Delivering pizza, personalisation and pounds in the millions

With downloads increasing by 21% year on year, and 64.3% of all online orders now being made through the app, the Domino’s app has become a cornerstone of the UK and Ireland’s favourite pizza brand’s digital offering.

But how do you ensure your digital product is as good as the products it’s delivering?

The starting point for any mobile app has to be ensuring the problem being solved reaches the very heart of the business, finding the sweet spot of both customer and commercial value.

“Our partnership with Apadmi has taken our digital customer experience from strength to strength,” says Domino’s Digital Director Nick Bamber.

“Apadmi's teams have integrated seamlessly with our own, resulting in an ongoing collaboration that brings together both technical expertise and a crucial understanding of the product and business.”

Utility tops the charts

So what are the hallmarks of the mobile apps topping the charts? A quick look at the digital products driving the biggest numbers according to Statista’s most downloaded shopping apps sees a clear trend emerge around utility.

Aside from the expected big names like Amazon, Tesco and eBay which litter the top 10, a less well-known brand name is leading the way, with Lithuanian second-hand fashion marketplace Vinted sitting at the top of the tree by some way.

Tapping into the dual desire of consumers to both be more sustainable and to monetise unwanted clothes, Vinted has become a veritable success with the app creating a marketplace which easily links buyers and sellers, racking up 75 million users across Europe in the process.

Alongside utility, the other common theme among the Statista top 10 is frequency of purchase. It’s no surprise to find greater app sale potential in businesses like Etsy, Pets at Home, Greggs and ASOS, all of which are selling goods which customers buy regularly.

Regular purchases require robust technology

Domino’s of course falls into this category too, but you still have to ensure the basics of seamless onboarding, ease of use and genuine customer value are covered to ensure your digital product actually delivers.

The weight of customer expectation around providing a genuinely useful omnichannel experience has left brands with nowhere to hide. Brilliant UX and functionality will take you so far, but it has to be underpinned by technology which is capable of putting your product quickly in the hands of customers.

Much like the supply chain which provides the dough, tomato sauce and toppings which go into making the millions of pizza sales it delivers every year, the Domino’s app has to be relied upon to integrate with several existing data feeds in order to bring all the necessary ingredients to keep Domino’s customers happy and coming back.

Supporting systems together

“The reality is no two scenarios are the same and the approach you take has to reflect that,” explains Apadmi CTO Gary Butcher.

“You might be glueing systems together - facilitating different workflows in your business across sales, marketing and development, on numerous projects - or you could be trying to standardise how people work."

“As part of the work we do with Domino’s, we’re providing support to ensure existing internal systems continue to provide the right data to the mobile app we’ve created."

“That means embedded developers working collaboratively to keep the service operational and moving forward. The integral nature of that system means any changes can only be made having thoroughly checked the validity of our work.”

The platform has to be fit for purpose and when it comes to delivering volume, there has to be absolute confidence in maintaining customer experience levels as it scales.

“We genuinely love working with Apadmi,” says Bamber. “They breathe their energy, enthusiasm and passion into every piece of work. Our collaboration puts the customer at the heart of everything we do to ensure pizza lovers everywhere continuously get that smooth, personalised experience they expect from our brand.”

Data to make personalisation useful, not creepy

A key part of that experience is knowing who the customer is and being able to use the first party data advantage afforded by an app to both reassure and reward.

Aligning that with the correct levels of transparency and avoiding potentially creepy personalisation goes without saying. Customers are too data savvy to be fooled by invasive offers. According to Gartner, more than half of consumers will block or stop doing business when communication becomes invasive.

But get it right, and the results can lead to genuine business value, including reducing abandoned baskets, happier customers and ultimately more sales. That includes maintaining a steady flow of new functionality, which for Domino’s has included new features such as In Car Collection to have deliveries direct to customers’ cars timed for when they arrive to pick up their order.

Coverage, community management and customer loyalty

Functionality can create an opportunity for coverage, as Burger King found to its advantage with its Whopper Detour campaign, which used geofencing to deliver a voucher to get a Whopper for a penny to customers who opened the BK app within 600 feet of a McDonalds. The download success was huge, the ongoing usefulness of the feature perhaps less so.

That being said, it worked brilliantly to raise awareness which isn’t always easy. Encouraging customers to move from a web to an app experience requires effort and the ongoing support to promote and manage any digital product is a key component of its success. Ensuring customers can not only find an app but also feel supported as they continue to use it is essential.

“We trust them not only with the creation and growth of our products" continues Bamber, "but with additional support such as community management. This service has proved to be invaluable; it has helped us build a stronger connection with our users which is so crucial for customer loyalty in today's competitive market.”

Volume and value

The nature of that competitive market makes it increasingly hard to stay ahead of the competition, but its number one spot in the Similarweb app rankings is testament to the ability of the Domino’s app to continue to deliver both business volume and customer value.

If you’d like to talk about unlocking mobile potential in your business, we’d love to hear from you - get in touch today.