Shopping apps have transformed how we purchase small to big things. Shopping apps have been a go-to source for buying books, electronic gadgets, and hefty machinery. They have become popular because of ease of convenience and user experience.
Moreover, many brick & mortar stores to big businesses are joining the eCommerce bandwagon by launching apps. If you are an entrepreneur or a business owner that wants to create a shopping app, you are at the right place.
As an eCommerce development company, we have developed shopping apps for all kinds of businesses worldwide. Therefore, this blog will provide a step-by-step process to create a shopping app that will engage, impress and retain customers. Before we look into it, we will walk you through the current state of the shopping apps.
So, let’s get started.
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The demand for shopping apps is reaching the sky with each passing year. Here are some of the latest statistics for shopping apps that prove the same.
After looking at the statistics, you must have understood the growing popularity of shopping apps. Now, let’s check out what benefits you can get by building a Shopping app.
Building a shopping app can offer many benefits to your business and your customers. In fact, you should create a shopping app even if you only have an offline store. Want to know why?
Here are some advantages you will get with a shopping app.
With a shopping app, your customers can easily browse products and make a purchase directly from their mobile phones without visiting your website or offline store. This can increase customer engagement with your brand and increase customer loyalty.
It can help you increase your sales with more precise marketing efforts to target new users. Also, the quick steps to search for a product and the add-to-cart option in the shopping app leads to more sales.
You can offer a more personalized experience for your customers through your shopping app, like personalized product recommendations and customized push notifications. You can even interact more with your customers and get reviews and feedback on the app.
A shopping app for your store can offer you a competitive edge and help you differentiate yourself from competitors. Moreover, a shopping app offers a new touchpoint for your customers, who can remember your brand for future purchases.
These benefits would have undoubtedly impressed you. So, without wasting much time, let’s jump on the steps to create a shopping app for your store.
Creating a shopping app for your online store can seem daunting, but with the right approach, you can do it with ease. Let’s break down the process into 9 simple steps to help you get started.
The first & foremost step is to do market research and know your target audience. To define the audience for your shopping app, you need to become familiar with the demographics, behaviors, and preferences of potential customers. It allows you to understand your target audience’s needs and create a shopping app accordingly.
Apart from this, you should also conduct thorough research on your competitors and the latest market trends. By analyzing the market, you can determine what is working and what users expect from the shopping app. Based on your research related to the audience & competitors, you can make effective decisions for your shopping app.
However, going through this step depends on your business stage. If you already have a shopping website and now want to build an app, you will not need to do much market research except for mobile stats. But if you are starting a new online shopping store and need a shopping app right away, you must research sufficiently to stand in the competition.
After knowing your target audience, the next crucial step is to define whether you want to develop an app for Android, iOS, or both.
There’s no doubt that Android technology is dominating the global market share, with more than 70% of smartphone users having an android device. So, you would want to build an android shopping app. But it’s equally true that iOS technology covers most of the market share in North America (almost 54%). And if your target location is America, you should build an app for both Android and iOS.
Apart from the platform, you also need to define the development approach for your shopping app. You have two options.
Native App Development:
In native app development, the developer creates an app that runs on a specific platform, such as Android or iOS, from scratch. That means, in the native shopping app development approach, if you want to build an app for Android and iOS, you’ll need to develop two distinct apps for each OS.
Native app development can be costly and may require more time, but it gives you more freedom to customize your shopping app and add more advanced features per your business requirements.
Cross-Platform App Development:
Here, developers create apps that run on multiple platforms like Android and iOS by using cross-platform app frameworks like React Native, Flutter, etc. That means you can use the same code for both OS apps by using cross-platform frameworks. This approach requires less time and cost but also has some limitations on the customization part.
If you don’t have any issues with the budget and want to create a high-performing shopping app for a specific platform, go with Native app development.
If you have a limited budget and want to reach a broader audience on multiple platforms, go with cross-platform app development.
Here is a list of essential features you should include in your shopping app.
Keep the sign-up process effective by allowing users to sign up via email and a phone number. To provide more convenience, you can allow users to Sign Up via third-party platforms, such as Google and Facebook.
It is one of the most crucial features in your eCommerce app. Users can discover their required product quickly if you have integrated a helpful search feature in your eCommerce app. It will ultimately increase user engagement.
A highly-organized product catalog is crucial in any eCommerce app. It displays product features, images, descriptions, height, weight, and ratings.
A wishlist feature allows users to add their desired products to their wishlist for purchase in the near future.
After spending significant time choosing a product, the user is looking for a quick checkout process that asks for minimal details. If the checkout process asks users to enter details again, they will leave your eCommerce app. Therefore, it is recommended to keep a one-step checkout process. You can also allow guest checkout for the users who use your shopping app for the first time.
If you want your app to give tough competition to other shopping apps in the market, it is essential to satisfy users’ needs. In this digital age, the consumer gets various options when making payments online. It would help if you integrated multiple payment options in your shopping app, or you might lose your consumers.
All the customers love to check where their order has been reached after purchasing the product. Hence, you should include an order tracking feature that allows users to track the order from order placement to delivery.
One of the most fundamental modes of communication you use with consumers is push notification. This feature lets you notify users about their orders, product recommendations, upcoming discounts and offers, and payment reminders.
By providing live chat, email support, or in-app support, you can resolve all the critical issues that users have with the product. It helps to offer a better experience to users and increase engagement.
A proper shipping system is necessary to offer seamless product shipping to your customers. If the product is not shipped on time or the shipping cost is very high, it can reduce your customer base and sales. So, while brainstorming about creating a shopping app, also think about providing a better shipping system.
After deciding on all the essential features of your shopping app, it’s time to create a wireframe for the app. It is generally a rough architecture of the future application in two-dimension.
In simple words, it allows you to check the overflow of the application from start to finish.
After creating a wireframe properly, it is time for app design. To create wireframe & app design, you should hire a mobile app design company. They follow the latest app design trends and platform-specific guidelines to create a shopping app design that displays products correctly & offers a top-notch user experience.
The next crucial thing for creating a shopping app is to make a reliable tech stack. A technology stack is a collection of all the technologies required to make a mobile application. It includes programming languages, frameworks, databases, frontend & backend tools, and APIs.
Here, the mobile app development team understands your business’s needs and builds a unique technology stack for your shopping app.
Now, it’s time to develop your shopping app. For the same, you should hire an eCommerce app development company.
The company first creates the front end of your ecommerce app. They make sure to consider the latest frontend development trends and leverage popular frontend frameworks to create an app’s user interface.
Apart from the front end, the company also builds the back end. They create the database, APIs, and server-side code in the backend.
After building an app, it’s time to test your shopping app thoroughly. The development team runs various quality assurance tests to identify any bugs and issues in the shopping app. The QA team forwards the same to the development team. The developers resolve the bugs as quickly as possible.
After developing your app, it’s time to launch it on the specific store. The development company has expertise in launching the app for multiple stores. Hence, they help you launch your app on the relevant app store without hindrance.
Your work is not over as soon as you launch your shopping app. The actual work starts after that. You need to market your shopping app to make it successful effectively. For the same, you need to carry out different marketing types to reach a wider audience.
The best way to promote your shopping app is to contact a digital marketing agency. They would understand your business goals, make a modern app marketing strategy and follow it well to market your app successfully.
The cost to develop a shopping app starts from $30,000 and goes up to $1,50,000 or more. It includes all the things right from planning to development and launch.
The cost varies based on many factors like the complexity, total number of features & functionalities, development company location & experience, platform, development approach, and more.
Talk to our app development consultant and find out how much it costs to build your mobile shopping app!
Get A QuoteNow, let’s check out some of the best shopping apps in 2023 that you can draw inspiration from to create your own successful shopping app.
Nike is a great example of a successful shopping app with unique features. This app offers personalized recommendations and exclusive access to limited-edition products. Moreover, if you are shopping from an offline store, the app allows you to scan the product barcode to get detailed information. This app can be a great source of inspiration for creating your shopping experience.
Adidas is another excellent shopping app example that has many unique features. It allows you to find products through visual search, shows real-time stock availability, and offers the ability to customize and personalize certain products. This app is a great example of how to offer an engaging user experience.
ASOS is a shopping application that offers a wide range of products from various brands. It has a very friendly user interface and features like visual search and personalized product recommendations. It also has shareable boards to help you share the product and a fit assistant feature to get the right size the first time.
H&M is another best shopping app that can inspire you on how to create one for you. It offers personalized recommendations, product finding through smart search and filtering options, the ability to create and save outfit combinations, and a virtual try-on feature. The app also has a Scan & Find feature that allows you to scan a price tag to get more details if you shop offline.
ZALORA is an Asian shopping app that offers a wide range of products from different brands. It has the feature of a loyalty program that rewards users for purchases. A live chat feature allows customers to contact a support team for assistance. Other features include smart search and filtering options, Visual search, push notifications, and magazine integration for the latest fashion trends.
We hope you have become familiar with the process of shopping app development. It’s time to start planning for your shopping app. As of now, there are many shopping apps in the market. Therefore, you should consider the target audience, key features, and budget.
Webdesk solution is a leading mobile app development company. We possess an excellent team of mobile app developers who have developed some of the best shopping apps for businesses worldwide. Hence, they can understand your needs well and provide you with a shopping app solution.
The features of your shopping app will depend on your target audience and business goals. Some of the features you should include are product catalogs and search functionality, secure payment options, wishlists, push notifications, ratings and reviews, personalized recommendations, and social media integration.
The time it takes to develop a shopping app depends on the complexity of the app and the resources available for development. On average, it can take anywhere from several months to a year or more to develop a shopping app.
Ensuring the security of your shopping app is critical for protecting your customers’ personal and financial information. Some steps you can follow to secure your shopping app are using secure server infrastructure, secure payment systems, regular security audits, regular security patch updates and bug fixes, and robust user authentication.
A shopping app typically requires a user interface for browsing and selecting products, a secure payment gateway for transactions, a database to store product information and user data, and integration with shipping and delivery services for order fulfillment. Additionally, features such as user accounts, customer support, and personalized recommendations can enhance the user experience.
To make your Shopping app successful, you need to provide a seamless and intuitive user experience, offer a wide variety of high-quality products, secure and easy payment options, fast and reliable shipping and delivery services, and excellent customer support.
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