Having established a very loyal customer base over the years Pro:Direct wanted to forge even stronger connections with their customers and knowing how native consumer mobile apps can help brands to drive increased engagement and sales conversion took the decision to build them. The team started to look for a proven partner, one who understood the sports retail marketplace and mobile first customer shopping journeys and selected One iota tp help build out the iOS and Android Consumer Mobile Apps.
Native consumer apps are typically designed and developed for loyal customers, one way of ensuring this loyalty is maintained and improved over time is through a well designed membership programme. The mobile consumer app is a highly effective channel to help move customers up through the membership tiers, for example using push notifications for early access products, events or personalised promotions.
The ProDirect and Nike membership schemes have been linked through Nike Connect allowing ProDirect members to gain access to a range of exclusive benefits and experiences. These include early access to special Nike product launches, free UK & Standard Delivery and registration for member-only experiences to enter exclusive competitions with once in a lifetime prizes.
For brands such as Pro:Direct who have very strong relationships with brands including Nike, Adidas, Reebok and others a key point of differentiation is in their ability to offer exclusive or limited edition products. The consumer mobile app is a highly effective channel through which to do this with push notifications advising customers of new drops and giving them the opportunity to enter raffles to win them.
Key to any shopping experience is ensuring that the customer can access high quality written content, images videos to inform their buying journey. This backed with a rich source of delivery and payment options ensures that the brand has the best possible chance of converting visits to sales.
Among special features of the new flagship, there is the newly developed “Smart Fitting Room” that will be integrated into eight of the 17 fitting rooms in this store for the first time.Such specific new experiential tool offers customers digital access to extensive product information, including material and care instructions, as well as alternative sizes available.Equipped with RFID, items in the fitting rooms are immediately recognized and displayed on a screen. Customers can also use an application on the screen to request additional items or help from the sales team for personal advice without leaving the fitting room, This enables a more individual and comprehensive service.
The whole team at Sportsshoes live running and fitness and have over 30 years of expertise. This allows them to deliver industry leading expert advice and support to their customer communities whether this be Couch to 5k runners or elite athletes taking on ultra marathons. Sportsshoes provide online gait analysis, to shoe and jacket finders, live chat expert advice as well as our Running, Trail and Training advice hubs, the team are always on a mission to help their customers find the perfect product from their range of brand partners.
Sportsshoes has a very loyal customer following and in their continued commitment to elevating the experience for their customers the team there took the decision to design and build a consumer native mobile app. As well as ensuring the app was of high quality in terms of look and feel it had to be fully integrated to work in harmony with their ecommerce platform and payment provider of choice.
The team wanted to take advantage of all of the industry proven benefits that a mobile consumer app provides, including but not limited to:
Sportsshoes vision for their mobile experience is to ensure they are delivering personalised content, both editorial and product led. This content is tailored for communities such as elite runners to leisure runners through to the hiking community driving engagement and sales conversion.
Membership is a key feature for retailers with large and loyal customer followings. Ultra is Sportsshoes membership program that elevates the customer experience by providing a wide variety of rewards including. These include access to exclusive content and special offers, first access to sale items, competitions, the ability to shop new product launches before anyone else and priority order processing for ultra fast service
After a review of the market Sportsshoes appointed with One iota to design, develop and deliver a native consumer mobile app. One iota were appointed due to their extensive experience of designing and developing mobile apps over the years for brands in the sports retail sector including JD Sports, Totalsport, AktiSport and ProDirect. Having conducted a range of integrations with solutions in the ecommerce ecosystem the team at Sportsshoes were confident that they would be in good hands, working with a team who understood and could manage the complexities of ecommerce systems.
Once developed and launched One iota deliver and support the mobile app as a cloud based managed service and provide resources for continued feature development to drive engagement
The app has now launched and we are looking forward to it taking the same growth trajectory as the other consumer mobile apps that are in the One iota stable.
People today want to express themselves and their personalities in everything they own and brands are very aware that personalisation creates value for their customers. A study by Deliotte discovered that personalised products can command a premium price of up to 20% more than non-personalised products, a great opportunity for retailers to increase revenues. ProDirect have introduced this feature into their consumer mobile app, allowing customers to personalise shirts and boots to help strengthen the bond between customer and brand.
ProDirect worked with brand partner Adidas to launch the augmented reality (AR) footwear try-on in their Consumer Mobile Apps on iOS and Android. This feature has been designed to let customers virtually try on some of their latest boot releases, including the <names of two of the boots that have this option>. Viewing products in 3D is already known to increase conversion, reduce returns driven by style or look and help brands attract new customers.
After a review of the market Sportsshoes appointed with One iota to design, develop and deliver a native consumer mobile app. One iota were appointed due to their extensive experience of designing and developing mobile apps over the years for brands in the sports retail sector including JD Sports, Totalsport, AktiSport and ProDirect. Having conducted a range of integrations with solutions in the ecommerce ecosystem the team at Sportsshoes were confident that they would be in good hands, working with a team who understood and could manage the complexities of ecommerce systems.
Once developed and launched One iota deliver and support the mobile app as a cloud based managed service and provide resources for continued feature development to drive engagement
As well as being a member of the Sportsshoes community some customers are also members of other running focused organisations such as England Athletics. The Sportsshoes mobile app allows members of both programmes to link their accounts and for members of England Athletics to receive specific member discounts. This co-collaboration of value helps both organisations to strengthen the bond between customer and brand.
Sportsshoes work with a range of leading brand partners across running and hiking, these including ON, New Balance, Asics, Salomen and New Balance. Working hand in hand with brand partners the app will become the primary channel for members to access special offers and events such as entries to the London Marathon.
