Give shoppers a more efficient way to find the products they need with a mobile app for your mall! help your stores maximize their revenue potential! The growing trend toward digital retail is putting shopping malls and mall REITs (Retail Investment Trusts) under enormous pressure to improve foot traffic and increase sales for their retailers. However, embracing digital can be used as an advantage to encourage in-store shopping. Malls, just like many other businesses – besides the regular communication channels – should reach out to their audience through mobile apps as well.

Why create the mobile app for a shopping center?

A Mobile app improves the experience of the new visitors of your shopping center or department store. Shopping centers are becoming bigger and bigger which makes more difficult for the the buyer to discover the services it offers. With a mobile app your visitors will have all the information of your center in their mobile phones.

Also, an app is an excellent tool to increase frequency of visits and boost the loyalty thanks to the push notifications.

Features of a mobile app for a shopping center

• Show the map of the shopping mall
• Keep a directory of shops, business and restaurants ordered by name and category with information about the location, opening times, phone, website…
• Publish offers and promotions of the business
• Share your news
• Display information about the added value services
• Integrate your social networks twitter, Facebook…
• Show your promotional Youtube videos
• Create satisfaction surveys
• Send push notifications, the best way to keep your the buyers up to date

Key performance element in  improving stores ability to manage their business.

Traffic/Footfall metrics

Tracking visitor traffic patterns within the premises of the mall provides insights on mall activity trends, peak periods, and some top-level impact assessment of variables such as weather, holidays, and promotional events. For example, malls could use n analytics data on visitor traffic to assess the impact that commercial propositions like pop-up exhibitions, product launch events etc., have on drawing more visitors to the mall. Shopping centres could also use this mall level footfall data to gain insights on the best timings to run daily marketing campaigns to drive  consumers in-store.

 Heat maps

One of the factors that play a critical role in enhancing the layout of malls is having a sound understanding of customer flow. Heat maps of entire malls can help track consumer movements within the malls and identify hotspots and bottlenecks in the layout. Malls can then use this data to assess the impact of layout changes, digital signage boards and marketing campaigns on consumer engagement.

Heat maps can also help malls identify zones that are most trafficked. They can then use this data to help revive low-traffic areas within the mall by setting up a food joint or a pop-up store of a popular brand or by simply shifting a high-visit store to those zones. This can help visitors discover retail stores in low-traffic areas that they would have otherwise never come across.

 Zone interdependence/ Zone-to-Zone conversion metrics

Analysing cross-store visits will help malls understand and reorganise the positioning of stores to maximize consumer distribution and convenience during their visit. For example say Vero Moda and Zara are a pair of stores that attract visits by the same customers in the mall. Then the marketing team at the mall can use  analytics data to their advantage by positioning these stores near each other with maybe two low-traffic stores in between. This will not only make it more convenient for customers to move around the mall but also increases the chances of them walking into one of those low-traffic stores.

 Loyalty metrics

Yet another way in which malls can put analytics to use is to look into repeat visit patterns and understand how loyalty patterns could help enhance those visits. When it comes to active customer engagement, there’s a whole new dimension of personalised in-store engagement that is possible via a loyalty/mall app. Retailers could use this app to their advantage by identifying the location of users who have opted in for location-based services  and using their shopping profiles to deliver targeted promotions. For example, say a visitor’s favourite brand is Levi’s. The brand could use the mall’s app to push an ad asking him/her to come checkout the latest denim arrivals, as he/she walks by a Levi’s store. This way brands at the mall could use the app to drive more visits to their store.

Attribution metrics

When it comes to driving revenue for malls, public advertising spaces within the entire layout have always played a critical role.  And when it comes such digital signage boards, measuring ad display attribution is key to optimising locations and timings, and picking the right content dynamically.

Digital technologies therefore offer the chance for individualised, tailored, accelerated and more effective strategy for businesses. If you want to know about the power of digital transformation, Anglo African team can help you,  do contact Naazreen on 2331636 or via e-mail at  naazreen.ghoorun@infosystems.mu.