Content Marketing Executive
When merchants launch sales campaigns (such as gift with purchase, discounts, bundles, upsells,…), they typically optimize for desktop performance, perfecting the deals, designing banners, and testing purchase flows on large screens.
However, with mobile commerce now driving 78% of e-commerce traffic and 66% of all online orders, there’s a critical blind spot: those same promotions often fail to convert when shoppers encounter them on mobile devices.
In this edition of our “Expert Interview” series, the BOGOS team interviewed Minh Nguyen, Director of OneMobile, a leading Shopify mobile app builder trusted by 6,800+ world-class brands with 1,200+ mobile apps successfully published, to break down 8 practical insights you can apply right away to solve this problem.
At the end, your next promotion won’t just look good on mobile but also convert, retain, and build a stronger brand long term.
No matter how good your sales promotion is, if your customers have to pause, think, or take extra steps to apply it, they will likely drop off. That’s why sites that incorporate an auto-redeem function see higher redemption and conversion rates, since the discount is applied with no extra effort from the shopper.
For instance, instead of making mobile users hunt for an “Apply Code” button, a brilliant move would be to auto-apply personalized gifts to your shopper’s cart instantly when they hit the qualifying purchase amount.
By removing extra taps and steps, you keep checkout quick and joyful – turning more browsers into buyers who appreciate the seamless savings.
Mr Minh emphasizes this point: “This is precisely why BOGOS and OneMobile have integrated. When merchants create auto-add gift offers in BOGOS, those promotions work seamlessly across all apps built with our OneMobile.”
Mobile apps generate 3-5x higher lifetime value, and 4x higher conversion rates compared to mobile websites. In fact, Curly Girl Method Club, a OneMobile user, grew AOV by 61% and witnessed 40% of total sales from its mobile app, driving repeat purchases and more sustainable, long-term revenue.
Sadly, most merchants fail to seize this opportunity. They run identical promotions across desktop, mobile web, and their app, giving customers no reason to choose the app first.
“App-exclusive offers solve this,” explains Mr Minh. “When your best deals are only available in the app, customers open the app first, not your website, not Google. You’ve shifted them from search-dependent discovery to direct, habitual engagement.”
Moreover, a customer who downloads your app for an exclusive offer can later be re-engaged via push notifications, browse in idle moments, and check out faster with saved payment details (without extra ad spend).
💡 Pro tip:
Let’s admit it. A full-screen pop-up on desktop devices is irritating enough, let alone on mobile screens, where it hides the entire shopping experience.
Not to mention that beyond annoying shoppers, these intrusive interstitials can also hurt your search performance, which Google has explicitly warned against on mobile.
Therefore, if you want to promote your offers, it’s best to use unobtrusive mobile banners that sit at the top of your customers’ mobile screens and take up only a small fraction of the screen space.
Mobile users scroll fast and scan in an F-shaped pattern*. If your promotion isn’t visible in those first scan lines, most shoppers will never notice it.
Google reports bounce rates increase by 32% when load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, and promotions hidden below the fold create the same drop-off.
That’s why your key offer must appear the moment the app opens, placed in the top-left or top-center of the screen where users’ eyes land first. Free shipping thresholds, discounts, or gift offers should be visible on the homepage, product pages, and cart, without any scrolling.
Because users skim rather than read, clarity also matters. Use direct, benefit-first copy that can be understood at a glance. “Exclusive free gift over $99 order” performs better than “Special gift today” because it requires zero interpretation.
💡 Pro tip:
*For better visualization, here’s the F-shaped pattern we’re talking about:
Not all mobile shoppers behave the same way, and treating them as if they do is one of the fastest ways to waste a promotion.
Personalized offers use signals like browsing history, past purchases, geography, or app activity to deliver offers that actually matter to each shopper. Moreover, when combined with app-exclusive deals, this becomes far more effective.
And customers reward that relevance: 86% say personalization directly influences their purchase decisions.
At the end, Mr Minh shared with us a few high-impact personalization strategies Shopify merchants can implement:
Nothing kills a mobile conversion like a hard-to-tap button. When you’re running promotions, ensure any CTA (call-to-action) buttons or links – “Apply Discount”, “Checkout Now”, “Get Offer” – are sized for fingers, not cursors.
On touchscreens, bigger is better for tappable elements. Apple’s design guidelines recommend at least a 44×44 pixel area (roughly 7×7 mm) for touch targets, and Microsoft similarly suggests about 7mm minimum with some padding between interactive elements.
Aim for chunky, high-contrast buttons that span a thumb’s width. Also give them adequate spacing – no one should worry that tapping the promo code field might inadvertently hit the ‘Cancel’ link below it.
A growing number of consumers prefer dark mode on their phones to reduce glare and save battery. Your promotional content must look great in both light and dark themes. This means checking that banners, images, and text remain visible and attractive against a dark background.
For instance, if your site or app toggles to dark mode, that bright white “Sale!” banner might turn into an unwelcome flashlight, or worse, dark text could become illegible on a dark background.
💡 Pro tip: Pay attention to contrast: neon-green text might be clear on white but could vibrate harshly on black, so test color choices in dark mode and consider using softer off-whites for large text blocks to reduce eye strain.
Getting a user to tap “Checkout” with a promo in hand is only half the battle – you also need to streamline the checkout itself so the promotional win isn’t lost to abandonment. There are a few key ways to optimize the end-game of a mobile promotion:
According to UX best practices, shopping carts should plainly show how the promotion affects the total (e.g., original price struck out, new total highlighted). This transparency not only delights the user (“Nice, I really saved $15!”) but also builds trust. It reassures them that the deal worked, preventing second-guessing.
The final stretch should be as simple as possible. That means, as we mentioned above, if the user entered a coupon, don’t make them click an extra “Apply” button – apply it automatically upon entry or selection.
Similarly, avoid surprise logins or lengthy surveys during checkout. If you can, enable features like address auto-complete or skip non-essential fields entirely.
Offering Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, etc., can significantly boost conversion at checkout. These wallet options auto-fill payment and shipping info, sparing users a tedious form entry on mobile. In fact, businesses that added Apple Pay saw up to a 58% increase in mobile conversion rates versus old-school credit card forms. (Source: Sports Fusion)
As one of BOGOS’s trusted Shopify integration partners, OneMobile understands what many merchants overlook: the mobile app is the real retention engine.
When promotions are designed for mobile behavior, remove friction at every touchpoint, and leverage app-exclusive incentives, you transform one-time mobile browsers into repeat customers who bypass search engines and open your app directly.
Finally, we’re grateful to Minh Nguyen for sharing these eight practical rules from years of helping merchants optimize mobile app performance.
We hope that after reading this article, you’ll have a clear roadmap from generic to conversion-optimized offers, built for the way mobile shoppers actually behave!
And the very first step to making that happen? Explore both BOGOS and OneMobile to try the integration and turn the mobile app into a high-converting sales channel!
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