E-commerce App Development: A Detailed Guide

Today, people make a lot of different purchases online! The different COVID lockdowns gave the already growing e-commerce market a boom! You may think that the market is saturated, but market saturation actually depicts that there is a huge demand for e-commerce apps. If you are looking to start your own e-commerce business, this is the right time for it. You may need the help of an e-commerce app development company to get started. Since your app and website both should have better features than your competitors. Using technical help from a mobile app development company is a good step.

What is mobile commerce app?

Electronic commerce has existed for the past four decades. The shocking fact is that this idea did not get much support back then! Today, it is a lifesaver for so many consumers. E-commerce means trading goods in an online marketplace. In the past few years, the e-commerce industry has grown because of globalization, increasing demand, availability of different product varieties, etc.

At first, e-commerce started with online websites, but when smartphones became an aspect of a person’s daily life. Something known as mobile commerce became popular, which means buying products with the help of a mobile application. Today, there are many mobile applications other than just Amazon and eBay. If you are looking to enter the market, kindly ensure that you have the right e-commerce mobile app developer working for you. A mobile commerce app is an app developed for the sake of online shopping. People can purchase goods with the help of this app and get details about product delivery and shipping.

Reasons to develop an e-commerce app

If you are still having doubts about whether you should go into the market or not, here are a few reasons for you:

• Popularity of smartphones

We live in a world where everyone’s eyes are glued to the screen. This involves buying and selling things online. People sell things on Facebook too. There are billions of active smartphones, imagine how much money you could make if you provided a better user experience to even a fraction of the existing e-commerce customers. Providing a better customer experience will not be easy and that is why you should seek professional e-commerce app development services.

• Revenue growth

Smartphones are more than a piece of technology. Many e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart have proved that mobile phones can attract new customers which will diversify your revenue streams. If you don’t have a mobile app developer in your startup, you should consider using the services of a mobile app development company.

• Change in user behavior after COVID-19

Because of constant lockdowns during COVID-19, people relied on e-commerce to get essential goods. This caused a major boom in the e-commerce industry. While the pandemic is leaning towards an end, people’s mindset has not entirely changed. As many still work remotely and order essential goods online. Use an e-commerce app development company to launch your online store with a boom!

6 Essential features for your e-commerce app MVP

MVP means the minimum viable product, it will be the first product that you will test on users. Each MVP has 6 essential features which ensure it’s a success.

• Authorization
• User profile
• Search
• Filter
• Payment system
• Checkout process

When people are looking for a product online, you need to find a way to get them the result quickly instead of adding more filters. An MVP follows the must-have features that absolutely have to be in the app. If you are building an app like Shazam, you will just need that one-user button to test out the idea.

If you are building an e-commerce app, you will need the minimum set of features that lets users complete all the tasks and provides them with maximum value. An MVP is crucial for the success of your company because this is how you can trust your idea.

You should consider giving your business to an e-commerce app development company as they will be able to provide you with the best results. After the MVP is developed, it should be released, you should collect feedback, improve the features, get rid of the bugs, and add the suggested features. You may think you have the next groundbreaking idea, but in the app development world, you need to start somewhere.

The eight steps of building an e-commerce application

Even if you are just monitoring the process of app development. You should know the steps in which app development is completed. If you have outsourced the app development to a mobile app development company, you would need to ensure that they are following these steps:

• Research

The research stage for your e-commerce app development company has to be the top priority! Make sure that they are conducting research and interviewing users. This will help you and they understand the target audience’s behavior and patterns. If you want to gain the attention of your potential users, you should know them! You will also know the right app platform and features after you know the target audience.

• Set goals

Kindly ensure that the mobile app development company has goals for your app. If they have set the goals for your app, then you can set business goals:

• What problems am I trying to solve?
• Who am I selling the product to?
• How do I measure the success of the product?
• Choose the right platform

You should know the business plan, process, motives, and objectives before you choose a platform for app development. You should focus on aspects like development cost, inventory, selecting a CMS, database, and a scalable framework.

With all this information, it will be easier to decide whether you want to launch your app on iOS, android, or both. You can ask for advice from the e-commerce app development company, but at the end of the day, you have to focus on your business objectives.

To develop an application, you need a tech stack that includes:

• The frontend interface of the app
• Back-end processes
• Development
• Support for technologies that enable the app’s security
• Outline the features you want in the app

In this stage of development, you will already have the user feedback, opinion, trends, and pain point of your customers. This knowledge alone should help you in creating a list of features that you want in your app.

You will more likely be successful if the set of features provides a new user experience. To be successful, you don’t have to think of a great idea first. You can just add better features to your app which will make the users download your app.

You can brainstorm with the mobile app development company about the features that can help you gain customers as they probably have a lot of experience in the field.

• Create UI & UX design

When you are in the UI and UX design phase, this is the opportunity you have to make your app stand out. If you have a great UI and UX, you will be able to steal the customers of your competitors. The design is going to be the identity of your business.

So that, whenever someone looks at the same set of colors, they think about your online store. This design usually comes from the brand logo and it has to be integrated into the mobile app.

• Build an MVP

The best thing you can do for your online store launches it with the minimum set of features and gather customer feedback. This will give you an idea of where the customer mindset is right now. This way you can add suggested features and other features you think the customers will love in the final product. However, for all that you need an MVP with a necessary set of features. Try to outline the features that are absolutely essential for your product.

Try to develop an MVP with the smoothest features, launch it in the market, receive feedback, gain insight, and continue development. This is a cycle that keeps repeating itself when you have a mobile app. Even when the full product is out, your app may have bugs or the customer may have insights into what you can do better. When they do, you have to update the app with better code which will provide it with better features. MVPs help cut development time and reduce risks for businesses.

• Gather feedback

When you release your MVP, you must be excited but hold that excitement because then it is time to study customer feedback. You have to study how the customer interacted with your app to understand features that can be edited or a need for any new features. At this stage, you have to find elements in the app that can be improved. If the feedback for your MVP is not ideal, do not worry as you can always add better features and customers will notice it. However, the key is to release updates quickly. Because otherwise, customers will stray away from your app.

• Iterate

The design and development of an app is never a one-time thing it keeps evolving with time. Why? Because customer behavior changes with time and new technology will keep disrupting the market. When you are handling an app, you should know it is a constant battle to evolve with better features. You either evolve or leave your business to die out. There is no middle ground! So, only start the business if you are serious about it and have the funds. Because, if you leave it in the process, you are not gonna be able to succeed.

Focus on these three elements while developing an e-commerce app

No market in the world is entirely free, even in the mobile app development world, there are some rules which you need to follow. Here are a few things you should consider while developing an e-commerce app:

• Data Security

Users give you a lot of their information when they sign into your e-commerce app. This set of data includes name, address, financial credentials, phone number, etc. Most customers are happy to provide this information as they trust you. However, you should take all the steps to ensure that they never lose this trust. You should take different steps to ensure a data breach never happens.

• Scalability

Your app needs to be set in the present, but you also need to think of the future. The app should be able to adjust as the number of users increase. You have to forecast the growth of your app in the beginning and develop its architecture with regard to that.

• Stability

Constant crashes can annoy users as they think that the problem is at their end. Users do not like to use an app that constantly crashes and performs without consistency.

To ensure that your app is stable, you should run quality assurance tests, ensure that you have enough data space in the cloud, get user feedback, and release updates that fix existing problems.

Q1 How much does it cost to develop an e-commerce mobile app?

Depending on the number of features, you can develop an e-commerce app with a budget of $80k to $150k. If you choose to add additional elements, the cost can go up too. You can lower the cost if you know to code or if you have a developer partner.

Q2 How long does it take to develop an e-commerce app?

The actual time that goes into the development of the e-commerce app depends on the project objectives. Creating the MVP may take around three to four months. Developing it further into a full-fledged app with increased complexity takes around seven additional months. Further development is inevitable. So, you can have your e-commerce app within a year. The development process never really ends once the app is in the market because you need to evolve.

Q3 How to develop an e-commerce app?

You can develop an e-commerce app by following these critical steps:

Research
Setting goals
Choosing the right platform
Choosing a feature set
Developing UI & UX design
Build an MVP
Collect feedback
Keep iterating constantly