When it comes to mobile commerce and coupons, it is highly important to value personalization to cut through the onslaught of the content overload and drive sales by providing call-to-actions that individuals are more likely to act on. The Cartwheel app serves users personal offer recommendations based on past purchases and interests, and now opens directly up to the page to give users direct access.

“As part of a recent redesign of Target’s popular Cartwheel savings app, we are now more prominently featuring personalized recommendations,” said Eddie Baeb, spokesperson at Target. “Target believes that recommending more relevant offers both enhances the user experience and drives deeper engagement and sales.

“Our efforts to make Cartwheel more personalized have contributed to the great success of the app, which now has more than 25 million users and has generated more than $3 billion in promotional sales for Target,” he said

Carting mobile coupons
Cartwheel is taking a bigger stance on mobile personalization by bringing users directly to personal recommendations tab For You when opening the app. The new update will mean that as soon as users access the app, their most relevant offers will be featured, making it more likely for them to find and use coupons of interest.

But many retailers are allowing users to customize their own homepages, which takes personalization to the next level. Target introduces a similar experience with its update, allowing users to seamlessly toggle between ways to search on the homepage.

The new interface for Cartwheel features a sleeker design and provides an easier method of checkout by allowing users to see their barcode by simply clicking Checkout through a bottom navigation bar. Users can also toggle between categories and collections for a wide range of offer-browsing.

Targeting mobile pushes
While Target’s recently decision to end a pilot with Curbside underscored a focus on driving in-store sales, the retailer is still committed to mobile, having recently merged its mobile and desktop Web sites for a more consistent experience (see more).

Cartwheel also recently tested a feature that enabled users to leverage manufacturers’ digital coupons, which offered dollar amount discounts rather than a percentage, giving customers access to increased savings opportunities (see more).

Target consistently updates its mobile properties to further provide convenience to its customers. But it needs to work on creating highly-relevant personalized offers; if not, the push is futile.

“Theoretically, it makes a lot of sense to have the ‘For You’ tab as the default opening page for the Target Cartwheel app; however, a better option might be to let your customers choose what they want on their opening screen,” said David Naumann, vice president of marketing at Boston Retail Partners. “Not everyone uses an app in the same way and customers have different preferences.

“Giving customers a choice in how they use an app is the ultimate way to personalize the app and improve the customer experience,” he said. “Personalization is important for almost every retail customer interaction and it is even more important for mobile apps, because by the nature of an app, retailers should already know something about the customer and can use this information to personalize the experience.

“While personalization is key, it must be relevant to the individual. I read a customer review for the Target Cartwheel app and the For You tab where one of the items promoted was for dog food and the person has never purchased dog food or even owned a dog. These types of mistakes tarnish the reputation of the app and may cause some customers to use the app less.”