How To Build An E-Commerce Mobile App - An Ultimate Guide In 2023

Going online has become the trend for many businesses these days. Many businesses are now building an e-commerce app app for themselves so that their products can be sold online as well. This trend has emerged owing to the global reach and clout of the internet and due to the numerous benefits and conveniences that e-commerce apps provide business owners. Why you must build an e-commerce app for your business? What are the types of e-commerce apps that exist? What salient features do top-notch e-commerce apps have and what is the process involved in building an e-commerce app are the topics we’re going to discuss in this blog post. So, kindly read on.

Why You Must Create An Ecommerce Mobile App For Your Business

An e-commerce app as the name implies involves buying and selling of products of any category online. You must for your business as it will give you the following noteworthy benefits and conveniences.

Heightened reach or business visibility

By applying appropriate and effective App Store Optimization (ASO) techniques and practices, you can make your e-commerce app visible on users’ searches on Play Store and The App Store and thereby heighten the visibility of your products and business.

Developing an e-commerce app for your business will enable you to sell your products far and wide. You can even sell your products to people in places where your store or warehouse doesn’t exist (even international destinations).

Hence, e-commerce apps enable business owners to scale up their business exponentially and derive a much higher profit margin with minimal additional staffing and infrastructure setup costs.

Marketing Your Business Becomes Easier

If you were to employ traditional means of marketing like giving newspaper ads, radio ads, TV ads, distributing flyers, sticking bills on public walls, giving billboard ads, etcetera, to promote your business,it would cost you a lot of money and you’ll never be able to quantify and optimize the performance of your ad campaign.

On the other hand, if you build an e-commerce app for your business, you can easily optimize it for app stores and promote it effortlessly on various social media platforms. You will easily be able to identify your target audience and create and launch targeted free or paid ad campaigns on various social media platforms.

Social media ad campaigns have a relatively high conversion rate and low ad campaign costs. They are also customizable and enable business owners to effectively engage with their target audience. Having a presence (business page) on appropriate social media platforms also helps in brand building and improving one’s products or service by implementing your customers’ suggestions and addressing their complaints.

24/7 Availability Of Your Products And Delivery Service

If you build an e-commerce mobile app for your business, your customers will be able to buy your products any time they want, which is not possible via brick and mortar stores. Thus you won’t be missing out on any business opportunity if you create an e-commerce mobile app for your business.

Positive User Reviews Can Spread The Word Of Your Brand Faster And Wider

Since the internet and social media platforms have a global reach and influence, you can leverage it to spread the word of your brand far and wide quickly. Since the positive reviews given on various app stores will be regionally or globally visible, more of your target audience will come to know of your business and have a good impression on it.

Getting positive customer reviews on various app stores will help you build your brand in all aspects (good impression, trust in quality, user engagement, etc.) quickly and on a grander scale.

Order Tracking Is Much Easier

Modern day e-commerce apps have a precise and fast order tracking feature that enables business owners to track the status of their customers’ orders and take corrective action if necessary. This feature will preserve the operational integrity of your e-commerce business and your reputation.

Availability Of Global Logistics Partners

There are many national and international logistics partners available these days that you can tie up with to deliver your products in any corner of the globe. This will enable your business to grow exponentially.

Popular e-commerce giants like Flipkart, Amazon, etcetera were able to grow so much and make their products available throughout the globe because they had tied up with national and international logistics partners like FedEx, DHL, Dot Zot, BlueDart, etc.

The Different Types Of E-Commerce Apps

Yes, you read the title right. Many people are aware of only one type of e-commerce app and that is the B2C e-commerce app but there are other types as well, which we’ll discuss shortly.

B2B E-Commerce App

Via this type of e-commerce app, one business sells some products to another business. The products are usually raw materials required by the buyer company. For example: a power generating firm may buy coal from an appropriate mining firm.

B2B e-commerce apps have a much more detailed and efficient order tracking mechanism than commonly used e-commerce apps. This is to preserve the operational integrity and reputation of the supplier firm.

B2C E-Commerce App

The acronym B2C stands for Business to Customer. B2C e-commerce apps are the most common type of e-commerce apps that are widely used throughout the globe by people. Here a business that has various stores or warehouses sells its products to people. Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Alibaba, etcetera are examples of popular B2C e-commerce apps.

C2C E-Commerce App

Here, one person tries to sell his products to people in his city, state, or country. The seller is usually a micro or a small entrepreneur who has one to a few store branches. Shopify is an example of C2C e-commerce app.

C2B E-Commerce App

The acronym C2B stands for Consumer to Business. Here a business buys any kind of product or piece of work from a person or many individuals.

For example: a painting store may buy art works from many local, national, or even international artists, an online news agency may buy content on various topics from one or more content writers. Clutch and GitHub are two popular C2B e-commerce apps

Features To Consider Incorporating Before You Build An E-Commerce App

If you’re planning to build an e-commerce app for your business, you have to incorporate the following features to make your e-commerce app a high-end one.

Simple Registration Process

You have to make the registration process of your e-commerce app simple and quick. If your registration process is too long and requires too many details, your prospective app user will most likely get frustrated and download another e-commerce app, which will be a huge loss for you.

Generally, speaking your e-commerce app will not be needing much more user details than his or her name, mobile number, current address, and the necessary bank account details. You can also enable users to login to your e-commerce app via any of their social media platform’s login credentials. Users generally prefer this option as it is quick and dead simple.

Simple Checkout Process

Just like the registration process, your e-commerce app’s checkout process should be swift and simple as well. Your e-commerce app must enable its users to add items to the cart and go to the payment section swiftly and with ease lest your users will get frustrated and download another e-commerce app.

Built-In Detailed Business Analytics Tool

The admin variant of your e-commerce app should have advanced in-built business analytics tools so that you’ll be able to gain valuable and actionable business insights and thereby will be able to streamline your business processes, business strategies, and your app’s performance.

The business analytics tool should give you a fair idea of your customers’ tastes and preferences, their buying trends, their average monthly budget/spending, etcetera.

Using these insights, you can program your e-commerce app to give more appealing buying suggestions, more appealing offers or discount coupons, a wider variety of payment options, and an overall better app usage experience to heighten your customer retention and profits

Search By Category Or Via The Search Bar

Your e-commerce app users should be able to find their desired items easily on your e-commerce app else it will build up their frustration with your app. Your users should be able to filter items by their categories and other parameters on your e-commerce app.

Your e-commerce app can also have a search bar so that your users can simply type the names of the items they want and order them. This feature will make ordering things via your app even more simple for your app users and will heighten their good app usage experience.

Push Notifications

This feature is used to Keep Customers Informed (KCI) and thereby prevent anxiety for them. Your e-commerce app can show notifications about your customers’ order statuses. It can also give your customers information on your latest offers and products so that your customers remain interested in using your e-commerce app.

Synchronization With Your Website’s Layout

If you own an official website as well for your e-commerce business, you’d do well to synchronize the layout of your app and your website to give your users an even online shopping experience.

You can use various online synchronization tools to synchronize the layout of your app and your website. Any changes or updates that you do to your e-commerce app will reflect on the layout and features of your website on a real time basis and vice versa. Synchronizing the layout and features of your official website and your e-commerce mobile app will speak volumes about your company’s professionalism to your users.

Provide 24/7 In-App Customer Support

No business can run successfully for a long time without providing 24/7 high quality customer or client support. The customer variant of your e-commerce app must have built-in 24/7 chat and call support options.

You can also have a dedicated email channel to resolve your customers’ queries and complaints pertaining to their orders. Some companies even have a live chat support feature on their official business pages. So, you can mull over having such a facility.

The bottom line is that 24/7 high quality customer or client support service is required to maintain your customer or client satisfaction levels and your customer or client base.

What We Can Do For You

If you plan to take your business online and build an ecommerce mobile app for it, think no further than consulting with us. We have quite a few years of proven experience in the mobile app development domain. We can impeccably build all kinds of hi-tech apps including e-commerce apps.

We have an impressive track record of successfully developing e-commerce apps like eBay, gumroad, etcetera. We will treat your business requirements as our own and design your the most appropriate and fully featured e-commerce app.

We offer our sought-after app development services at very reasonable costs. So, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by getting in touch with us.