With heavy usage of mobile devices, Shopify stores are finding great results by offering mobile apps for their on-the-go audience. A crucial aspect of success for these mobile apps is Mobile Session Time. This is the amount of time users spend engaged within an app per visit.
The longer these session times are, the more likely the conversion will be, brand loyalty strengthened, and customer relationships established. Moving on to very practical advice on how to increase the average time a mobile session lasts in Shopify mobile applications, we have options ranging from better UI/UX to using targeted notifications to stimulate user exploration and depth.
Understanding Mobile Session Time and Its Impact on User Engagement
Mobile session time- that is, the average length of time users spend in an application per session. It serves as a powerful indicator of user engagement. It provides an insight into how engaging and interactive the app is.
Session times can be a way of keeping the user for longer inside an app, but their benefits actually turn into real business benefits for Shopify businesses. The more the session time, the more time the user has to spend browsing products, collections, and possibly making purchases.
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Optimization of User Interface through Shopify Mobile App Builder
A UI needs to be well-optimized to keep users engaged. A clean, visually appealing design not only gives an app aesthetic appeal but makes it easy to navigate, enabling smooth movement from one section to the other. According to Intechnic, a well-designed UI can increase your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, while a superior UX design can increase conversion rates by up to 400%, meaning UI is critical in session time and conversions.
Shopify Mobile App Builders does offer a pre-designed template with drag-and-drop features, making it simpler but still enough to use, while still fulfilling the needs of eCommerce users. Here are some guidelines on how to optimize the UI for your Shopify application:
- Consistent Branding: Colors, fonts, and icons must originate from the same brand identity because regular branding familiarity and credibility set in, causing visitors to spend more time on that particular website.
- Minimalist Design: Keep the screen free of clutter by focusing on what users need to know. Minimalism allows users to notice what is important—the most important thing is your products—without providing overload.
- Excellent Images and Videos: The image and video upload is easily dealt with in Shopify app builders, and therefore you can make the maximum use of excellent product images and videos that would do well to set an application into the visual treat, allowing users not to lose interest.
- Mobile-Friendly Layouts: Make use of mobile-first design principles to test and refine layouts that swim in the waters of smaller screens.
By creating an app through Shopify Mobile App Builders, you can fine-tune the UI for your app so as to keep users curious and prepared for another dose.
Read more: 10 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Converting Your Shopify Store to a Mobile App
Navigation Optimization of the App for Better UX and More Engagement by Users
User experience will make most of the users stick to using an application. There should be friendly navigation, quick page loading, and easy availability of desired features so that a user can easily find whatever they want in the application without hassle. Here are some ways of enriching app navigation with Shopify Mobile App Builders:
- Clear Category Organisation: Group products into clearly defined categories. Convenient filters ensure the accessibility of desired items.
- Sticky Menus and Icons: Use sticky menus for optimal capabilities in always ensuring elements in the navigation stay visible even upon scrolling up or down. This shows movability around pages, hence longer browsing sessions.
- Search Functionality: Have an intelligent search bar, also known as a smart search bar, which offers suggestions to users as they type.
A great mobile app user experience means an easy transition from one section to the other, meaning spending more time there eventually leads to more sales once opportunities arise.
Push Notifications and How to Re-Engage Users
Push notifications are a great way to re-engage a non-actively used app, towards your audience. If you have the right push notification, the users will open your Shopify mobile app and spend more time checking up on products and sales, or other content they may have missed. As a matter of fact, the research study shows that personalizing push notifications can increase the app’s retention by 20% and engagement in the app by up to 88%.
Using Shopify Mobile App Builders also enables you to easily configure and personalize push notifications. Here is how you can use them effectively in order to enhance session time:
- Personalized Recommendations: Customize your notifications for specific users according to their browsing history or purchase history. For example, if a user has recently checked summer dresses, send a notification of new arrivals or discounts for that particular category.
- Flash Sales and Time-Sensitive Offers: The use of flash deals through push notifications may be what brings a sense of urgency to the app as this can activate users to return to the app to check on some content.
- Cart Reminders: Reminded persons who had left items in their cart. These reminders can call back the returnees to spend more time on the app and eventually result in a conversion.
- Engaging Content: It can also be with tips, articles, or even tutorials about your products but pertinent to drive users back to your app for browsing and exploration.
With these strategies, Shopify owners can encourage more engagement with their mobile sessions, engaging the user even when they are not active, hence increasing loyalty.
Interactive Feature Addition for High In-app Engagement
The interactive features in the Shopify store mobile application help you enhance user engagement. You can add live chat, in-app games, or quizzes to your application and make it engaging. Such immersive features capture the users’ attention as well as encourage them to dig deeper. According to research, apps with interactive elements have a higher user engagement of up to 50% than those without such interactive features.
With Shopify Mobile App Builders, you can easily add interactive components without requiring extensive technical skills. Here are a couple of ways you can utilize these features to get more session time:
- Product Quizzes: Have customers find the perfect product for them using a very short quiz, perhaps like “What’s Your Style?” or “Find Your Perfect Skincare Routine.” These prompt users to engage with your app while discovering the perfect products based on their preferences.
- Augmented Reality (AR): Shopify app builders packed with AR features allow customers to see products in their actual space, making for a far more interactive and memorable shopping experience. For example, furniture store operators can allow users to “Place an item in their living area through AR”, increasing session time as users explore other items.
- Live chat or AI chatbots: Interactive chat options are valuable for immediate customer support. At the moment a user has a question, a prompt response from a chatbot or even a live agent can keep that user engaged in the app.
You are going to create an app environment that encourages exploration and extended time on site. This is beneficial in terms of session time.
Personalization- Tailoring the User Experience
One of the most effective ways to engage the user and feel valued is personalization. Users spend more time in an app when they see content, product recommendations, or offers relevant to the user’s preferences and behaviors. Conversion rates and revenue increase up to 26%, and the impact on session times will be the same when people explore the content relevant to their needs.
Mobile App Builders in Shopify generally offer functionality to enable personalization capabilities like:
- Customized Product Recommendations: Previous purchase history and browsing history of the user should be used to get the most relevant items according to a user’s interest. For instance, if a user has recently browsed through winter wear, then related push notifications or even a look at the same can be seen in a user’s home feed.
- Location-Based Offers: If your application sells products across the world, the location-based offers could be built based on the user’s location. It helps users feel noticed and recognized, which usually leads to longer app sessions.
- Personalized Welcome Messages and Content Feeds: Consider personalizing messages and feeds when the users log in. That may be done by welcoming the user back using his/her name or showcasing a personalized content feed right away making them more attached to the application.
The implementation of personalization improves the user experience, and users tend to spend more time with your app and frequently return.
The Best Shopify Mobile App Builder in the Market
Among the best and most potent Shopify Mobile App Builders, one name stands out: BoonApps. Essentially, the no-code eCommerce mobile app builder is the tool that enables the masses of Shopify store owners to create high-quality mobile apps without needing advanced coding knowledge.
- Drag-and-Drop Builder: BoonApps allows you to use very basic drag-and-drop and preview all your changes happening in real-time. Thus, without so much trouble, you can design an engaging app layout that best fits your brand.
- Fully Shopify Integration: You can sync the information with your Shopify store, making sure that the updates of products, the levels of your inventory, and any changes happening in your store are automatically reflected in the app.
BoonApps offers the facility of using advanced features, such as user engagement, optimization of experience, and increased time in a mobile session. BoonApps can offer special benefits to Shopify store owners when they need high user engagement without minimum development resources.
Monitoring and Analyzing Session Time through In-App Analytics
Closely monitor and analyze session time in order to know whether your strategies are effective or not. A good in-app analytics tool will be able to tell you how long users spend on each section, where they exit from, and which elements draw in the most engagement. This can help track where users go wrong or lose interest, giving you useful data to make changes.
Many apps with Shopify Mobile App Builders have analytics functions within the app or are compatible with third-party tools, including Google Analytics. Here’s how to make the best use of it:
- Track by Page Session Time: Find out which pages or sections consume the most time. For example, if users take more time reading product pages, then it may be worthwhile to further enhance this section, using reviews, AR features, or interactive elements.
- Analyze the drop-off points: Identify where customers are leaving the application, which can be a place for potential problems. If users leave after seeing the cart, then either they might be facing some sort of barrier or simply not motivated enough to make a purchase.
- A/B Testing: Experiment with different A/B variants for testing layouts, notification styles, or types of content. Compare the variants with prolonged session time and engagement metrics to further improve your strategy.
Through its use, you can come up with detailed analytics that brings actionable insights, which immediately affect the engagement of users and the time in the session so that you can always optimize your Shopify mobile app.
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Conclusion
With the exploding trend of going mobile-first, maximizing mobile session time is the only way an eCommerce business can hope to be successful. Interactive elements, personalization, optimized UX/UI, and strategic push notifications can greatly create an engaging app experience for users where they keep browsing longer and come back frequently to the Shopify store.
Using a powerful Shopify Mobile App Builder such as BoonApps allows all this to happen easily for the store owner, using customization and no-code solutions which ease up the technical barrier in creating a professional app.