Why Direct-to-Consumer Brands Are Going Mobile-First

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands face a markedly different landscape from just five years ago.

Customer acquisition costs have surged up to 60% over the last five years, with Apple's 2021 iOS privacy updates dealing a particularly devastating blow to efficient digital advertising.

This new reality forces a fundamental shift in strategy: sustainable growth now depends on retention and lifetime value.

Key to this shift is a focus on mobile, and on mobile apps.

In this article, we’re going to dive deeper into the major struggles modern brands have to contend with, the changes in consumer habits, and how mobile apps present an ideal solution for brands looking to stay relevant in 2025.

MobiLoud helps successful brands take the next step by turning their websites into revenue-generating mobile apps. To learn more about how we can help your brand grow, without the overhead of traditional app development, get a free consultation now.

The Fall of Traditional Engagement Channels

Traditional engagement channels are failing, and making it harder for brands to get customers.

Organic social media reach has collapsed to below 10%, while email open rates have dropped to 20-25%.

Even customers who opt in to email marketing are hard to reach. Sophisticated privacy protections and aggressive spam filters relegate brand messages to promotional tabs, where they often go unseen.

A mobile-first reality compounds the situation. 80% of eCommerce traffic now comes from smartphones, yet the average conversion rate on mobile is less than half of desktop. This gap represents millions in lost revenue for brands who can't convert mobile attention into sales.

The convergence of rising acquisition costs, declining engagement channels, and the mobile conversion gap creates an urgent need for a new approach for DTC brands to re-engage customers and build long-term purchasing habits.

Organic Social Media Reach

One of the most significant shifts in digital marketing has been the collapse of organic social media reach. 

The statistics are sobering: organic reach has plummeted to as low as 9% for smaller accounts. This means for every 100 followers a brand has painstakingly acquired, only nine might see their posts organically.

With organic reach dropping, brands can no longer rely on social platforms for free customer engagement.

This decline is prompting a fundamental shift in how DTC brands must approach customer engagement.

The Rise in Customer Acquisition Costs

CAC is brutal. Nearly half of DTC brands are seeing higher costs in 2024 than 2023.

Ever since Apple's iOS 14.5 privacy update in 2021, the reliable playbook of scaling through Facebook ads doesn't work anymore.

The math doesn't add up. When you're spending more to acquire customers than you'll make back in a year, something has to change.

DTC brands that want to survive need to shift focus from acquisition to retention.

Smart brands are shifting their focus away from acquiring new customers and towards finding ways to increase revenue from their existing customer base.

The New Reality: Mobile and Social Commerce

Mobile makes up 60% of all online sales, but most DTC brands are still playing catch-up.

They're still trying to appeal to shoppers in the same way they did five or ten years ago, rather than changing their approach to fit how people shop online today.

Blurring the Lines Between eCommerce and Social Media

The reality is, customers today aren't comparing your mobile experience to other Shopify stores. They're comparing it to Amazon, Shein, and TikTok Shop.

Amazon has made one-click buying and next-day shipping the norm. Scroll through Temu or Shein and you'll see endless product feeds that feel more like TikTok than an eCommerce site.

These aren't just nice-to-haves anymore - this is how people expect to shop on their phones.

Social commerce has changed the game even further. Customers discover products while scrolling Instagram or watching TikToks, and they want to buy right then and there. 

The days of carefully browsing category pages are over. If you can't convert that impulse into a purchase in seconds, you've lost them.

Meeting Modern Consumer Expectations

Most DTC mobile websites feel clunky in comparison to the experience your customers get on platforms like Amazon, TikTok and other social media apps.

Even with the best Shopify theme and all the optimization in the world, you're still asking customers to remember your site’s URL or google your name, load page after page, navigate menus, and go through multi-step checkouts. 

That's not how people want to shop on their phones anymore.

This gap between what customers expect and what most DTC brands deliver is a real problem.

A mobile-responsive website isn't enough to compete, when customers are used to the speed and simplicity of the best shopping apps out there.

That's why more DTC brands are building apps, and giving customers the smooth, fast shopping experience they're used to from the big players.

The Mobile Conversion Problem

Here's a painful reality for DTC brands: nearly 80% of traffic comes from phones, but your mobile conversion rate is probably stuck around 1-2% (while desktop converts at more than 3%). 

With users spending 5-6 hours daily on their phones, almost entirely in apps (88% of mobile time), this gap is too expensive to ignore.

Most of your paid traffic lands on mobile. Your Facebook ads, your influencer campaigns, your email clicks, they're all leading to a mobile web experience that's fundamentally broken.

Every slow page load, every clunky checkout form, and every payment detail that needs to be re-entered costs you sales.

Think about it from your customer's perspective. They spend their day in lightning-fast apps like TikTok and Instagram. Then they land on your mobile site, and suddenly they're pinching to zoom, waiting for pages to load, and typing their credit card number into tiny forms.

Mobile apps solve this by giving customers what they're used to: fast, smooth, native experiences with one-tap checkout.

It's not about having an app just for the sake of having an app. It's about converting traffic you're already paying for.

Why DTC Brands Are Betting on Mobile Apps

This isn't just a bunch of separate problems - it's all connected. 

The old DTC playbook of scaling through paid social and email marketing is broken. Privacy changes have made tracking harder and acquisition more expensive.

Anti-spam measures are making it nearly impossible to reach customers through email. And the mobile web experience just can't match what customers expect from their favorite apps.

That's why mobile apps have shifted from a nice-to-have to a strategic necessity.

They solve multiple problems at once:

• You own the customer relationship, no Meta middleman required
• Push notifications cut through where emails get buried
• Native app experiences convert better than mobile web
• Customers who download your app are your best customers, and they shop more often

In 2025, having an app isn't about jumping on a trend or checking a box. It's about having a direct line to your customers in a world where every other marketing channel is becoming more expensive and less reliable.

Direct Customer Relationship & Data Ownership

In an era where access to third-party data is disappearing and platform algorithms control customer access, mobile apps offer something invaluable: direct relationships.

With apps, brands can:

• Build first-party data profiles without platform intermediaries.
• Track customer behavior across the entire shopping journey.
• Understand product preferences and browsing patterns.
• Own the customer relationship without platform dependence.
• Reach their users directly using push notifications.

An app gives you a way to take ownership of your audience, rather than renting it through a third-party platform, or trying to engage your customers through email, which is becoming more and more of a black box.

Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

App users consistently demonstrate higher value than web-only customers.

This shows through higher purchase frequency, higher AOV, higher lifetime value, and more predictable revenue from app users.

How Apps Drive Higher Retention and Lifetime Value

The download itself acts as a natural filter, selecting for customers who already have a strong affinity for the brand. 

Installing an app is a high-friction decision. Consumers must value the brand enough to dedicate precious phone real estate and go through the download process. 

This self-selection means app users start with a higher propensity for loyalty. But it's what happens after the download that truly drives lifetime value. 

The superior user experience of a native app, such as faster loading, smoother navigation, stored preferences, and simplified checkout, makes every interaction more satisfying. 

This reduced friction encourages more frequent purchases and higher order values. When buying is easy and enjoyable, customers buy more. 

The app experience converts already loyal customers into super fans.

These super-fans shop more often, spend more per order, and stay with the brand longer - and push notifications amplify this loyal behavior.

Their purchasing patterns become more predictable, resulting in stable revenue streams at a lower cost than acquiring web-only shoppers.

For DTC brands, this combination of self-selected loyalty and enhanced engagement makes app users dramatically more valuable over time.

Reduced Dependency on Paid Social Media

With customer acquisition costs reaching 3-5x annual recurring revenue for early-stage businesses, apps offer a path to more sustainable growth.

Paid social channels are getting more expensive, and it's made worse by the fact that modern brands struggle to measure and attribute their marketing efforts.

Apps have lower long-term customer acquisition costs post-install, and deliver more long-term value per customer, as discussed already.

Apps offer more efficient remarketing to existing customers, which offsets more expensive channels with a high-ROI revenue channel.

Push Notifications

Many brands find that push notifications, on their own, are reason enough to build an app.

With email open rates declining to 20-25%, push notifications offer a more immediate and effective communication channel.

Unlike email or social media, where marketing messages often go unseen, push notifications cut through the noise, with direct access to your customers’ devices.

They bring customers back at the right moments - when items come back in stock, during flash sales, or when cart items are about to sell out. 

The ability to automate abandoned cart notifications alone can generate tens or hundreds of thousands in revenue, for almost no extra cost and effort.

This direct line of communication turns periodic shoppers into consistent buyers. Push has higher engagement rates than email, and its immediacy makes it perfect for time-sensitive updates (such as order status notifications).

Improved Checkout Experience

Finally, mobile apps solve many of the conversion challenges that plague the mobile web.

They store payment information and shipping details for your customers, making it simpler for repeat customers to authenticate and reducing friction significantly.

Integration with mobile payment wallets and one-click purchasing further enhance the shopping experience and boost conversion rates.

Apps also load faster, and have smoother interactions than mobile websites. They’re just easier to use for mobile shoppers.

This ease of use is a strong incentive for customers to download the app. It makes it more likely they’ll convert once they’re in the app, and once they’re in, you unlock the ability to build a deeper and more direct relationship, and drive more long-term revenue.

Our eCommerce App Revenue Calculator gives you a quick estimate of the earning potential for your brand's mobile app.

Major DTC Brands Who Are All In on Mobile

For DTC brands, the benefits of mobile apps compound. 

The combination of higher customer value, lower acquisition costs, and better engagement creates a virtuous cycle that can transform their economics. 

The potential return from an app, along with the low investment made possible by services like MobiLoud, makes it a winning strategic choice.

Today, it’s unlikely you’ll find a successful DTC brand that doesn’t make mobile a priority, from delivering mobile-optimized websites to building high-converting, high-CLV apps to represent their brand.

Here are a few notable examples of mobile-first brands.

FEATURE

Streetwear brand Feature knows the value of appealing to mobile-first customers.

Their mobile site is sleek, fast, and well-optimized, from category pages to conversion-optimized product pages.

At the same time, an app banner on their mobile website pushes users to download their app, which boasts over 10k downloads on Google Play, and a 4.8/5 rating on 2.7k App Store reviews.

The brand uses the app to:

• Launch app-exclusive product drops.
• Provide early access to sales.
• Create excitement around limited releases.
• Build stronger connections with their most engaged customers.

The app offers improvements in navigation and user experience, and unlocks more possibilities for Feature to engage with their customers.

Chebeauty

Haircare brand Chebeauty highlights the benefits customers get from downloading the app, making a strong case with app-exclusive discounts and improvements to the shopping experience.

They then make it easy for the customer to get the app, whether they’re browsing on desktop or mobile.

The app offers small but meaningful improvements in user experience, with smooth navigation and an optimized checkout experience.

Getting shoppers into the app unlocks push notifications as an engagement channel, which the customer can easily turn on or off and customize based on their preferences from within their app settings page.

Modere

Health & Wellness brand Modere makes their website easy to use for mobile shoppers, while at the same time directing site visitors to download their app.

Users who do download the app get a cleaner user experience with fewer distractions, that just fits better within a mobile screen with the browser removed.

Small CRO improvements are enough, with an average order value likely $100+, to generate a nice return on their mobile investment, before we even get to the new revenue driven via push notifications.

Yon-Ka

The first impression from skincare brand Yon-Ka’s website is that it feels like it was designed specifically for mobile users.

It’s fast, interactions are smooth, and elements perfectly spaced out for mobile screens.

Their checkout features smart up-sells designed to increase basket size, and express checkout options to facilitate quick purchases for convenience-driven mobile shoppers.

The UX is even more inviting in their app, which boosts visibility for their referral and loyalty programs - leveraging the app to drive more low-cost acquisition and lifetime value from fans of the brand.

John Varvatos

Premium menswear brand John Varvatos built a mobile website that’s fast, clean and functional.

As a brand with a large number of physical store locations, their online store (particularly the mobile site and app) makes the perfect companion, providing a store locator and in-store pickup options for online purchases.

The app builds upon their mobile site, with incremental improvements to the user experience that deliver a small but significant boost in conversions, and all the tools (a presence on their user’s home screen, plus push notifications) to drive higher purchase frequency from their top fans.

Want to see more brands leaning into mobile, and mobile apps? Check out these case studies of brands who successfully built apps for their online store with MobiLoud.

4 Steps for Your Brand to Take to Make Mobile a Priority

Mobile optimization is par for the course for eCommerce brands today.

But while every store is usable on mobile, a mobile-optimized website is not enough to actually make mobile a priority.

With a rising majority of eCommerce sales coming on mobile, these shoppers should be your primary focus.

Aside from ensuring your website is responsive and functional on mobile (which it likely already is), here are four steps to take to stop leaving mobile revenue on the table.

Design Mobile-First

Even though every modern website is usable on mobile, the habit remains to build for desktop first, and then tweak what you built to fit mobile screens.

This results in websites where mobile is still an afterthought, and holds back your mobile website’s potential.

Start designing your experiences for mobile first. This allows you to craft a website with a more native experience than typical websites, crammed and squeezed to fit the mobile browser.

Streamline the Purchase Experience

Desktop shoppers have more patience, and are more willing to fight through additional clicks or input that would cause mobile users to bounce.

To avoid losing your mobile shoppers, search for and remove any unnecessary points of friction in your purchase flow.

To further increase your mobile conversion rate, try adding one-click checkout and mobile wallet integrations, simplify inputs, reduce the number of pages in your checkout flow, and speed up your site.

As mobile commerce continues to grow, and a higher share of your customers comes on mobile, these CRO tweaks become more and more meaningful.

Launch an App

Once your mobile website is fully optimized, you need to launch an app.

We’ve tackled many of the reasons why apps bring value for DTC eCommerce brands. 

The mobile web experience just can't match what customers expect from their favorite apps.

That’s why some customers will always prefer to shop in an app than on a mobile website.

These customers end up being your most valuable customers. They spend more in each order, shop more often, and spend more over their lifetime as a customer.

The app also gives you an owned channel, a direct line to your customers, and first-party data that is becoming harder and harder to come by.

But one of the biggest arguments for launching an app is that you’re already 90% of the way there.

You don’t need to make any wholesale design changes, or rebuild everything you’ve already built from the ground up. 

Your mobile website does nearly everything an app does. All you need are some small touches, and the website to be repackaged in a form customers can download to their own device.

Converting your website into an app requires much less investment and takes significantly less time than many brands think, making it a straightforward decision that almost guarantees a positive return on investment.

Start Using Push Notifications

Once you have an app, you can start to incorporate push notifications into your engagement strategy.

Push notifications are another no-brainer for eCommerce brands. They’re easy to implement, and deliver value in a range of ways - from driving new sales with promotional campaigns and new product launches, to recovering lost sales via abandoned cart notifications.

There’s virtually no cost, and you can contact your customers as often as you like, with messages that show up directly on their phone's lock screen.

Email and SMS are still effective, but their impact is decreasing. Meanwhile, most brands are only scratching the surface of what push notifications can do.

Learn everything you need to know about driving revenue with push notifications in this ultimate guide.

Wrapping Up

Brands going all in on mobile will be the ones that prosper in the rest of the 2020s and beyond.

As smartphone use grows, especially for eCommerce, traditional engagement channels like email, paid and organic social media are becoming less reliable for driving consistent engagement and revenue.

A mobile-first, app-first approach is the best way to build a sustainable, future-proof brand.

MobiLoud is the tool that helps you do this.

MobiLoud turns your website into mobile apps, allowing you to launch full-featured, revenue-generating mobile apps in less than a month.

For a fraction of the cost of custom development, you’ll have apps that look and feel like million-dollar native apps from the world’s biggest brands.

Your apps will come with essential mobile features, such as push notifications, already built in. They'll also sync seamlessly with your website, resulting in little to no overhead.

We build and publish your apps, and then handle technical maintenance after launch, so your team doesn't have to lift a finger.

Read more about our process and why this is the best way to build shopping apps in 2025, then book a free consultation to learn how we can bring your app to life.