Cool mobile app releases from a hot summer

As Labor Day weekend draws near, it’s time to reflect on some interesting retail mobile app activity from summer 2023.

Summer always seems short, even when depending on what part of the country you live it was either brutally hot or drenched with torrential rainstorms. But the past few months were long enough to contain some significant developments in the retail mobile app space.

Following is a look back at how Fetch, Fanatics, and 7-Eleven upgraded or launched new mobile apps during the season of sun and sand (and rain if you were in the northeastern U.S.).

Fanatics

Fanatics is letting fans and collectors participate in creator-run, live shopping experiences via a dedicated app. The global digital sports and related merchandise platform launched a new livestream commerce platform, Fanatics Live.

Through exclusive content offered across the platform, Fanatics aims to transform the digital shopping experience and create a space where sellers and fans can unite their passions and interests and transact on collectible items in one place.

The experiences initially feature trading card “breaks,” limited edition merchandise and collectibles drops, with on-location streams featuring high- profile athletes and entertainers. 

Consumers onboard the platform by signaling their interests and can then discover new content based on what their preferences are. Streams come to life through interactive widgets and a live chat experience that lets users engage with creators, react and celebrate big moments together in real time. 

Sellers can run their entire broadcast through “LiveOS,” a one-stop shop for managing every stream, including all logistical and operations through analytics dashboards, and engaging their audience.

Fetch

Rewards app Fetch undwerwent a major product update that includes a suite of social features, new back-end tools to enhance personalization, and a redesigned user interface.

The new Fetch 3.0 app release enables users to search for and add friends within the app. It also provides an activity feed where users can see which brands and purchases are earning their friends the most points and send reactions, as well as a leaderboard where friends can compete to be the top point-earner for the month. The leaderboard also allows users to track and compete against their own personal record.

Fetch has also made several performance and design improvements, such as a redesigned "Discover" page which improves visibility for brands and offers, and a new "For You" tab that curates the most relevant offers and allows users to sort by recency, point value, and category.

The new design additionally allows users to more easily track progress on offers that require multiple purchases. The update further includes a more powerful ranking algorithm, which draws from users' actual purchase history to deliver relevant brand recommendations and personalized offers based on what consumers are buying, in a privacy-compliant manner.

7-Eleven

Convenience store retailer 7-Eleven, which initially launched its app in Dallas-area stores in late 2017 and began expanding it to other markets in August 2018, has updated a number of app features aimed at improving the user experience — both in and out of the store.

Upgrades to the refreshed 7-Eleven app user experience include:

• Simplified login and registration designed to make access easier.
• Improved in-app shopping and delivery experience enabling customers to browse through a catalog of items and make their selection with a few taps.
• New discovery experience including streamlined access to fuel loyalty, car wash experiences, and more.
• Onboarding and homepage improvements designed to ease navigation.

• Centralized exclusive deals, discounts and rewards for loyalty members.
• New design aesthetic and animations covering more 500 screens across the app end to end.