This month in the world of app commerce — June
This month we look ahead to what the future of app commerce could bring with announcements from Apple WWDC about iOS 12 and how shopping behaviour is changing.
Apple’s iOS 12 announcement:
This month saw the announcement of iOS 12 at Apple’s WWDC which saw some important advancements in Augmented Reality (AR) that could have useful implications for app commerce. With the announcement of ARKit 2.0, Apple promises to improve face tracking, 3D object detection and realistic rendering. All of which could have useful applications for the demonstration furnishing products in the home and by beauty brands for demonstrating how beauty products will look on the user. ARKit 2.0 will also be able to offer social interaction and shared AR experiences, opening up a new world of possibilities of how we use our phones and potentially the way we shop.
AR has already seen a host of retailers levy this technology to bring customers products into their homes and most recently Houzz and Argos have both launched AR features in their apps. With the advances brought in the measuring app in Apple’s iOS 12 announcement, we expect that this could be a useful tool in combination with AR for homeware retailers to boost their customer experience and aid in the decision process for buying large ticket items. The popularity of AR continues to grow and it could soon become part of our everyday lives.
Changing shopping behaviour:
As we anticipate the growing influence of AR in our lives, early signs are already suggesting that how we shop is changing too. Recent research has found that women are not only more likely to embrace mobile commerce than men but are more engaged with it too. They attribute this to the existence of mobile-first brands like Glossier, who target and engage women on social media building brand loyalty and ultimately drive the cost of acquiring them as the most valuable type of customers, app users, down.
Not only are women more likely to be app shoppers, but those specifically those aged 18–34 are most likely to be familiar with retail apps according to CivicScience. Brands that embrace and align with millennial lifestyles will ultimately be the ones to see the most success in app commerce.
Shoppable Stories become mainstream:
Last year we proudly announced the launch of App Stories, enabling retailers to bring relevant and interesting curated content to their users in a shoppable way. This month we saw the likes of social media giants, like Instagram, introduce the concept of stories being shoppable to their platforms. With Stories on social media seeing active users in the hundreds of millions, we’re excited to see them embrace the concept too.
Read a recent platform release to find out more about how why we introduced shoppable App Stories to our platform and how they can help drive engagement.
Reported by Samantha Rigg
Originally published at poqcommerce.com on July 3, 2018.
