Many individuals engage in numerous online transactions, from sneakers and sunglasses to drugs and office tables – essentially, a wide array of products. The advent of lockdown periods further fueled the already thriving trend of eCommerce app development.
Consequently, buying goods through these apps has emerged as the most convenient and favored method of shopping.
Despite the consistent growth of desktop eCommerce over the years, mobile commerce is projected to soar even higher, reaching an estimated value of $620.97 billion by 2024.
This remarkable surge can be attributed to the seamless and user-friendly experience that customers enjoy with just a tap on their screens. Consequently, eCommerce mobile app development is a lasting trend in the digital era.
Retailers who hesitate to invest in eCommerce application development may risk appearing outdated or inadequate. Therefore, if you are still contemplating a mobile app, continue reading to discover how to build an eCommerce app.
What is eCommerce application development?
eCommerce application development refers to the process of creating software applications or a service marketplace platform that facilitate online buying and selling of goods and services.
These applications enable businesses to conduct their operations online and provide customers with a seamless shopping experience.
eCommerce applications can vary in complexity, from simple online stores to sophisticated multi-vendor marketplaces.
What does an eCommerce app do?
An eCommerce app facilitates online buying and selling of goods or services.
It allows users (customers) to browse through a product catalog, add items to their shopping carts, and proceed with secure online payments to complete the purchase.
The app typically provides features like order tracking, customer account management, personalized recommendations, and customer support.
For businesses, an eCommerce app enables them to showcase and manage their products, process orders, handle inventory, and track sales performance.
eCommerce App Types
There are several types of eCommerce or electronic commerce applications, each catering to different business models and consumer needs. Some common types of eCommerce apps include:
Type 1: Retail eCommerce Apps:
These are the most common eCommerce apps where businesses sell their products directly to consumers. Users can browse a wide range of products, add items to their shopping carts, and make purchases within the app.
Type 2: Marketplace Apps:
Marketplace apps act as platforms where multiple vendors or sellers can list their products for sale. Users can access various products from different sellers through a single app. Examples include Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
Type 3: On-Demand Delivery Apps:
These apps facilitate the delivery of goods or services to customers’ doorsteps. Users can order groceries, food, or even services like transportation through such apps.
Type 4: Subscription-Based Apps:
Subscription-based eCommerce apps charge users a recurring fee to access certain products or services. These apps often offer subscribers exclusive content, digital products, or services.
Type 5: Social Commerce Apps:
Social commerce apps combine social media and eCommerce elements. Users can discover and purchase products directly on social media, leveraging their social connections for recommendations and reviews.
Type 6: Flash Sales Apps:
Flash sales apps offer time-limited deals and discounts on specific products. Users must quickly grab these limited-time offers, creating a sense of urgency and excitement.
Type 7: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Commerce Apps:
P2P commerce apps enable individuals to buy and sell directly with each other. Users can list their used or new items for sale, and interested buyers can connect with them through the app.
Type 8: Digital Product Distribution Apps:
These apps provide a platform for selling and distributing digital products such as eBooks, software, music, or digital art.
Type 9: B2B eCommerce Apps:
Business-to-Business or B2B eCommerce examples cater to wholesale business transactions. These apps are designed for bulk purchases and often offer personalized pricing and catalog management.
Type 10: M-Commerce Apps:
M-Commerce, or mobile commerce apps, are specifically optimized for mobile devices. They enable users to shop conveniently on their smartphones and tablets, providing a seamless mobile shopping experience.
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Why Build an eCommerce App?
Smartphone Usage
Presently, there are approximately 4 billion active smartphones worldwide.
Most people make online purchases around the clock, utilizing mobile devices with seamless one-tap transactions.
This explosion in mobile commerce makes having a user-friendly eCommerce app a must for any business.
However, a well-designed custom ecommerce website development can still be a valuable asset, providing a comprehensive product showcase and catering to users who prefer desktop browsing.
Ultimately, the best approach might be an omnichannel strategy that combines a robust mobile app with a website that complements the app’s functionality.
Growth in Revenue
Smartphones transcend being mere hi-tech circuits and electronic components. Numerous global eCommerce apps, such as Walmart and Amazon, have demonstrated that mobile apps attract new customers and drive revenue growth across all devices.
Buyer Demands after Covid-19
The eCommerce boom witnessed a significant acceleration due to the impact of COVID-19, fundamentally altering people’s purchasing habits. In May 2020, total eCommerce spending surged to $82.5 billion, a staggering 77% increase from the previous year. Under traditional year-over-year growth rates, achieving such a number would have taken 4 to 6 years.
Key Trends in eCommerce App Development
The advent of eCommerce mobile apps has supplanted the conventional method of purchasing goods. Nevertheless, this transformation does not imply that the online shopping experience should fundamentally differ from in-person shopping.
Let’s explore what this entails and how eCommerce trends enhance the customer experience.
Trend 1: Big Data
As the eCommerce industry experiences rapid growth with increasing users, big data algorithms have gained immense significance in developing eCommerce apps.
Take Amazon, for example, which can accurately predict users’ preferences and provide personalized product recommendations.
This phenomenon often leads to the question, “How does Amazon know what I like?”
In truth, it is no longer a well-kept secret that Amazon tracks users’ activities on its app, utilizing sophisticated big data algorithms to deliver relevant and tailored suggestions to users.
Trend 2: Augmented Reality
Augmented reality serves as the link between eCommerce shopping and the in-store experience. The Ikea commerce app stands out among the retailers excelling in AR implementation.
Customers of this home furnishings giant gain access to the complete catalog of products through an immersive AR mode, enhancing their shopping experience.
Trend 3: Purchases with a Single Click
The key advantage of eCommerce applications lies in their single-click payment feature. Streamlining the payment process has become a crucial trend and necessity for eCommerce mobile app development.
With one-click payments, users are spared the hassle of repeatedly entering payment information, leading to increased convenience and encouraging multiple purchases.
This user-centric approach exemplifies how enhancing the buying experience can positively impact customer satisfaction and business revenue.
Trend 4: Social Media eCommerce
The trend of social commerce is surging in popularity among eCommerce companies. Once again, personalized user experience takes center stage in this phenomenon.
Companies are seamlessly integrating their online products into social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, enabling users to purchase while browsing these apps.
Social commerce empowers users to instantly monitor price changes and make purchases on the spot, creating a more efficient and convenient shopping experience.
Trend 5: Chatbots
Although chatbots may seem somewhat less significant when compared to AI or AR, never underestimate their importance in personalized user approaches within eCommerce app development.
Chatbots play a vital role in maintaining communication with users without overwhelming them with excessive information.
Moreover, the ability to remain in constant contact with users 24/7 is an invaluable feature that even cutting-edge technologies cannot replicate.
How to Make an eCommerce App – Steps
Step 1: Researching
At ClickySoft, we are passionate about products and consider ourselves product geeks. As a result, we prioritize the research stage to ensure the best outcomes.
We thoroughly conduct competitor research and user interviews, which are crucial for understanding the behavior and patterns of our target audience.
This process helps us determine the most suitable app platform and create a feature set that resonates with our target audience as much as possible.
Step 2: Setting Goals
The cornerstone of eCommerce mobile app development is establishing clear business goals. To do so, consider asking yourself these three essential questions:
- What issues or problems am I aiming to address and solve?
- Who is my target audience or customer base for my product?
- How will I measure the success of the app once it is launched?
Step 3: Choose the Platform
The developers at ClickySoft recommend thoroughly understanding the intricacies of your business before making any decisions about the technology to be used for eCommerce application development. Pay close attention to development costs, inventory management, and selecting an appropriate CMS, database, and scalable framework.
This valuable information readily available makes it significantly easier to determine whether you should launch an Android, iOS, or both. It is essential to target the mobile platform where your target audience is most prominent and active.
Tech Stack: Front-end, back-end, development, support.
For Android: Java/Kotlin, Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, Android UI
For iOS: Swift/Objective-C, AppCode, UIKit
Cross Platform: React Native, Flutter, Xamarin
These are some of the common tech stacks and programming languages our developers at ClickySoft suggest. These tech platforms may change according to the nature of your business and eCommerce store attributes.
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Step 4: Defining Features
Having gathered user feedback, expert opinions, market trends, and a drive to outperform competitors, you now possess a deeper understanding of the problems your product must address and the features that will meet the needs of your end users more effectively.
Step 5: UI/UX Design
In eCommerce apps, the user experience must surpass that of in-person shopping, and the key to achieving this is through UX and UI design.
Your design becomes the voice and identity of your business, speaking directly to your target customers so it is essential to employ UI/UX best practices.
Utilizing well-crafted color schemes, captivating visuals, and seamless transitions between pages creates a lasting impression on your customers, setting your app apart from the competition.
Hire web design services by ClickySoft for a professional website worthy of your business.
Step 6: Building MVP
We have mentioned the product features that should be given top priority. The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage is where you should concentrate on incorporating the most crucial features of your eCommerce app. Instead of launching a fully-fledged product immediately, I recommend focusing on continuous evaluation, which facilitates further refinements.
MVP aims to gather user feedback, streamline development time, mitigate risks, and optimize resource allocation for maximum efficiency.
Step 7: Feedback
Once the MVP is released, it becomes crucial to begin collecting customer feedback. This process involves closely observing how users interact with your app, capturing their feedback, and identifying potential areas for improvement.
Feedback collection plays a pivotal role in eCommerce app development, as it allows you to understand what resonates with your target audience and what might require enhancements.
Step 8: Iteration
Finally, let’s not forget about the importance of iteration. When we observe the major players in the eCommerce app market, it becomes evident that design is never stagnant. Instead, it continuously evolves and adapts to meet the market’s and users’ ever-changing demands.
Points to Consider During eCommerce Mobile App Development
Security
eCommerce applications involve handling significant sensitive information during the purchase process, such as shipping and billing addresses, card numbers, CVV codes, and email addresses. Therefore, ensuring the protection of this data from harm must be your primary concern.
Failing to guarantee users the absolute safety of their confidential data poses a risk of preventing the app from reaching the top. While achieving a 100% unhackable application may be considered a superstition rather than reality, modern encryption technologies offer robust solutions against data theft. Various encryption methods exist, with some being more expensive than others.
The level of security in any software application depends on the willingness of its owners to invest in robust barriers against hackers. While ensuring security can be cost-intensive during the eCommerce mobile app development stage, it ultimately proves rewarding in the long run, safeguarding user trust and the app’s smooth operation.
Application Stability
Stability and avoidance of crashes are paramount for a successful mobile eCommerce app. Ensuring the app’s stability should be a top priority on your “to-do” list if you intend to drive sales and achieve a high return on investment.
Users prefer consistent and well-balanced apps, as they don’t want to waste time dealing with unreliable applications.
Admittedly, creating a flawless product without any difficulties or bugs is challenging.
However, it is essential to conduct thorough quality assurance tests, gather customer feedback, regularly release updates to address issues, and continuously improve the app step by step.
This iterative process is standard for reputable companies engaged in professional eCommerce mobile app development.
While it might be time-consuming during production, the result is a well-crafted and polished product that doesn’t cause headaches for owners and customers.
Ultimately, the developers’ efforts are geared towards delivering a seamless user experience worth the investment.
Scalability
Scalability refers to the capacity of an app to accommodate a growing workload. As an application gains popularity, it attracts more users and generates more requests that must be handled. When developing an eCommerce app, it is wiser to incorporate a certain degree of excess capacity from the beginning rather than dealing with a frozen application later.
A scalable application can maintain or enhance efficiency even as the workload grows. This implies that average response time, the number of requests processed per second, and other performance metrics can increase proportionally with the demand.
Style
Developing an app that caters to numerous devices necessitates an exceptional design that meets the demands of both Android and iOS users, ensuring their satisfaction. It is essential to consider the specific requirements of these operating systems and the capabilities of various supporting devices.
The application should boast a visually appealing and user-friendly interface. Bearing that users can be lazy and impatient, a slow and confusing app can be frustrating. Subconsciously, people seek beauty in everything they interact with, making an impressive design an integral aspect of building successful eCommerce apps.
eCommerce App Examples
We have compiled a list of some of the best examples of best eCommerce platforms for startups that you can consider for your online business.
Example 1: Shopify
Shopify exemplifies an eCommerce application that enables individuals to establish their virtual stores effortlessly. Besides, it offers various services, goods and products, including fulfillment and Shopify POS systems.
The revenue generation for Shopify comes from various sources. These include selling hardware, obtaining commissions through its app, theme, marketplace exchange, selling domain names, email marketing, Shopify SEO, logistical and investment services. Additionally, it accrues revenue from transaction and referral fees.
Hire Shopify development services by ClickySoft and let them develop a store according to your requirements.
Example 2: Amazon
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), renowned as the biggest online retailer globally, has witnessed remarkable expansion across diverse sectors, encompassing cloud services, digital marketing and advertising, and its fundamental eCommerce operations. Amazon’s revenue generation stems from multiple avenues, including web subscription, streaming services, and retail.
Retail remains Amazon’s most significant source of income, with a major contribution coming from its online and offline stores. Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as the driving force behind the company’s operational profits, and it continues to experience rapid expansion.
Example 3: GOAT
Goat is a widely recognized e-commerce platform specializing in secure buying and selling of sneakers. The app provides complimentary and reliable verification services for every sneaker transaction to ensure authenticity and accuracy.
The company initially secured a substantial investment of $7.6 billion from notable investors such as Y Combinator, Upfront Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Reddit. In 2017, Goat achieved a significant milestone by merging with Flight Club, solidifying its position as the primary player in the secondary sneaker industry. Despite the merger, Goat and Flight Club operated independently, dominating specific market segments.
How Much Does it Cost to Develop an eCommerce App?
Regarding the costs of mobile eCommerce app development, providing precise prices can be complex.
Developing an e-commerce app typically involves an expenditure of around $21,799. Nevertheless, the total cost may vary significantly, ranging from as low as $7,500 to as high as $30,000. If the e-commerce app is designed as a “minimum viable product” (MVP) with fewer features, it will be more budget-friendly compared to a fully-featured app encompassing all intended functionalities.
Several factors come into play, such as the project’s goals and requirements, the number of features, the complexity of the UI/UX design, and the targeted mobile platforms.
You can also check out our post to reduce mobile app development costs.
How Long Does It Take To Develop An ECommerce App?
The time required to develop an eCommerce app can vary depending on its complexity, features, and requirements. Generally, it may take a six months to a year to complete the development process.
What Specialists Do You Need to Build an eCommerce App?
To build an eCommerce app, you typically need a team of specialists, including:
- Mobile App Developers
- UI/UX Designers
- Back-end Developers
- Front-end Developers
- Database Specialists
- QA/Testers
- Project Managers
The roles and team composition may vary based on the project’s scope and requirements.
Conclusion
The present-day eCommerce app development industry is witnessing a surge due to various factors, such as widespread smartphone usage, the impact of the pandemic, and consumers’ inclination for novelty amid global circumstances.
Developing an eCommerce app presents numerous opportunities for your business, offering fast user access and a competitive edge. By examining top players in the eCommerce sector, you now have some trends to adopt.
However, the fundamental essence of the entire eCommerce app development process lies in prioritizing the customer’s needs and finding the most optimal user-oriented solution.
If you seek experts to develop an eCommerce app and product support, please contact ClickySoft.
We offer eCommerce development solutions with a decade of experience in the industry and a team of professional developers. We have the expertise to craft a tailored solution that perfectly aligns with your target audience and product needs.
