Use Of Shopping Apps Increases 174% Year-On-Year

A new piece of research from Flurry Analytics has found that the use of apps in 2014 grew by 76% year-over-year, with the use of specific shopping and lifestyle apps growing by 174%, Warc reports. In fact, shopping apps experienced growth of 220% on Android devices alone. Utilities and messaging apps also experienced triple-figure growth of 121% and 103% respectively.

The company – owned by Yahoo – analysed 2.079 trillion app sessions throughout 2014. The three sectors in which apps experienced triple-figure growth have helped make “2014 the year apps got down to serious business”, as stated in the report.

The sectors with the lowest recorded growth figures were games (30%); music, media and entertainment (33%); and news and magazines (49%).

The research firm looked even closer at the use of shopping apps and found that the majority of consumers engage with shopping apps at 9am (during their morning commute to work, the firm suggests), at 12pm (during lunch) and at 8pm (whilst at home).

Yahoo’s vice president of Flurry Products, Simon Khalaf, noted that: “this stunning growth of the use of shopping apps this year is an opportunity for retailers and brands to stay more connected with their consumers and engage them during shopping.” It seems that the surging popularity of mobile apps will offer unique opportunities for retailers and marketers; Target – the American retail giant – have called these mobile apps “the new front door to target”, with retailers now needing to take advantage of the fact that consumers are now able to visit a number of stores from their mobile device, and must therefore become competitive.