Apps can help the customer enhance their customer experience by using interactive technologies. For example, Arena Plaza is now looking into options to organize the navigation in the parking lot and inside the shopping centre using augmented reality to make it easier for the customers to find themselves.
Website as business card
Unlike an app, a website of a shopping centre is a digital must these days. It is the main information source about the shopping centre for its customers, a sort of a business card. So the requirements are certain: maximum information and an easy to use interface. A customer must receive all the information necessary before they start feeling like running away and never coming back (or worse, never stepping a foot into the shopping centre itself). The main tasks for such websites are to provide relevant information about the current tenants, sales and offers, directions how to reach the shopping centre and find everything a customer may need inside. Experts believe that the content must be as visual as possible because it is difficult to keep the attention span of a customer if there is too much text on a page.
It is awkward to remind developers, though it must be done: your website must load very fast on all systems and in all browsers, including tablets and smartphones. In 2018 mobile devices were used by 61% of users, according to GfK.
Meanwhile, the business card functions are not where it ends. There are a lot of other options which can help a customer plan their visit to the shopping centre or even lure them into online-shopping still right there on that very website. A shopping centre website is an important tool to communicate with a brand. “We have been developing marketplace MEGA Online in our internet market in the past half a year and trying to help our customers to make a decision while choosing between thousands and thousands of offers from our tenants. Professional stylists craft and coordinate garments from current collections for different events, such as business meetings, parties, the big days, sport and other activities,”,says Oxana Nizhgorodova.
To enhance customer experience in the MEGA mall, we invest into the resources and build an omnichannel ecosystem. Our mobile app, being a part of the system, makes our services more tech-advanced and effective for our guests and businesses. Let's take, for instance, our new loyalty program, MEGA Friends, which is now being piloted in Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. It allows us to become friends with our customers: we invite them to join our hobby clubs and open new places, give presents and points for shopping and activities and help their dreams come true. This all is based on big data and our digital assets. There are some parameters which we can assess only based on the data from the app.
Oxana Nizhgorodova, Head of Regional Marketing, Ingka Centres, Russia
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