Mobile ecommerce apps: Benefits and development guide

In 2022, 39% of US internet users made weekly mobile purchases, reflecting the growing trend of consumers using ecommerce apps on phones for online shopping

To meet customers’ expectations for a frictionless mobile experience, online merchants can turn to an ecommerce services company to expand their digital offering and develop a mobile ecommerce application.

Read this guide to learn about the value of mobile ecommerce apps for retailers, crucial aspects to consider before starting app development, and seven steps for creating a robust mobile solution to drive on-the-go sales.

Why ecommerce apps are important for retailers

Ecommerce businesses can gain remarkable advantages by launching a mobile app in addition to their websites.

Improve customer experience

With mobile apps, customers can look for products, place orders, and make payments wherever they are.

Drive sales

Mobile ecommerce apps create a seamless and convenient shopping experience, encouraging customers to buy more and producing sales growth.

Foster customer loyalty

Retailers can send exclusive offers through push notifications or in-app messages, enable quick access to users’ rewards information, and allow customers to redeem offers from their mobile device, motivating them to return to the online store.

Boost customer engagement

Mobile ecommerce apps enable merchants to provide customers with more personalized recommendations and effectively target customers with relevant promotions based on their current location.

Get valuable customer insights

Retailers can collect mobile-specific data and combine it with the analytics from their ecommerce websites to better understand customers’ preferences and buying trends and improve marketing strategies.

Gain a competitive advantage

By offering their target audience a mobile app, online retailers can stand out among the competitors and win customers who prefer mobile shopping.

What to consider in your future mobile app

Before building a mobile app, ecommerce businesses should decide upon some key characteristics of their future app.

Design

To make your mobile app a full-fledged continuation of your online store, align its design with your company’s branding and ecommerce site’s visual style.

Product display

Consider how you will showcase your products in the app and w will use images, videos, or 3D models to present them. Also, think about using cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality to allow customers to virtually try on your products or place items in their home spaces.

Search

Implement user-friendly search, filtering, and sorting options to help customers to quickly find products. Also, by equipping your app with AI-powered voice search capabilities, you can make the product search even more convenient and create more sales opportunities.

Payment options

Online retailers can determine payment methods their customers use most often from the store’s website and add them to the app. Moreover, you can integrate your app with the most popular and trusted mobile payment services and make it easier for customers to pay and increase the chance of a purchase.

Integration with other ecommerce systems

If you use other systems for sales, customer, and inventory management, consider connecting your mobile app to them to create a unified ecommerce ecosystem and streamline data exchange.

Seven steps to create an ecommerce mobile app

Conduct a research

Before investing in ecommerce mobile app development, retailers should thoroughly research the market, top trends, competitors’ offerings, and target audience’s needs to establish an effective mobile app strategy and design a competitive mobile app that meets customer needs. They can do so by studying market statistics, acquiring an in-depth report from a research provider, and conducting user surveys.

Establish your goal

The next step is to develop an understanding of what you want to achieve with a mobile app. For example, retailers can aim for diversifying the ways they show products, targeting a new audience segment, or building stronger customer relationships through personalized promotions and rewards.

Select the technologies

Based on the results of your target audience analysis, you can conclude what devices your customers use the most and whether you need an iOS, Android, or cross-platform app. Based on this choice, you can go on selecting a relevant tech stack to build a fast, well-performing app that will integrate well with your other systems.

Choose the features

Equip your mobile app with features that will help you achieve your goals and engage end-users. The list of common features for a mobile commerce app includes:

• User account
• Shopping cart
• Wishlists
• One-click checkout
• Convenient and secure payment
• Shipping options
• Delivery status tracking
• In-app and push notifications
• Ratings and reviews

Build an MVP

It’s a common practice for digital retailers to begin their mobile project by building a minimum viable product that contains only the core features an app needs to function. An MVP helps businesses make sure their audience is interested in the app, as well as find faults in it and identify high-demand features. Building an MVP also minimizes the development time and time to market for your application.

However, even if you start small, be careful to thoroughly test your app and make sure it works as intended to prevent customer churn at the early stages due to poor experiences.

Release the app

When you’re ready with an MVP, it’s time to submit it for publication to either Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store.

Typically, app stores can have special submission requirements that companies should make sure they meet in advance. Moreover, new ecommerce apps go through the review procedure, which can take from under a day to several weeks. Therefore, merchants should take these factors into account when planning the app development timeframe.

Improve your app based on customers’ feedback

After you launch your ecommerce mobile app, collect your customers’ feedback to learn how much they are satisfied with it and what improvements or changes they’d like to see.

Retailers can incorporate the feedback-gathering practice into the lifetime of their app because users will always want new features and businesses should be able to meet these needs. This way, customers will keep returning to the app to buy more.

Mobile commerce apps are essential in todays world

Mobile commerce applications have become essential in today’s retail landscape.

By investing in mobile app development, ecommerce businesses get an additional sales and marketing channel that helps better engage with the audience, create more sales opportunities, and drive business growth. Retailers ignoring the potential that mobile apps bring can ultimately fall behind in the mobile-centric world.

This article was written and provided by Alena Kuptsova, who is a Technology Research Analyst at Itransition, a software development company based in Denver, CO.