How Shein and Temu Leverage Mobile Apps to Keep Users Hooked

In just a few years, Shein and Temu went from unknowns to household eCommerce names. Today, each platform draws tens of millions of users, and generates billions in annual revenue.

Both brands utilize similar strategies to explode on the scene, centered around engagement at all costs – and their apps are a core part of their success.

While the goal for your brand might not be to launch the next Shein or Temu, you can learn a lot about the tactics used by these brands, drawing on basic human psychology to attract shoppers and keep them as engaged, long-term customers.

Read on and get some key insights into the factors at work behind these two brands’ success, and why they couldn't do it without mobile apps.

Disrupting the eCommerce market

Launching an eCommerce platform to compete with a giant like Amazon is not something many experts would recommend.

Yet that’s what these two brands did. Shein and Temu are currently the two most downloaded apps in the world, having been completely off the radar not so long ago.

Shein has more than doubled its annual users since 2021, while Temu’s growth curve is even steeper, having gone from 5.8 million users in 2022 to more than 100 million.

A lot of the same tactics are at the core of their success, including a mobile-first strategy, which represents a timely bet on the mobile commerce market which now accounts for almost 60% of all eCommerce sales worldwide.

How mobile is the centerpiece of Shein and Temu’s strategy

Both brands clearly have a mobile-first, app-first approach.

The websites are fully functional and perfectly usable on their own. But the main goal of the website is to funnel users into their app.

Mobile web visitors are immediately served with CTAs to download the app, and app-only discounts.

One of Temu's trademark "spin to win" game offers the three free items, which they can only redeem in the app.

The goal is clear – get you into the app.

Once they get someone to download their app, they can turn their engagement tactics up to 11, and start using push notifications to get the user hooked.

The gamified shopping experience

The biggest thing that stands out about these apps is the heavy use of gamification.

Nearly every time you open the app, you get a new “spin to win” game, with the chance to win coupons offering as much as $300 off.

It doesn’t stop there – games are followed by more games, like a chance to “cut down” the minimum purchase threshold, reducing the amount you have to spend before you can redeem your coupon.

Temu's app even has a whole page of different games, with the chance to win freebies, discounts and bonus shopping credit.

Often, after you win a discount, you’ll enter into a shopping spree-like experience, where you have a limited time to spend your prize, or earn credit, which is presented as if you're playing to set a high score.

The apps also include referral programs and loyalty programs, which are dressed up and designed more like games than pages in a shopping app.

Classic engagement and CRO tactics

Few of the tactics used by Shein and Temu are actually new.

The apps make heavy use of urgency and scarcity, such as stating “Only X Items Left in Stock”, or putting a ticking clock alongside discounted products.

They also leverage social proof (products show an estimated number of items sold next to their price) and price anchoring, with strikethrough pricing to show the huge discounts you can get (as long as you buy before the sale ends or stocks run out).

If you dare to close the app, it won't be long until you get a push notification pulling you back in – such as abandoned cart notifications which usually offer an additional discount to get you to finish your purchase.

None of this is particularly new or innovative. Retail brands have been using tactics like urgency, scarcity, price anchoring and social proof for decades, even before eCommerce and eCommerce apps were a thing. Push notifications, too, are a core part of any shopping app's toolkit.

What is innovative about their use of classic engagement and CRO tactics is the level to which they are utilized.

These psychological devices are everywhere. Shein and Temu never miss a chance to offer a coupon, display a product on special, show a ticking timer, or send a push notification, to increase the chance of the user making a purchase.

Not your typical shopping app

The remarkable aspect of Shein and Temu’s apps is how they blur the lines between shopping, gaming, and social apps—two types of apps that are known for generating engagement on a massive level.

As we know, gamification is a core part of their strategies. It’s not just the functional aspect of using games to dispense coupons and special offers, but the design, and the reaction the games elicit.

At times, the apps look more like what you would expect from something like Candy Crush or Angry Birds.

Like gaming apps, the design elicits a dopamine hit from the user, which keeps them coming back.

At the same time, these apps are built almost like social media apps.

People around the world scroll for hours a day on apps like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

What draws such high levels of engagement is not necessarily the content, but the act of scrolling itself.

It provides a constant stream of small dopamine hits, and a fun way to fill the time when you're bored.

For a long time, brands have sought to capture social media users’ attention with a well-designed, well-timed ad on their news feed.

Shein and Temu have removed the middleman and given users a similar scrolling experience, where these brands instead have 100% of the user’s attention.

The infinite scroll on these apps is essentially the same as an Instagram or TikTok feed. 

Users can scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and the longer they do this, the more likely they are to be tempted into making a purchase.

Shein and Temu want their app to sit next to Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, as one of the first things people open when they pick up their phone, as a way to pass the time.

Once they're in the app, the brands are banking on their gamification and CRO tactics to inevitably convert mindless scrolling into sales.

What can your brand take away from Shein and Temu’s success?

There’s no doubt that Shein and Temu’s strategy is working. There’s billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of millions of app downloads to attest to that.

So what are the key takeaways for other brands, who may be looking to utilize similar tactics to grow engagement and revenue?

Here are a few points to take on board.

Retaining users' attention with mobile apps

Both brands set out right away to move website visitors into their app. Once they're in the app, it’s a lot easier to keep someone's attention, compared to a website, where they can easily navigate away or close the browser tab.

All about engagement

Shein and Temu are laser-focused on generating engagement. The more they can get you to engage with their app or website, the more they believe they’ll be able to convince you to buy something.

Time in app is key

With their infinite scroll and numerous engagement mechanisms, Shein and Temu’s apps are designed to maximize the usage time. The longer they hold on to you, the higher the chance that you’ll end up buying something.

Classic CRO techniques work

A lot of their CRO tactics are not new – strikethrough pricing, urgency, scarcity. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but just playing on classic psychological tendencies, such as FOMO and price anchoring.

Increasing retention with push notifications

Another major reason Shein and Temu want you to download their apps is to be able to send you push notifications.

Once enabled, you’ll get notifications everyday, constantly pushing you to open the app, spin the wheel to win another prize, and keep shopping with them over and over again.

It can't be stated enough how impactful push notifications are. The ability to reach out to users directly on their phones, for minimal cost and with a high rate of visibility, allows these brands to turn one-off customers into habitual users.

Putting it into practice

While it might not make sense for your brand to replicate everything Shein and Temu do, they do give us some interesting lessons on how to drive customer engagement and retention.

At the center of it all are their mobile apps, which allow them to capture users’ attention for longer, implement innovative gamification features, and use push notifications to retain your attention long-term.

So if there’s one lesson you can take away and use for your own brand, it’s the value of having your own mobile app.

MobiLoud helps eCommerce businesses launch apps, for a low cost (no need to spend hundreds of thousands on development), low overhead, and low effort, due to our full-service approach.

This approach has worked wonders for many high-revenue brands already, including John Varvatos, Rainbow Shops, Bestseller, and many more.

If you want to unlock the benefits of mobile apps, with none of the risk or downside, get in touch with us and book a free demo today.