App Development For E-commerce: Everything You Need To Know

According to e-commerce statistics, global e-commerce sales surpassed the $3.56 trillion mark in 2021, which is a 22.3% increase when compared to 2020. 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase in the last six months. The usage of e-commerce apps have grown tremendously over the years especially during and after COVID-19. In fact, users will spend 82 billion hours on shopping apps in 2020. 

All these data  points towards an exponential growth in the e-commerce industry. With people spending more time online than offline and using their mobile devices to shop, businesses can take advantage of this opportunity by creating an e-commerce app for their business. Don’t know much about e-commerce app development? Don;’t worry because you have landed on the right article. In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about e-commerce app development.

App Development For E-commerce: The Complete Guide

What is E-commerce App Development?

E-commerce app development is the process of developing mobile applications enabling businesses to sell their products online and deliver a great shopping experience for users who are using their mobile devices to shop online..

Why Is E-commerce App Development Important?

According to mobile commerce statistics, e-commerce apps have 14% higher conversion rates as compared to e-commerce mobile websites  Mobile shoppers make twice as much purchases on e-commerce shopping apps as compared to e-commerce mobile websites. E-commerce mobile apps will generate 53.9% of total e-commerce sales. Another research shows that 78% of users prefer to access an online store via a mobile app as compared to a mobile website. Here are some of the reasons why. 

What Are The Different Types of E-commerce Apps?

E-commerce apps can be broadly categorized into four different types:

• Business to Consumer (B2C)
• Business to Business (B2B)
• Consumer to Business (C2B)
• Consumer to Consumer (C2C)

What are the Requirements of E-commerce App Development?

Some of the basic e-commerce app development requirements include:

• User friendly storefront
• Product review and rating system
• Payment system
• Customer support
• Third party app integrations

What are the Key Features of an E-commerce App?

Here are some of the key features that every e-commerce app must have.

• Simple onboarding and signup process
• Search and filter options
• Comprehensive product information
• Shopping cart
• Convenient checkout process
• Order management and tracking
• Multiple payment methods

What is the E-commerce App Development Process?

Wondering how I can develop an e-commerce mobile app? Here is a step by step e-commerce app development process you must follow:

• Set clear goals
• Do your research
• Choose the platform
• Decide on the features
• Design the user interface and user experience
• Develop the e-commerce mobile app
• Test and collect feedback
• Improve the app

Let’s look at each step in more detail to give you a better idea about how it works.

• Set clear goals

First and foremost, ask yourself why you want to create an e-commerce mobile app for your business? What is the purpose behind it? During this phase, you should decide on who your target audience will be, how your e-commerce app will help solve their problems and what metrics you will be using to track success. With a clear goal in front of you, you are all set to move on to the next step of e-commerce app development.

• Do your research

During the research phase, you should identify who your competitors are and what strategies they are using. Study the shopping behavior and patterns of your target audience to know about their preferences. Conduct interviews from users on which features they value the most and which ones they don’t care about.

• Choose the platform

With goals and research phase out of the way, now is the time to choose the right platform. The decision could be highly influenced by your target audience and a host of different factors. Every platform has its pros and cons and you must understand it in order to make the right choice.

Moreover, you should also understand development tools, technologies, frameworks and programming languages. For instance, if you choose android as your preferred platform for e-commerce mobile app development, you will be working with Java programming language, Android Studio and SDK and JetPack Compose. On the contrary, if you opt to go the iOS route, you will be working with either Swift or Objective C programming languages, Swift UI framework for XCode development tool.

• Decide on the features

After looking at the competitors, collecting feedback from users, conducting research and choosing the right platform, you have reached a point where you have to decide on the features your e-commerce mobile app would contain. The number and complexity of those features will directly influence the cost of your mobile app. The more features your e-commerce mobile app contains and the more complex they are to develop, the higher will be the overall cost of your e-commerce mobile app.

• Design the user interface and user experience

Everything from choosing the colors, themes and different design elements for your e-commerce mobile app is done during this phase. Make sure that the design is simple and does not feel cluttered as it would overwhelm the shoppers and force them to abandon your app. Design the user interface of your e-commerce app in such a way that it can deliver an optimal shopping experience.

• Develop the e-commerce mobile app

Develop a basic version of your e-commerce app with bare minimum features instead of going all in. This will give you an opportunity to collect feedback and improve the app and saves you from costly and time consuming rework. Following the iterative development model will help you bring continuous improvements to your e-commerce mobile app and deliver a refined user experience.

• Test and collect feedback

Once you have a minimum viable product ready, it is time to pass it through rigorous testing. After smoothing out all the bugs and errors in your e-commerce mobile app, you should pass it through user testing. Collect feedback from users who use your e-commerce app. This will give you a better idea about whether the users are liking your e-commerce mobile app or hating it. More importantly, it will highlight weaknesses in your ecommerce mobile app and areas for improvement. This will make it easy for you to fix those issues.

• Improve the app

Following the iterative model to mobile app development means that you will be constantly improving your e-commerce app at each iteration. After multiple iterations, your app won’t have any issues left and is ready to deliver a seamless shopping experience your target customers want it to. Keep repeating the whole process and keep bringing continuous improvements until it reaches perfection. 

How Much Time Does It Take To Create an E-commerce App?

E-commerce apps can take anywhere from a month to six months to complete. According to a survey conducted by GoodFirms, 47.6% of e-commerce app development companies took 2-3 months to develop e-commerce apps while 38% of app development agencies needed 3-5 months to fully develop e-commerce mobile applications. Only 9.5% of app development companies took 1-1.5 months while a meager 4.6% took more than 6 months to develop ecommerce app.

What is the Cost to Make an E-commerce App?

E-commerce app development cost depends on a lot of different factors. Some of the factors affecting the cost of e-commerce app development.

• Type
• Platform
• Features
• Location
• Time

Once you have understood the different factors affecting e-commerce app development cost, now let’s look at the average cost of e-commerce app development. A survey conducted by GoodFirm revealed the following findings:

• 43.75% of e-commerce mobile app development companies charged anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000
• 25% of e-commerce app development companies charged their clients $4000 to $8000
• 25%of e-commerce app development companies charged businesses $20,000 to $30,000 for an e-commerce mobile app.

Are you looking for an e-commerce app development company that can give you the best e-commerce app? If yes, then look no further than Branex.