Why shopping malls fail to digitalize

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Digitalizing your mall marketing is not an easy task. It takes a lot of effort and maintenance along the way. But when done right, amazing results will show. Emplate aims to create amazing costumers experience and smoothen the digital transition - so it's as easy, quick and successful as possible. From experience, we know most of the common mistakes that are usually causes digitalization to fail.

The most common mistakes are:

• Believing you truly know your end-users
• Not focusing on user-friendliness, UX or design
• Forgetting to inform and joining forces with all of your stakeholders
• Not promoting your app through all of your existing channels
• Only focusing on getting new users and not thinking about retention from the beginning
  

Believing you know your end-users

Naturally, you know the costumers of your mall. But do you know their digital habits?

This is one of the key mistakes most malls make when going digital: Not serving the digital needs of their customers. Today almost everything is online and the competition for consumer attention is intense. This means that you have to make sure to ask your costumers about their digital needs and habits - because it is your job to please them, if you want their attention.

Not focusing on making mall apps user-friendly in accordance to UX design

We pointed out that everything is digital. Now one thing that rhymes with digital is changes - constant changes. It is absolutely critical to follow the trends and apply new features to the app continuously - otherwise your app will be outdated in an instant and boring to your users. Think of it like this: Every time the user get's frustrated (yep, even the slightest bit!) about counterintuitive navigation, lack of features or unfixed bugs, there is a chance that they'll stop using (or even delete and poorly review!) your mall app. That's why the User Experience Design (UX) is extremely important - And has to be continuously updated to maintain a high standard .

Forgetting to inform and joining forces with all of your stakeholders

When launching a new marketing platform - such as a mall app - it's essential to inform and include all of your stakeholders in the digital project. It is especially important to include your tenants as they are going to play an important role in providing content for the app and a personalized shopping experience for the costumers. They are going to be the ones facing the costumers, so it's key that they know how to use the app and provide content on a regular basis. This requires a sense of ownership - and creating ownership and driving engagement can be a difficult task, that many malls tend to forget about.

Not promoting the app through the malls existing channels

When launching a mall app you have to build a user base for it to be a successful channel. That can be a hard task that will only prove successful if you utilize all of your existing channels. We recommend you focus on targeted marketing on platforms where users have easy access to download the app and where they are easier to convince - that could be when using digital media such as their phones or when visiting your mall. It is our experience that no channel alone can provide a solid user base and therefore it is important to use the entire marketing mix strategically.

Not thinking retention from the Start

What most malls think when launching a mall app is: How can we get new users and new costumers? And don't get us wrong - that's a great(!) question and also an important one to ask. But experience shows that what seems to be more important is to think of retention - preferably from the very beginning. It has been proven over and over to be the most important factor for long term success. Thinking of how you can maintain your users instead of getting new ones is also more affordable and will let your users become more loyal to your app - and mall - as they will feel valued and entertained over an extended period of time.

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