Personal Shopper Apps Development
Mobile shopping is currently experiencing massive growth. According to a forecast written by BI Intelligence, it will reach $284 billion by 2020. This makes 45% of the total U.S. eCommerce market.
Interestingly enough, online shopping can get quite stressful. A balance will need to be struck between convenience and usability: with so many different brands and items, sales and last-minute discounts, you might get stuck on a website for hours. Looking for goods on a mobile can be even more frustrating. A smaller screen size makes it difficult to make the right choice. To top it off, you will often have to switch between multiple apps when looking for an item you need.
While online shopping platforms like Amazon or eBay partially solve the problem by bringing tons of goods from multiple brands in one place, it is still difficult to find exactly what you want among millions of items on sale. Spending hours just to browse through all of the possible options is a luxury few can afford. That is where technology comes in handy.
The case for mobile shopping assistants
A personal shopper app is more than just another mCommerce product. It is a smart concierge that takes the hassle out of online shopping. It can help you find the right products at the lowest possible cost, searching hundreds of online stores for the best deals and offers. It provides personalized recommendations and offers better alternatives to the items you want.
The benefits of a personal shopper app for a consumer are obvious. It is an automated and effortless way to shop online.
It saves time and money, it helps keep all purchases organized, it tracks the orders from a single app, it monitors price movements and it allows you to buy cheaper.
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Many retail companies and major fashion brands have adopted virtual assistants. Thanks to advanced personalization capabilities and higher engagement, businesses can strengthen brand loyalty and improve customer retention. Thus, personal shopper apps have proven to be useful in terms of revenue growth.
From a business perspective, building a shopping assistant app might be a great investment. There are numerous ways to monetize such apps, for example, through
- subscription-based services;
- paid requests;
- purchase commissions;
- membership fees for brands and vendors.
Furthermore, the market is still far from being saturated, so your app will have all the more chances for success.
Best practices: building a smart shopper assistant
What makes a good shopper assistant app? The answer is simple: the assistant itself. Based on the way the users’ requests are processed, shopper assistant apps can be divided into the ones relying on actual people to handle all the tasks and the tools using artificial intelligence algorithms.
Human shopper assistants
These apps are used to connect professional shoppers, fashion advisors or brand/store agents with the users. They communicate through a simple chat interface: users make shopping requests, and the assistants further specify orders and suggest possible options that meet those requirements.
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There are several examples of these apps using real shopper assistants to serve the users’ needs.
- Shopbolt — An app providing on-demand shopping assistance from “real people who can offer expert advice while serving your shopping needs.”
- Personal Shopper By Shop Your Way — The platform connects its users with personal shoppers, making it possible to buy a wide variety of goods from the group of Sears retailer companies, including Sears.com, Kmart.com, and mygofer.com.
Building such an app is relatively easy. All it takes is creating chat functionality. Additionally, you will need some basic elements of a traditional mCommerce app, such as a user account, a shopping cart, payments, order tracking and shopping history.
