Ecommerce Mobile App Development | Complete Guide

Nowadays, Numerous purchases are made online by people. You know, things like sneakers, sunglasses, medicines, and office tables. Lockdowns prompted a surge in eCommerce app development that was already underway. Using eCommerce applications to make purchases has become the most practical and popular method of buying.

E-commerce is a big source of income for the world’s biggest online stores, which is not a big surprise. But a lot of new businesses also want to do well in e-commerce. How to make a mobile app for shopping? This is a question that traders, marketers, store owners, and online retailers ask themselves over and over again as they try to figure out how the market works.

Statista says that sales of mobile eCommerce will go from $148 billion in 2018 to $3.5 trillion in 2023. You probably start to consider entering the eCommerce sector after seeing these figures. Or, if you’re currently there, you might be trying to draw in more clients and increase sales. The answer is easy: Ecommerce Mobile App Development

In this article, we will summarize the various phases involved in creating an Ecommerce Mobile App Development, discussing about eCommerce, reveal the typical cost associated with developing a mobile commerce app, and list the features your ecommerce app needs to have.

What is an Ecommerce Mobile App?

An eCommerce mobile app also referred to as a mobile commerce app, is software that enables users to browse and buy products from an online store using their phones or tablets.

The top eCommerce apps benefit both brands and customers. More personalization and better control over the buying experience benefit consumers, while businesses benefit from more loyal and engaged customers.

Creating an eCommerce app or a mobile site was practically a privilege a few years ago, but as consumer views and behavior continue to shift, it’s becoming more of a necessity for retailers.

With features like wishlists, loyalty and membership options, and managing orders and returns wherever they are—within a short period of time—highly convenient, customers find eCommerce applications to be both entertaining and beneficial during the buying experience.

Must-Have E-Commerce Application Features

To ensure that all objectives are reached, app development requires strong cooperation between user experience design, product development, and the sales team. Application features are the most important and essential aspect of a successful mobile eCommerce application development.

✔️User Onboarding:- This is the initial stage in the setup, as this is the first component that must be present and functional. Make it simple and unobtrusive so that the user does not feel lost or confused. When you demonstrate that it is simple to join up and finish the surveys or activities, the user will be pleased. These instructions should help people comprehend and utilize the app’s primary features. Make the onboarding experience enjoyable and interactive.

✔️Registration:-This is a crucial component of the puzzle. Users must register in order to view your application and make purchases. In order to maintain your operations simple, all users should have an account, so that after logging in, they may edit their profile, complete their shopping basket, and utilize the payment-checkout function.

✔️An easy-to-use checkout. Creating a decent shopping cart can be difficult and complicated. Any eCommerce business should not only be able to promote its products, but also give a straightforward purchase experience.

✔️Social sharing. In most circumstances, social sharing is one of the most alluring features of eCommerce software; therefore, you should incorporate this option into your product. The interaction that ensues enables your consumers to advertise your goods. In addition, this will help users locate your application. If users conduct an online search for your brand, they will certainly locate your eCommerce store.

✔️Targeted push notifications. Your clients will receive information about your products and sales sooner if you use a push notification service. Additionally, users of the program won’t need to sign in with their email addresses each time they wish to receive notifications. As a result, without having to look for it, when a customer clicks on your push notification, they will be able to see the product details on your eCommerce site right away.

✔️Reviews and ratings. Allow customers to provide open feedback on the products and services they received through your eCommerce application. You will reap huge rewards in the form of increased sales and greater trust by encouraging customers to rate and review apps. Additionally, you may considerably increase sales, earn a better income, and ultimately enhance the user experience by promoting reviews and ratings using the key functionalities.

✔️Voice search. One of the current main trends in app development is this. The integration of voice search in your e-commerce software can greatly enhance the user experience. They can easily find the information they’re looking for thanks to it. OC&C Strategy Consultants’ latest report predicts that voice search in e-commerce would increase sales, with a $40 billion rate by 2023. As a result, this eCommerce app feature is excellent and has a lot of potentials, and it should not be disregarded.

✔️Wish lists. A Wishlist is a collection of products that customers have ordered. Creating and managing Wishlist gives you a quick and simple option for customers to purchase goods they like. Additionally, by allowing consumers to save and view their favorites in their eCommerce applications for Android and iOS, shops can gain a better understanding of the demands of their customer base.

✔️Synchronization. If you have both a mobile e-commerce app and a website, make sure it’s easy for the user to switch between the two to finish their purchase. Synchronization will make sure that all users get the same product and experience, no matter what device they use (PC, phone, or tablet).

Reasons to Develop an Ecommerce App

The market for e-commerce apps is huge. But if you’re still not sure if you need an ecommerce app, here are three reasons why you should make one.

World Of Smartphones

Around 4 billion cell phones are currently in use worldwide. Most individuals use their mobile devices to quickly and easily make purchases online whenever they want. Do you require another good reason to create a mobile commerce app?

Revenue Growth

Smartphones are more than just a sophisticated electronic circuit. Numerous global eCommerce platforms, including Walmart and Amazon, have demonstrated that mobile apps enhance revenue growth across all devices and draw in new clients.

User Behavior Changes After Covid-19

The eCommerce boom was considerably accelerated by COVID-19, which also had a big impact on how individuals make purchases. The total amount spent on eCommerce in May 2020 was $82.5 billion, up 77% from the same month in 2019. If we were to use the conventional year-over-year gains, it would have taken 4 to 6 years to reach that figure.

Additionally, there are other reasons to create an eCommerce app besides only having a decent adaptive web view, such as:

• Quick access to users;
• the ability to contact them via push notifications;
• better ways to monitor users’ behavior;
• efficient analytics collection; 
• and quick hypothesis testing of new features.

8 Steps of How to Build Ecommerce App

Let me first provide you with a full overview of the eight essential procedures to follow in Ecommerce Mobile App Development

Step 1. Research

Here, we prioritize the research phase. In order to analyze the trends and behaviors of the target market, we conduct user interviews and competition research. It also helps us figure out the best app platform and a set of features that will appeal most to our target audience.

Step 2. Set the Goals

The setting of your company’s goals forms the basis for developing an E-Commerce mobile app. Here are 3 queries that aid you in setting goals:

1. What issues am I attempting to address?
2. To whom am I marketing this product?
3. How can I tell if it was a success?

Step 3. Choose the Right Platform

Before choosing what technology to implement eCommerce application development, I suggest that you become familiar with the inner workings of your company. Keep an eye on your inventory, and development costs, and choose a scalable framework, database, and content management system.

Knowing this makes it much easier to decide whether to deploy an iOS app, an Android app, or both. Of course, you should concentrate on the mobile platforms that your target audience uses.

For example, while working on ecommerce mobile app development, you need to take into account the following:

• Programming Language (Java/Kotlin for Android);
• App development tools (Android Studio);
• UI Framework (Jetpack Compose);
• Android UI. 

Similar to that, consider the following when it comes to iOS:

• Programming Language (Objective-C or Swift);  
• IOS Mobile Development Tools (XCode, AppCode); 
• UI Frameworks (UIKIt or SwiftUI). 

The following list of frameworks for cross-platform apps:

• React Native (JS);
• Flutter (Dart)
• Xamarin (C#).

Step 4. Define Feature Set

You already have input from customers, expert opinions, trends, and the drive to surpass your competition, which means that you now have a better awareness of the challenges that your product has to answer and the features that can please end users.

You can make use of well-known prioritization frameworks and methodologies to assist you in determining which product feature should be prioritized first.

Step 5. Create UX & UI Design.

UX UI design offers the chance to stand out since, as I indicated above, the experience in eCommerce apps must go beyond traditional in-store buying. Your brand’s voice and identity will be communicated to your target market through design. Customers are left with a lasting impression of your business when you use appealing color schemes, eye-catching graphics, and seamless page transitions.

Nike Shopping app

Food Delivery app

On-demand Taxi app

Step 6. Build MVP

A minimally viable product, or MVP, is a ready-to-launch version of a product that supports the essential but fewest functionality. It is designed with the goal of facilitating a quicker speed to market, luring early adopters, and achieving product-market fit from the start.

The MVP concept is thought of as an amalgamation of the “minimal necessities” – something with the crucial components to satisfy the early clients.

At the MVP stage, you must choose the most important elements of your eCommerce application. Instead of immediately implementing a fully-fledged product, I recommend a continual evaluation of the product, which drives further revisions.

MVP attempts to learn what users think of the product, save development time, mitigate risks, and more efficiently manage resources.

Step 7. Gather Feedback

When the MVP is released, it is time to begin collecting customer feedback. It is the process of observing how people engage with your app, collecting feedback, and identifying potential enhancements. Feedback collection is important in ecommerce app development since it helps you determine what works and what doesn’t for your target audience.

Step 8. Iterate

The final step is iteration. Observing the dominant players in the eCommerce app market reveals that design is never static. Instead, it is continuously changing and reacting to market/user demands.

The Ecommerce Mobile App Development Cost Estimation

Considering all that has been discussed thus far, purchasing a pre-made eCommerce app is not a wise decision. An app needs to give its users tailored experiences in order to become popular with users.

The price of ecommerce mobile app development is also something else to think about.

When it comes to mobile eCommerce, it is advised to choose native app development over a hybrid approach. UI/UX designers, iOS and Android developers, testers, and Q&A engineers will then make up your project team. The addition of a project manager and full-stack web developers to a team is an option.

There are basic, standard, and complex versions, which vary in the degree of technical assistance required as well as how sophisticated the functionality of an eCommerce app is. The final cost could also depend on several other elements. Therefore, you must choose whether to create an MVP first and whether to create apps for the iOS and Android operating systems simultaneously or separately. In addition, you need to decide whether you want to hire software professionals on-site to develop your app or outsource it, among other things. 

TABLE 1:-Let’s look at the potential costs associated with creating a native eCommerce app for Android and iOS.

TABLE 2:-Also, here we can see the E-Commerce APP Development Cost Estimations from various countries in various designations.

Those are rough approximations. Keep in mind that the best DevOps and Agile approaches could assist you in lowering the cost of development. Additionally, feel free to get in touch with us if you want additional details or have any other queries regarding how to create an overhead-free eCommerce mobile app.

FAQs

Q1: What is the cost estimate to develop an app?

Ans: The typical price range for developing an eCommerce application is between $80K and $150K. The price may increase with the number of features, mobile platforms, UI/UX design complexity, etc.

Q2: Where do I develop an ecommerce app?

Ans: If you are looking for a reliable partner to develop an e-commerce app, the best place to start is by researching the different options available. You can check online for reviews and feedback on different app development companies, and compare costs, features, and turnaround times before making a decision. Many companies offer custom solutions tailored to your business needs, so make sure to ask any questions you may have. It’s also important to research their customer service policies and procedures before committing.

Q3: What technology should I use?

Ans: Developing an e-commerce app requires the right technology and tools. We recommend using a combination of Angular/React for developing the front end, Node.js or PHP as the backend language, MySQL or MongoDB as the database, server-less architecture with AWS Lambda & DynamoDB to handle the heavy lifting and Stripe or PayPal for payments. All this backed up by a reliable hosting provider can provide you with a very robust and secure e-commerce platform.

Q4: How long will it take?

Ans: The specific amount of effort required to design an eCommerce app depends on the objectives and product requirements. The development of the first iteration of a minimum viable eCommerce software can take three to four months. To make it into a medium-complexity app, it usually takes another 7 months. It is obvious that development and advancement will continue. Prepare yourself for the fact that your eCommerce app will change frequently.

Q5: What features should I have in my ecommerce app?

Ans: Your ecommerce app should offer a range of features that make the shopping experience as seamless and convenient as possible. Consider including an intuitive user interface, product search and filtering, secure payment options, order tracking, customer reviews and ratings, loyalty incentives and rewards programs, personalized recommendations, promotional discounts and offers, product image galleries with zoom capabilities, and virtual try-on features for clothing items. Additionally, integrating social media platforms can also help increase engagement and sales. The more features you offer in your ecommerce app to deliver an exceptional user experience, the better your chances of success.

Conclusion

For a number of reasons, including widespread smartphone adoption, widespread education, consumers’ insatiable appetite for novelty, and other international factors, the eCommerce app development industry is booming right now.

An eCommerce app provides your company with numerous benefits, including easier customer acquisition and an edge over the competition. We also analyzed the market leaders in the eCommerce space so that you can learn from their strategies. However, the most important part of Ecommerce Mobile App Development is putting the user experience first.

Please get in touch with us if you are looking for an ecommerce mobile app development company. Since years under our belts, our ecommerce app developers know how to tailor a solution specifically to your target market and your offering.