E-commerce App Development – Everything You Need to Know
E-commerce websites have witnessed immense growth in the last decade. Lately, the industry has touched new heights of success with mobile apps. The milestones achieved by biggies like Amazon, Myntra have encouraged many businesses to shift from e-commerce to m-commerce.
If you’re also devising to invest in iOS/Android app development services and create an e-commerce app, then this article is for you. Here, you will find everything you need to know about e-commerce app development like types, benefits, features, process, and cost.
So let’s dive in…
Types of E-commerce apps
E-commerce apps are classified into four business models, which we have described below.
Business-to-Business (B2B)
B2B e-commerce apps are developed to sell goods or provide services. These processes are carried out between enterprises – business to business. For instance, you may create an app that enables manufacturers to advertise their products while other companies purchase what they require.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
A B2C model facilitates the interaction between a particular company and the end-consumer. Most of the e-commerce applications fall in the B2C category, and businesses develop B2C apps to sell a variety of products and improve their scalability effectively.
Consumer-to-Consumer (С2C)
With a C2C app, the sale of goods is taken place between two consumers themselves. Examples of such e-commerce models are the apps that conduct online auctions and various P2P marketplaces.
Consumer-to-Business (C2B)
It is not a typical example of an e-commerce app. In this case, consumers sell their products or services to companies. For instance, when photographers or graphic designers share their colorful photos or logos on an app, companies can purchase what they like.
Now, you understand the types of e-commerce apps available in the market. Now, let’s move onto the benefits you can yield with e-commerce app development.
Benefits of E-Commerce App Development
Better Customer Engagement
E-commerce applications are highly optimized and personalized, which significantly enhance customer experience and facilitate acquisition as well as retention of new customers. The apps provide convenience consumers want while purchasing goods.
Here are some deeper benefits of an e-commerce app over a website:
Mobility – Customers can use apps anytime, regardless of their location.
Loading Time – The pages of a mobile app load faster and draw more users. Most visitors leave the app if it takes more than three seconds to load and will likely to turn to your competitors.
Personalized content – Apps can store shopping history of your customers and provide them personalized suggestions based on their preferences.
Offline Access – The best e-commerce apps allow users to access some basic functions like comparing products or checking prices, even when there is no internet.
Thus, you can generate almost 50% of traffic from your e-commerce app.
Enhanced Brand Recognition
E-commerce apps build a strong connection between brands and customers. Loyal customers willingly share apps with their friends and describe their experience on social media platforms. So, you can integrate popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. into your app to let customers spread a word about your brand.
Besides, you can encourage users to interact with your app regularly by sending push-notifications about special offerings, discounts, and giveaways. It can also help you strengthen your brand and increase your app installation rate.
Detailed Analytics
Nowadays, data collection has become the key to the success of most businesses. With an e-commerce app, you can easily monitor users’ interaction and gather information like feedback, session length, audience composition, and more. This will help you to develop personalized content, update your app, create an advanced marketing strategy and efficient loyalty program. Thus, you can deliver an unparalleled customer experience leveraging data analytics.
Reduced Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges of an e-commerce business. An average of 70% of customers leaves products in the shopping cart and closes the app for one or other reasons. These reasons may include high shipping costs, slow processes, fewer payment options, no discount coupons, and more. All these reasons lead to a bad shopping experience, which you can improve by creating an interactive checkout form. It has been observed that a fully optimized checkout form can reduce cart abandonment rate by up to 20%.
These benefits can considerably take your business to the next level and help you stand out. Now, if you are interested to know how to develop an e-commerce app, read further.
How to Develop an E-commerce App
To create a comprehensive e-commerce app, you need to know all the essential aspects. Below, we have shed light on some of the features and process of e-commerce app development.
Features of an E-Commerce App
Registration Process
Registration is the first step to use your app. Welcome your users by allowing them feed only necessary information and providing them the most effortless registration process.
Multiple Payment Options
Most users are skeptical about payment as it involves personal and bank account details. Provide them secure and trustworthy payment options like debit/credit card, PayTm, Google Pay, PayPal, Razorpay, etc.
Push Notifications
Push notifications act as a constant reminder when you launch a product or when customers leave products in the shopping cart. Studies have shown that most users visit an app when a notification is sent them. This feature also helps in generating more sales as it informs customers about various events and offers.
Social Media Integration
As mentioned earlier, social media is a powerful tool to improve your brand awareness through word-of-mouth. Users can also directly sign up on your app through integrated social media platforms like Facebook or Google account.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics can help you to know about the most sold products, the time frame when your app has the maximum users or the reasons they leave the app. Precisely, you can analyze everything to improve your services and thus measure your app’s potential.
Rating and Feedback
Customers’ ratings and feedback can be used as a guide to improving your e-commerce app. Always keep in mind that the app is for users’ satisfaction and should have everything that enhances their experience.
Wishlist Button
With a wishlist button, users can save their favorite products for later. This feature is like the bookmark for the product, which users can check any time they want. You can also notify users when there is an offer on the product they have wishlisted.
Easy Checkout
Easy checkout can act as a boon for your business. Your app can store the customers’ payment details and locations, allowing them to checkout in a jiffy.
Synchronization
For iOS/Android app developers, matching the app with the website is quite tedious. This is why synchronization is the best way to save time and effort. It automatically makes changes in the application that are made on the website, eliminating the need for doing the same work twice.
Filters and Search Options
Filters can narrow the users’ search and help them find the product they want from a plethora of products. It saves time and boosts their satisfaction.
Seamless Navigation
An e-commerce app with complicated navigation is a quick turn off for the users. Make sure to provide smooth navigation and showcase all the products in a highly impressive manner.
Fewer Clicks
App conversion rate increases drastically when users can perform each activity like sign up, product search, checkout, etc. with the fewer possible clicks. The lesser, the better is the new trends, and e-commerce apps are taking it seriously.
Having an idea of the features of an e-commerce app, you can partner with a reliable company that provides high-quality iOS/Android app development services.
E-Commerce App Development Process
Generally, the process of developing an e-commerce app includes the following stages:
Research – The first step is to find out the latest trends and assess the competition level in the m-commerce market.
Prototyping – The next step includes creating a prototype to illustrate each screen of the app and have an idea of its look.
Design – Your e-commerce app development team should have experienced designers to create an intuitive and interactive app interface.
Development – Figure out the technology stack to create an e-commerce app that will operate seamlessly on all platforms. Professional iOS/Android app developers can help you create the best app aligning with your business goals and requirements.
Quality Assurance – A QA team will meticulously test each functionality of your e-commerce app to ensure the quality of the final product.
Launch – App release is the last but not the least important stage of your e-commerce app development process. The app launched correctly is equivalent to the half success achieved.
E-Commerce App Development Cost
The cost to develop an e-commerce app varies depending on various factors like:
App Specifications – The cost of e-commerce app development is directly proportional to its size, features, backend, Admin panel, and complexity.
Development Team – The size, experience, and location of your iOS/Android app developers make a huge difference in its development cost.
Tech Stack – The programming language, tools, and elements significantly impact the e-commerce app development cost.
Additional Costs:
- Support
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Updates
All these factors can help you determine the cost of developing your e-commerce app. Roughly speaking, the development cost of a native app may range from $20k for an MVP to $50k for a complex model. If this price doesn’t suit your budget, you can turn to a cross-platform e-commerce app. Its development cost will be 30%-40% lower than that of a native app.
Final Words
If you need more information about e-commerce app development, feel free to book a consultation with our experts. We can also provide you end-to-end iOS/Android app development services to turn your app idea into reality. Our experts will decode your idea intelligently and code it into an exceptional e-commerce app that can potentially disrupt the market.
