Retail CX: What’s Mobile Testing Got to Do with it?

A lot, actually.

Retail executives have had a rough go the past few years. The industry went from post-recession apocalypse to being expected to deliver perfect digital app experiences, from store to app and everywhere in between. Retailers that can quickly release high-quality retail apps and digital technologies are creating seriously awesome shopping experiences—which consumers say they’d spend 16 percent more to have.

Consumers will spend 16 percent more on average to get a great digital experience.

Digital morphed an entire industry

While we are in a great place with digital and retail CX now, this didn’t happen without casualties.

In 2008, the sight of  “For Lease” signs on empty retail spaces everywhere gave us all chills. Was it the second Great Depression? How could Starbucks go out of business? Following sharp economic collapse in the housing market (and resulting viral job loss), in-store sales came to a screeching halt. Digital transformation was gobbling up brick-and-mortar stores like something out of The Walking Dead.

Fortunately, “The Retail Apocalypse” didn’t destroy the retail industry forever. Many brands rebounded because they figured out how to fuse digital and in-store experiences to create substantial competitive advantage. And here we are in 2018, with a prediction from Forbes that 83 percent of good purchased globally in 2022 will be bought in-store.

Digital didn’t kill the retail industry; it just put an alligator-filled moat in the way. Retailers that saw the big picture and evolved their mobile testing strategy to embrace digital as a CX advantage are now poised to release mobile retail apps with supersonic efficiency. And kick ass at it.

App testing platforms matter

Why did their mobile testing strategy work when others failed so miserably? They invested in mobile app testing platforms, which greatly streamline QA activities to meet increasing competitive threats and consumer demands for rich digital shopping experiences.

So if it’s as easy as purchasing a mobile testing solution, what’s holding everyone back from digital domination? It’s because not all app testing tools are equal. In fact, many actually suck. But organizations do not understand the differences and, therefore, pay big prices for big-name legacy test clouds – unaware of their hidden costs or shortcomings.

Very few app testing platforms are flexible enough to support the complex needs of today’s mobile tester. The result is a big, stinky bottleneck in the testing phase of development because of the difficult dilemma which digital puts on QA:

“Do I test quickly or do I test thoroughly? I can’t do both.”

Well, too bad; honey badger don’t care. Consumers expect both! Top brands are releasing retail apps and updates hourly. At the same time, the cost of incomplete testing is material. Twenty-four percent of users abandon apps on the first use due to bugs and UI issues, which accounts for 88 percent of customer acquisition costs.

Flexible, streamlined app testing platforms such as Kobiton solve this dilemma and help retailers to test better, faster, smarter:

• Eliminate costly QA bottlenecks
• Extend test coverage to resolve bugs earlier
• Centralize/share test data across local, private and public cloud devices
• Reduce TCO; pay only for what’s needed
• Improve CX / increase sales
• Get started quickly with open source standards
  

Retailers Must Balance BOTH Speed AND Certainty:
• 53 percent of organizations release apps and updates daily
• 23 percent of organizations say that QA is the bottleneck
• 24 percent of users abandon an app on first use due to poor UI
• This accounts for 88 percent of customer acquisition costs

Retail uses Kobiton for CX excellence

Top brands including a large national supplier of business products and services use Kobiton to stay ahead of retail trends and dominate CX… Retail’s holy grail; the “Land of Promise.” These customers are tired of inflexible legacy testing clouds that overcharge and do not allow them to test the way they need to test.

With Kobiton, they can get the most streamlined access to real mobile devices (no emulators or simulators) – whether those devices are in our public cloud, in a tester’s hands, or somewhere in between. Having one comprehensive view of all testing activity allows retail enterprises with multiple locations to release powerful retail apps and technologies, such as analytics and voice-assisted smart speakers, which are growing nearly two-and-a-half times faster than smartphones!

653% vs 286%
Growth rate for smart speakers vs. smartphones

So you see, mobile testing has everything to do with retail CX. Feeling like your mobile app testing platform can’t get CX-centric apps and technologies out fast enough? Do you need a more cost-effective way to…

• Learn about evolving shopper behaviors and desires?
• Create highly personalized multi-channel experiences?
• Deploy emerging and “sexy” technologies first?
• Increase sales?