Global markets have bridged the boundaries between trade and communication like never before. With the advent of eCommerce, the internet is transformed into a huge marketplace. Ecommerce businesses are making waves at present and everyday lot of new ecommerce companies are getting launched.
The first rule of an eCommerce business is to retain their customers by giving them a good buying experience by connecting with them at every touchpoint. The two main touchpoints in eCommerce business are mobile and website. With the rise in smartphones, the preference of users has shifted to do shopping online through a mobile app instead of a eCommerce website. Many businesses make the mistake of neglecting their app or not making one in the first place.
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Let us look at some eCommerce mobile stats now:
- 125 Million U.S. consumers have smartphones
- 50 million U.S. Consumers have tablets
- 62% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months
- One third of all eCommerce purchases during the 2015 holiday season was made on a smartphone.
- eCommerce dollars account for 10% of all retail revenue
- 80% of shoppers used a mobile phone inside of a physical store to either look up product reviews, compare prices or find alternative store locations
Indispensable Features in any eCommerce App:
1. Intuitive Design:
The design of your eCommerce store plays a key role in how buyers perceive your app. Users have a very short attention span of less than 8 seconds. So it becomes all the more important to keep your user glued to your mobile app screen with the app not appearing too much complicated. Creating a very complicated design with lots of animations and text in the hope of enticing the user will always backfire. Simplicity is the best option.
2. Security:
Security is an essential part of ecommerce mobile app development. We ask for a lot of information from the user when they visit our eCommerce site. Some of this information also includes bank account details, credit/debit card info, address, etc. We have to ensure that our app is safe and secure to use and there are no security loopholes.
3. Great Images:
Studies show that visual information can be processed 60,000 times faster than text. In case of eCommerce, our images communicate our brand and product. So don’t try to use cheap quality images of your products. Make sure that your brand value is well communicated through your images.
4. Social Media Integration:
Your ecommerce app must be integrated with social media sites. This allows the users to directly connect with your app through their social media profile, without having to fill in registration forms. Additionally, you can enable the users to share their experience of purchase on social media which can help you gain a good following and word of mouth publicity.
5 . Simple Navigation
When you build an eCommerce mobile app, the most vital thing to consider is the content and screen size. The display screens of mobile phones have limited space, so you need to ensure that your app and its content do not appear crowded on the screen. So a very simple and neat layout should be developed which should deliver seamless navigation and display your products in the most impressive manner. A responsive design is the best solution, which automatically fits into any screen size and resolutions.
6. Google Analytics
The main objective of an eCommerce mobile app is to earn revenues. Therefore, your app should include analytics which helps to understand consumer behavior and buying pattern. Google Analytics for Mobile Apps measures your app’s full value. Session time, cost of conversion, click-through rate, and accessing custom fields, all provide information about consumer behavior, leading to higher revenue.
7. Push Notifications
Push Notifications have proved to be very successful for mobile apps. They tend to show users marketing content like exclusive promotions, special offers, and new product launches and inspire them to take actions based on that. This feature can be paired up with analytics to boost up your sales.
8. All payment options supported
Sometimes it happens that a buyer has a strong wish to buy a product from a specific mobile app but unable to do so as he doesn’t find the payment option he wants. This may result in loss of sales. Try to put all payment options on your mobile app.
7. Relevant App Content
The content of your app should be concise and to the point. Your app should not overdose your customers with lot of marketing related information. Generally customers prefer crisp information that is relevant and convincing.
9.Easy Checkout
A lot of people abandon the cart during the checkout process. This could be due to a lot of reasons like pricing issues, competition, search for better alternatives etc. With a complicated checkout process, your customers will get another reason to abandon your cart. So,keep the checkout process simple and direct. Also, you should ensure that you give all sorts of alternatives that a user might want for closing a transaction on the checkout page.
Popular Ecommerce Apps examples:
1. Amazon
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1. Amazon – the leading online eCommerce site, which provides an excellent shopping experience to their users. The app is lighter and faster, and allows you to search and filter a wide range of products on various parameters with just a couple of clicks.
It provides multiple payment gateway options for easy checkouts. You get a complete update on your order status by every minute. It gives you the option to shop without registration and alternatively you may register at the end of the checkout process, only with your phone number or email id.
2. eBay
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Online bidding is possible through eBay mobile app and people across the globe have taken advantage of this. The app provides search options which enhances the buying and selling experience.
The app includes features like barcode scanning for price comparisons, autocomplete searches, guest checkouts, linking of Paypal accounts with eBay accounts for quicker transactions and many more.
eBay app gives alerts about the latest auctions, time left in the auction and the bid status.
Conclusion
An eCommerce mobile app should provide a complete and unique user experience that makes online shopping a simple and fun activity. It should also include features that drive sales and boost revenues for your business. Already mobile apps are preferred over mobile websites.Thus they have very bigger opportunities, they can leverage on, in future.