In the era of the digital world, having a website is not sufficient for a business. People invest in email marketing, newspaper ads, hoardings, etc to attract consumers. Today, mobile applications are performing a significant role in creating relations between consumers and businesses. Mobile applications are well-accepted for understanding their buyers better. Just with the help of an app, businesses can also tap their customers anytime.
Table of Content:
- Introduction
- What are the benefits of Building a Mobile App for an eCommerce Business?
- E-Commerce Mobile App Trends for businesses
- How to design e-com mobile apps for Business?
- – Understand Your Industry and customer
- – Choose Your Business Model
- – Select your technology infrastructure
- – Look for an E-com Mobile App Development Company
- Conclusion
What are the benefits of Building a Mobile App for an eCommerce Business?
Now, let’s see some of the benefits of building a mobile app for an e-com business:
- Enhanced brand identification
One of the foremost reasons to select the mobile app for an eCommerce business is to get brand visibility. Moreover, it’s the most beneficial benefit of mobile app development.
- Better communication
With mobile phones, consumers get connected with the brands online. These days mostly everyone prefers using a smartphone to shop online. Hence, brands need to incorporate these devices in their marketing strategies. Moreover, this will support in improving the interaction process with the customers.
To use the potential of their online consumers, businesses need to show constant engagement via mobile apps. And apart from being connected with the customers, mobile apps are also used to share deals, offers, discounts, etc.
- Improved consumer experience
These days consumers want a customized experience from brands. And also that with the help of websites is not enough in these times. Firstly, If you desire your customers to be faithful with your brand, then you must go for mobile app development.
Moreover, utilizing the power of technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, VR, etc with mobile app development, you can get insights into your customers. Such as their preferences, their buying journey, what time they usually come online, etc. And once you will know the insights, you can easily tap them and can enhance their shopping experience.
- Better customer engagement
In these times you can even take advantage of your consumer’s devices. Additionally, you can combine the features of a consumer’s device with your app to streamline navigation and improve consumer engagement.
- Global Positioning System (GPS)
GPS allows an app to track the customer’s location. To get rid of the stress of adding shipping details manually, businesses can also add this geotags feature to their app.
- Camera
These days almost every website allows consumers to click pics of items. And they can also upload it on social media using their apps. Firstly, this enables you to show the items to others and also it can help in improving the business sale.
- Microphone
Using a microphone you can help customers to press the soundbar on the app & also check what they want. And it helps in making the search process easier.
- Improvement in profits & efficiency
A robust mobile app with the top features and functionality attracts customers. And having more consumers leads to higher orders, which will automatically help in increasing revenues.
- Boost Customer Retention
Sharing below some of the points that help in increasing customer retention:
– Exclusive benefits
Brands can also add some benefits that only app users can avail. This will help get more app downloads as well.
– Reward points
There are so many ways to get your customers back, and it includes loyalty/reward programs. So with this, whenever they make a purchase they’ll get some points, and can redeem those points in the next purchase. This helps in improving customer loyalty.
– Lastly, Excellent Support
Having great customer support service goes a long way. Brands should set definite support care for their customers. Even when customers uninstall the app & switch to another version, a consumer should be contacted for feedback.
- Improve ordinary order value
This is not an easy task to be very frank. Here, you need to follow different tactics to attract the customer to spend more on your mobile app. To help you out with this, we are sharing some points below:- Secure Payment: You should always give various options for payments. And also all the options should be safe for the customer. This can give them the surety of adding their cards to the app for quick payments.
- Push notifications: This feature also notifies the customers regarding any offers, new collections, sales, etc.
- One-Click Order System: The quick layout of the mobile apps makes the buying process easier. Hence, you should add this important feature to your app so that customers have to click just once for the checkout process.
- Lesser cart abandonment
As per a study, in the previous times, mobile apps had the least cart abandonment. It is due to a quick buying & checkout method. This method adds the payment and shipping details which allows the customers to check out in just one go. This makes users finish the checkout easily and even faster.
Additionally, when customers aren’t sure about their requirements and they go online to a store, in this case, they don’t finish their checkout part. And now even more than e-com mobile applications, the desktop version boosts the performance. The users who can reach your e-com app via their mobile phone are assumed to visit well-prepared and may come to your store and buy.
- Gives a customized shopping experience
You as a brand can add relevant suggestions and highlight features to give your customer a customized online shopping experience. You can also take the benefit of the data your customers are sharing in the mobile app.
- Extended customer loyalty base
These days users spend more time on their mobile apps. Brands have to be sure that they should give specific details about the product, contact details, as well. Moreover to encourage the customers to purchase the product.
Sharing below are some ways that you can follow to increase customer loyalty:- Uniform brand awareness by having an attractive design. And build a mobile app.
- You can ask your customers to visit again by having loyalty programs. For instance, discounts, bonuses, offers, sales, etc.
- Keep 24*7 customer support for your customers to settle their queries. It can be via call, live chat, or even chatbot.
- Finer Conversion rate
E-Commerce Mobile applications help in better conversion. And, we are only looking for better conversions at the end. This results in business revenue.
Let’s get into some more points about why your business requires an e-com mobile app:
- Features such as push notifications can help you get more conversions.
- Your app can feed all the customer data, which you can use for further requirements.
- You can add a payment wallet to make a one-step checkout process.
E-Commerce Mobile App Trends for businesses
After understanding the challenges that the e-com mobile app business gets, we have come up with some of the important points that you should consider to skip those hurdles in generating revenues. Sharing below are the three benefits of adding voice technology to your mobile app:
- Speed: It has been noticed that exploring with voice is 3x quicker than typing. Hence, This feature will help customers in getting quicker results.
- Comfort: In voice searches, customers have to just speak a query rather than type it. So it is comfortable & easy for them to use voice technology. It also attracts that kind of audience who doesn’t know how to type.
- Flexibility: As per research, most of the searches will be via voice in the coming time. This reflects that people are adapting technologies very fast.
Now, let us find out how businesses can use voice technology in their mobile apps? The purpose of voice technology is not restricted to search. For better returns, eCommerce business owners should optimize their eCommerce businesses and allow users to do various things with voice technology. Such as buying a product, Reaching out to customer support, Product Tracking, Adding items to the cart, Making carts, Payments, etc. Hence, as an e-com business, if you want to give an impeccable shopping experience to your consumers, you should always acknowledge adding voice search to your list. This feature can help you add more profitability to your business.
Mentioning below are some of the features that require for a seamless shopping experience:
- Social E-com App: Instagram allows users to checkout within the app itself. This feature will make the E-com mobile App even more helpful for customers in the coming time.
So to make an e-Com business more competitive in the market, it is essential to use social media. Since it can help businesses to reach a broader audience, make higher Return On Income, improve customer engagement, etc.
- OmniChannel: Because of heavy market competition, businesses have started selling on multiple channels like mobile apps, social media, mobile websites, websites, and physical stores.
But, a seamless customer experience is a must. You should take care of all the channels as an e-com manager. For instance, if a consumer is searching for something on the e-com mobile app. And adds anything in the cart, the items shouldn’t be removed from the website cart. All the channels must be in sync.
Now let’s get into how you can create an omnichannel approach using an e-com mobile app. Let’s say a consumer hunted for a product on your e-com mobile app. And after a few days, they check out your store. So, the best way to give an omnichannel experience is to tap the consumer with a push notification as per their search history. You can also offer a discount on the product. Always remember, an excellent consumer experience is constant across all platforms.
- Chatbots: Chatbots are common. Several e-Com apps have been using this mobile chatbot for years. However, their use in e-Com mobile apps is considered to improve many functions. AI-powered tools can give e-Com mobile apps many advantages such as:
- Enhanced Consumer Experience by allowing quick customization while interacting with the customers.
- Improved report of customer preferences for recommendations.
- Greater customer engagement in e-com mobile apps by interacting with many customers at the same time.
- Providing 24*7 customer support for solving issues and queries.
- Time and cost-saving of a human support executive.
- Various Payment Alternatives: Customers are extensively using e-wallets like Google pay, Paypal, Apple pay to make payments. Further, it is quick and safe to use. We all must have experienced how irritating it is to re-try the payment over and over again for purchase. This is the point where you lose your customers. So, you should make sure to always consider the quick payment methods in your app. The more convenience you’ll give the more conversions you’ll get.
Till now we have clear the importance of your app features, what all are needed to make an impression on your consumers. Now let’s check how to create an e-com mobile app for your business to get the best out of it.
How to design e-com mobile apps for Business?
From design to distribution, there are several things that you need to look for while developing an e-com mobile app. There are some points you need to follow to build an efficient app. You need to first follow a precise procedure. So now let’s check the e-com mobile app development process:
Step 1: Understand your industry and customer
Inadequate market research and no understanding of the market is one of the notable reasons for crashing apps. So, make sure to do market research to avoid mistakes. Also, check the purpose of designing an e-com mobile app for your business. To understand the consumers & the market you need to check the following points:
- About the target audience
- The age group of your audience
- Customer need & preferences
- The kind of products they are using
All these details can assist you in creating a robust app for your consumers. For instance, if you own an offline store, your customers might like both of the experiences you are providing, online & offline. On the contrary, if you have a business mobile app, you have to put more on your app marketing to get customer trust. So, look for your desired goals, understand your market, customer needs, and the go-ahead with your e-com mobile app.
Step 2: Choose Your Business Model
Firstly, you need to select & understand your business model for your e-com mobile app. Building a practical business model before going for the app development process would be better for you to understand the buyer segment, value proposition, and revenue. Usually, e-com mobile apps come with one of the two kinds of business models as mentioned below:
Business to Business: B2B offers its products or services to other online businesses. Here, in some cases, the buyer can be the end-user also. But, usually, the buyer resells the item purchased to the customers. It is always recommended to create a business model canvas for greater understandability.
Business to Consumer: B2B is the most popular approach in the case of e-Com mobile apps. For instance, you purchase anything on a website or an app that comes under the Business to Customer approach. Like Walmart, Amazon, etc.
Step 3: Select your technology infrastructure
You must have understood the market after getting the research done. Also after getting your mobile app’s business model. Now it’s the correct chance to determine what technologies you should pick to develop an e-Com mobile app. Your choice now will quickly affect your mobile app development costing.
For instance, If you are selecting cross-platform app development, in this case, you’ll get a better reach in the market also in no time. Moreover, it will assist you in case you want to spend less on your mobile app. As you will be making one mobile app for both Android and iOS platforms. On the other hand, If you want a native app, you will get better performance over e-com app costs. It is also advisable to check the popular device with your target segment and audience. Accordingly, you can go forward with your app development.
Step 4: Look for an E-com Mobile App Development Company
While looking for an eCom mobile app development company, always make sure that the development company possesses expertise in providing robust digital customer solutions. Go through their reviews, portfolio, connect with their clients, ask questions from them. Understand how they work, their process, and also check for how experienced they are in working with emerging technologies. Cross-check each & everything, then take your decision with your development company. Moreover, when you get your app developed, don’t miss out on testing your mobile app. This will make sure that your e-com mobile app is error-free and performs smoothly.
Conclusion
Mobile e-com apps are the future of the shopping industry. And it is always safe to take the early steps to remain on the top in the market. With the benefits and availability that a mobile app offers, it becomes easy to tap customers and retain them.
About the Author
I am Vijay Chauhan working as a technical content writer with 4 Way Technologies. I am passionate about reading and writing content for Web application development, mobile application development, SMART TV app development and DevOps. I am also fond of creating applications (small) using the latest Javascript library. I am having close to 5 years of experience in a blogger avatar. You can reach out to me to discuss emerging technology trends and its impact.
