Singapore Brands Lead in Sticky App Experiences. How Can You Build One?

Story by: Anushka Pandit

Boasting a mobile-first population, Singapore is one of the countries leading in mobile penetration. In 2024, there are 5.85 million smartphone users in Singapore, and the figure is expected to grow to 6.16 million by 2028. Increased mobile usage links to enhanced chances of user acquisition through mobile advertising. In fact, a staggering 84% of the country’s population reports using mobile apps for their daily activities. There clearly lies a huge potential for marketers to leverage this channel for brand success. 

What is the topmost advantage of mobile marketing through apps? It lets businesses connect with customers at any time and any place, ensuring they meet the customer at the right moment. However, it is crucial for brands to understand that while app instals are important, they only quantify success if customers convert, and do so repeatedly. 

“A sneak peek of the iOS app store or Google Play Store shows us the clutter that we are dealing with. There are tons of available apps doing similar things and hence the question is—how do you differentiate your app?” says Nikhil Vidhyan , Regional Head of Digital Omnichannel at Ninja Van Group.

How can brands ensure they provide a sticky app experience? 

Enhancing the “Experience” in App Experience

User experience has a significant impact on overall app success. How the customer feels throughout their journey on the app decides their long-term loyalty to the brand. “The pre-purchase experience is as important as the post-purchase experience,” says Dipti Khalate , Head of Growth APAC at ZALORA Group . 

“The app should provide a seamless user experience so that it is easy to use and navigate. Do not give customers reasons to get annoyed or feel lost,” adds Vidhyan.

Brands must assess where the user is coming to their app from, explains Khalate, “The customer will land on your app in two scenarios–either when they are trying to discover products, or when they have already decided they want to buy something.”

In the discovery phase, the customer comes to your app to check if you have what they are looking for. The critical factors impacting the customer journey in this phase are whether the customer gets the best pricing for the product and the kind of service they receive.

In the consideration phase, when the customer has made up their mind to buy a certain product, the app experience must be so that it keeps them satisfied. For instance, using algorithms, the app must provide relevant product recommendations next to what the customer clicked on. 

For brands to offer a seamless app experience, they must assess which phase the customer is in when they land on the app, and service the customer accordingly. 

The Four Factors Affecting App Experience

Khalate suggests five factors in the customer journey that help shape the app experience and can make or break it;

Ease of Navigation

The customer might have landed on a brand’s app through an ad on social media and once they have switched their screens, it is imperative to ensure that the navigation across the app is as seamless as possible. For example, the user should be able to scroll forward on the product listings, move to viewing another product, or go back to the category or home page, without facing issues like slow loading time. 

Continuity

One of the most essential factors impacting the app experience is continuity. Once the user has decided to buy a certain product, the other recommendations must be relevant to what they have in mind for purchase. Features like size/dimensions, colours, etc. must be clearly visible and available to choose from. 

Clarity in Next-Step-of-Action

Once the product is added to the cart, the best prices incorporating available discounts from relevant vouchers and cashback points, must be displayed, without the customer having to browse around the app for it. The aim is to make the entire experience a lot easier for them.

Order Tracking

A critical part of the post-purchase experience is order tracking. The customer should be conveniently able to track where his shipment is–whether it is still in the warehouse or enroute, where in the shipment route it is, what the expected day and time of delivery is, and if there are any delays/progress in arrival. 

“The stickiness and user experience are not two different things in my mind. This entire experience of an end to end journey is something we must focus on to build a sticky app experience,” says Khalate.

Sustained App Use and Long-term Loyalty

After a brand has provided a great user experience on the first purchase, it is time to ensure that the customer comes back for more. “Apps are a critical brand-owned destination. While app downloads are important, they only matter if people convert and do so repeatedly, driving positive ROI on increasingly costly paid acquisition efforts,” says Steve Tan , VP & General Manager, EMEA & APAC at Airship .

For the customer to continue making future purchases, there are three pillars of the customer app experience, Tan suggests, that drive loyalty;

Value: Customers want brands to recognise their needs and quickly deliver value, such as fast service, special access, personalised interactions, unique products and affordability. Brands should prioritise personalised and tailored experiences to meet these expectations, and doing so requires data willingly and continually provided by customers.

Convenience: Customers want a fast and easy route to accomplish their goals. Simplifying their lives and saving them time are the top reasons they continue to use brands’ apps, far above saving money and earning rewards. Brands should orchestrate moments that matter in guiding customers to complete high-value actions throughout the customer lifecycle.

Consistency: In our cross-channel world, customers want seamless experiences wherever they choose to interact with brands. Winning brands will focus on optimising the end-to-end customer experience, personalising both messages and resulting app experiences to better connect with customers consistently – from acquiring and onboarding new users to understanding their evolving needs over time and how to best reward them. 

“Measuring activation, engagement and retention reveals whether the app experience resonates with customers and which lifecycle stages require optimisation to gain more value from ad spend and greater efficiencies from ongoing marketing efforts,” adds Tan. He explains why retention is imperative with the example of the holiday retail season. 

“Airship research found that key holiday shopping days generate a flood of new app instals for retailers, but activation,engagement and retention rates of peak holiday installers is actually lower than customers acquired ahead of the holidays. That’s critically important for retailers to understand as acquisition is more expensive and the value creation opportunity is significantly larger than any other time of the year,” Tan adds.

He emphasises that brands need to optimise first and second impressions of new app customers as the majority decide in one or two uses whether they’ll keep an app. 

Securing Customer Data

Personalisation for efficient app experiences can only be offered when customers willingly share their data, which demands an assurance of safety from brands. “In order to ensure good data protection in mobile apps, app makers should first ensure secure authentication to the app, including use of multi-factor authentication (MFA),” says Brian C Reed , SVP Marketing at Appdome . 

Reed suggests five best practices to secure user data in mobile apps: secure authentication, mobile data encryption, prevent data harvesting, mobile privacy and data loss prevention (DLP), and ensuring the integrity of the mobile operating system.

“Mobile brands should use a mobile app defence automation platform to ensure that they can build comprehensive protections into their mobile apps quickly and have the flexibility to easily update their defences to be ready for any new threats and attacks,” he adds.

Building a successful app is not easy and requires a lot of testing and learning from those experiences, says Vidhyan. “Some of the defaults in this process should be continuous learning through user feedback and behaviour data that is being collected. This should lead to app updates for consumer journey improvements,” he concludes.

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