Earn $100 by Referring a Friend!

March 23, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

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Know a company looking to make a mobile app? Help them out and get a bonus of your own!
Earn a $100 Amazon Gift Card just for referring them to Rocket Farm Studios! 
 

Here’s how it works:

  1. Email us your referral’s name, email and/or phone number.
  2. We connect with your referral and give a free demo of Rocket Farm’s services.
  3. You earn your $100 gift card!

If we are able to connect with your referral and show them a free demo, the Gift Card is yours!
Who can say no to free money? You can’t go wrong. Email us your referral today!

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

The Big List of US App Development Agencies

March 16, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

Rocket Farm – Key clients for Rocket Farm feature Yamaha and T-Mobile. As well as iOS, Android and Windows Phone apps, they have created SDKs, one of which was bought by Google in 2011. 

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

4 Reasons Every Retailer Needs a Mobile App

March 9, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

Are you a retailer without a good mobile app? Well, here’s a sobering quote from a recent venturebeat.com article:

By the end of 2015, U.S. mobile commerce sales totaled approximately $104.05 billion for the year, up nearly 40 percent from 2014. With mobile commerce growth outpacing total ecommerce growth by 2.58 times in 2015, mobile commerce sales nearly reached 30 percent of total US ecommerce sales.

Mobile shopping is quickly becoming more than a fraction of the market; it’s becoming the market. If you are a retailer, big or small, that has yet to dip your feet into this brave new world, you better get started. Here are 4 big reasons why every retailer needs a mobile app.

1. You’re missing out on Millennials.

We all joke a lot about “kids these days” always on their smartphones, but these “kids” (read: Millennials) are big spenders when it comes to retail, and they’re doing it from their mobile devices. In fact, comScore found that 59% of digital shopping time occurs on mobile devices. Since the purchasing power of Millennials are hitting trillions of dollars, $2.45 trillion in 2015, you’ll want to pay attention to exactly how they’re spending all that dough.
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And remember, a mobile site isn’t enough. We’ve already written about how 90% of mobile time is in apps, not on the sites. To capture Millennial dollars, the best option is a branded mobile app that can serve not only as a great marketing tool, but also as your customers’ online portal to purchasing your products.

2. You’re missing out on cross-channel promotion.

With a good mobile strategy for your brick-and-mortar store, one can feed the other and your total business can grow larger than the sum of its parts. Said CMO of Localytics, Josh Todd:

Retailers have a twofold problem: they want people to buy within the app, but they also want to drive people into stores. Smart retailers use the app to do both by emailing customers about their in-app shopping carts or wish-list items, and offering in store incentives to buy.

There are many ways to engage your customers with cross-channel promotion in mind. There are lofty ideas like publishing content to an entire second app as Barneys does, but there are much simpler ideas too: for example, push an in-store coupon to a user’s mobile app; this brings the user into the store where she can “check in” via the app for a loyalty credit; and accumulating credits can eventually lead to another in-store coupon that will again be pushed to the mobile app. By personalizing their shopping experience in this way, cross-channel promotion becomes much more effective.

3. You’re missing out on awesome data.

These days, if your business doesn’t have an app that intelligently captures user behavioral data, you’re running your company with one eye blind. There is a mountain of data to be mined from how often shoppers open your app, how long they spend on it, what items they looked at, when they look at them; the list goes on. Because today’s shopper spends so much time on mobile devices, traditional sources of behavioral data pale in comparison to the insights you could gain from an effective mobile app.
A great article on cio.com highlights Walgreens’ effort to intelligently mine customer data via its app. A quote from their CIO, Abhi Dhar:

When you become experience focused, your technology vision is different. You don’t accept limitations of enterprise software anymore. You’re maniacally focused on making it easy for customers, which means you eliminate anything that gets in your way, even if it’s the same technology that everybody else uses, and you have to consider ripping it up.

Dhar is saying that old technology will be violently replaced by the new in service of better serving the customer base, and we love that. Mobile apps are that new, groundbreaking technology available now to capture better customer data.
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4. You’re missing out on what your customers actually want.

24% of mobile commerce app users who add products to a cart will ultimately buy, compared to just 13% on the mobile web. The number of iOS shopping app downloads during last Black Friday week increased about 17% over the previous year. From these data points, it’s clear that users not only want shopping apps, but want to use them to purchase. Increased sales are yours for the taking! But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Just having an app is a start, but it isn’t enough. Your retail app also has to be great, because app brand recognition isn’t up to par at the moment. Why not? Because most retailers still aren’t thinking “mobile first” as they should be. And here’s what results from this mentality:
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3rd party shopping apps are taking over the smartphone screens of your customers. eBay, Amazon; these sites know how to put mobile first and are filling the gap in the market for retail apps. They’re eating your lunch because you’re not even at the table yet. If your company wants to win at mobile ecommerce, there’s no better day than today to get to work on your killer mobile shopping app. Your customers are waiting!
What’s been your experience with retail mobile apps? Sound off in the comments below!
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

4 Reasons Why Your Mobile App IS Your Best Marketing Strategy

March 1, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

Depending on who you ask, mobile marketing is still a mystery to be solved. How do you run it effectively? How do you measure success? What channels should you pay attention to most? In fact, according to a survey by Millward Brown Digital last year, nearly 8 in 10 US marketers said they would increase mobile spending if they could track ROI better. And while recent reports show that mobile ads are set to overtake press to become the 3rd largest advertising medium in 2016, sadly up to 60% of clicks on mobile ads are accidental. Is mobile marketing really what it’s cracked up to be?
Yes! But we need to take a step back to understand that mobile marketing isn’t just throwing up a display ad or running a video before a mobile game. Rather, the actual mobile experience IS the mobile marketing that you’re looking for. Here are 4 reasons why focusing on a great user experience on mobile is the best mobile marketing investment you can make.
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1. A good mobile experience brings in customers.

According to themobileplaybook.com, 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. And furthermore, 40% went to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience. If someone pointed to your physical business space and said “ugh, I wouldn’t buy from this store based on how messy it looks,” wouldn’t you hire a cleaning company right away? Not investing in a great app or great mobile site is the same deal.
And it makes sense. How often has a friend held up his or her phone to show you some product? That’s the mobile marketing you want. For example, a friend had me use Waze on her phone one day while I navigated. It was a beautiful app, and I was hooked immediately. By providing a great mobile experience, 1) my friend felt confident showing it to me, and 2) I immediately understood the value and downloaded the app on my own phone. A good mobile experience will go viral.

2. A good mobile experience retains customers.

We’ve written about loyalty before, and it’s something all companies want; and mobile is the way to make this happen. According to a study by Latitude, 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience. Again, it makes sense. Since so much of shopping (and window shopping) is moving to mobile, often times a customer’s interaction with your brand starts and ends on his or her smartphone. If that experience is good, then the brand is good by extension.
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Here’s another stat from Apadmi to keep in mind: “almost 30% of shoppers would feel comfortable sharing their location if it meant retail applications could send them deals and loyalty points as they were shopping.” In today’s era of increasing privacy, for nearly a third of shoppers to agree to this is pretty extraordinary and something marketers should pay attention to. It means that for the right incentives, customers are willing to be loyal even to down to the square meter! Yet another reason to provide a robust mobile experience (so build in that loyalty program ASAP!).

3. A good mobile experience gets in front of customers at all hours.

80% of consumers check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up. In a typical day, the average consumer checks their phone about 150 times. Sure, these are pretty standard facts about how mobile-obsessed we are. But here’s one that caught our interest: a thinkwithgoogle.com article stated that “49% of B2B researchers who use their mobile devices for product research do so while at work.
“While at work” is the key phrase here, because very often, workers will turn to their personal mobile devices to do some shopping during work hours because it’s a more private experience. In essence, you don’t want Zappos.com on your work monitor for everyone to see, but are fine with it on your phone while taking five in the bathroom.
What this means is that a good mobile app or site will reach people during work hours much easier than a desktop site would. We all need a break sometime, and more frequently, we’re turning to our phones, be it due to privacy concerns, work rules, or ease of use. Take advantage of this trend to reach your customers during non-traditional shopping hours with a good mobile destination.

4. A good mobile experience will capture Baby Boomers.

What do many retirees do in their twilight years? Go shopping. And increasingly, they’ll do that via their mobile devices. According to Business Insider, 1 in 4 mobile shoppers is over the age of 55. That’s pretty incredible since my parents can’t even use email correctly, but it’s happening. With a 401k to spend and time on their hands, this demographic is set to spend a lot of money in the coming years.
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If you ask us, there’s no better argument that this stat for creating a good, simple mobile experience. Smartphone are ubiquitous enough in our society that Baby Boomers are shopping on them, and Baby Boomers are brand loyal to a fault (unlike their hipster children who hate labels). Every company needs to have a great mobile app or site in place to cater to this group. Avon and Tupperware made their fortunes by getting into their homes. Now we can do it with the press of a finger. Let’s get to work!
What do you think about mobile apps being great marketing tools in of themselves? Sound off in the comments below.
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.