What:  Apps remain relevant for retailers wishing to personalize their relationship with their customers

Why it is important:  A decade ago, apps were a goal: build an app, promote it and customers will come and use it. Today, things are quite different: the app, just like the store, the website or social media channels, becomes integrated into the digital ecosystem and needs to take into all its components to make sense. This might be costly in terms of technology upgrade, but worth it: 2 customers out of 3 use branded apps for their purchases.

Apps, even in this era of new channels proliferation, still represent according to McKinsey the main channel for 2 customers out of 3 to buy from a brand. Apps allow to have a digital direct line with customers, data-rich, personalised and brand-specific.

However, the article argues that building an app is not the toughest job: the most difficult is to figure out its positioning in the customer journey and properly articulate it as a part of a broader brand and digital strategy, and not an endpoint like it used to be a decade ago. For instance, apps need to integrate live-streaming and social commerce options to be relevant in 2021, and represent one of the many entry door to the brand and retailer ecosystem.

To achieve this, retailers might have to overcome legacy issues in their tech stack, and not rely on the app to be a magical wand allowing them to become connected with the customer.

Yes retailers need an app, but also a strategy