#SwrveThisWay is a blog series that showcases how global teams solve everyday issues with Swrve. Every blog post covers a new topic in a new industry, and common issues that were solved in real life using our industry-leading mobile-first customer engagement platform. 

This Week’s Issue: Retail Apps - Modernizing the Path to Purchase 

Driving in-app purchases and increasing online sales can be a particularly puzzling challenge for retailers. Apps are being opened and items are being viewed constantly, but just not enough consumers are making it to checkout. While the reasons around this may vary, one often overlooked issue to consider is that: many buyers are nervous about buying the wrong size online, which keeps them from committing to an item.

For Allison, a Senior Marketing Manager at a luxury fashion retailer, Swrve analytics revealed that her brand’s size guide was one of the most frequented sections of each product page. After digging deeper, Allison found a segment of users who never purchased, but visited the app frequently and looked at the size guides repeatedly. This is quite different from long-time app users who browse products but don’t check sizes, or those simply using the app for style inspiration. Allison knew that turning these users into paying customers could increase the volume of repeat buyers significantly.

How Swrve Solves This Issue

Swrve is built to send the right messages to the right users with perfect timing, at scale. This makes it the perfect tool to inform and inspire action from users exactly when they’re most likely to engage or make a purchase. There are two campaigns in Swrve that Allison used to solve this issue for her team:

Campaign 1: A Hyper Targeted, Hyper Relevant Tool Tip

Allison used Swrve to create an in-app tooltip that informed users how easy it is to return items. The tooltip, designed in her brand’s look and feel, highlighted specific perks of their return policy. She targeted this message to the segment of users who had frequently visited the size guide. To her delight, this small campaign generated a significant increase in sales.

Campaign 2: Geo-Targeted Messaging to Encourage In-Store Visits 

For those unsure about sizing, especially for highly-individual items such as shoes, the next best option would be to visit a store to try a few pieces on in person. To encourage this non-converting shoe browsers to visit a store, Allison created a geo-triggered campaign in Swrve that encouraged them to stop by a store the first time they were within 1 mile of a brick-and-mortar location, if they had also recently browsed shoes. These messages saw high engagement, increasing foot traffic for several locations.

Have questions? Email me anytime at swrvethisway@swrve.com, or learn more about Swrve and how we help marketers solve common issues in retail during one of our upcoming demos.