Do You Need a Brand App?

According to a recent NY Times article, US shoppers are expected to make $118B in retail purchases through their smartphones in 2018, up from $13.4B in 2013. But does that mean a brand should have a mobile app?

Not necessarily. For an app to resonate it has to be used and that means apps that are slow, poorly designed, push too many notifications, or don't offer exclusive sales or promotions will get deleted. 

In fact, a recent study showed almost half of those surveyed found 50% or fewer of the brand apps to be useful after downloading them and about 22% had deleted more than half of their brand apps

If you don't have a reason for customers to come back to the app on a daily or weekly basis, then an app may not be warranted. 

An example of a brand app that works? The Walgreens app has been downloaded more than 50M times and has 5M people actively using it each month with users coming to the app for its discount coupons and helpful pharmacy features (e.g. daily pill reminders, notifications for prescription refills, the ability to speak with pharmacists through Pharmacy Chat, etc.)