Business is gradually transitioning into the mobile first world. Today, people spend more time and money than ever to shop online using their mobile devices. Many businesses have successfully emerged with their E-Commerce systems selling all kinds of products to users, and there will be many more to come in the near future.
However, the truth is that it’s not easy to become a successful one. Similar to any brick and mortar business, in order to become successful with E-commerce, you need to be able to acquire and retain customers by offering the best online shopping experience possible.
One of the key requirements is to create a pleasant online shopping experience is to connect with your customers at all the E-commerce touchpoints (e.g. website and mobile app) and provide them with a pleasant shopping experience. Many businesses seem to have missed a huge opportunity by not (yet) tapping into the untouched market of e-commerce app. This could be due to the neglect of the app or not creating one in the first place. But, of course, it’s never too late to start.
In this article, we take a look at a number of things that are essential to successfully develop an e-commerce app, as follow:
- Great UI/UX:
One of the most important aspects when it comes to e-commerce mobile App development is great design. An intuitive design of your e-commerce store will be attractive and help customers to shop easily. This will enhance the shopping experience for customers. On the contrary, a complex design with too many menu buttons and text will make it difficult for customers to use the app, leading to app abandonment. Thus, a simple and clean design is the way to go.
Additionally, you should also try to use beautiful and quality images to showcase your products/services catalogue. It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, looking through those attractive photos will make it easier and more fun for your customers to browse your products. So, make sure that there is value communicated through those images and design so that your app can wholly engage with customers.
- Security:
In order to adequately operate an e-commerce store, customers need to be able to make payment directly via their mobile devices when check-out. In this case, users will be asked to provide sensitive information regarding their payment such as debit/credit card info, billing address etc.
Ensuring your e-commerce app is safe and can securely process digital transaction is of utmost importance. Thus, security measures need to be applied so that business transaction can be carried out securely and safely via your e-commerce app.
- Social Media Integration:
Billions of people world-wide are using social media every day to communicate and interact with their friends and acquaintances in their social networks. Business should take advantage of this by having a social media presence for their organizations to interact and engage with customers.
In addition to having a social media account for communication and branding, business can also use social media kit/integration to simplify and speed up the registration process required of users to use the e-commerce app. With the help of social media integration, users no longer have to spend time fill out registration form with too many questions. Besides, after finish shopping, customers can also share their shopping experience and products reviews directly through their social account which is a good way of promoting business brands and gaining interest from potential customers.
- Easy Checkout:
In addition to pricing and competition, one of the common reasons leading to high shopping cart abandonment rate is because of complex check-out process. Thus, you should try to design and make the check-out process of your app direct, and simple enough to help customers complete their order as quick and easy as possible.
With the rise of new mobile payments technologies, your e-commerce app should also provide users with new ways of making payment by incorporating new digital payments methods such as mobile e-wallet to provide users with a seamless payment experience.
- Geofencing:
Geofencing is the new technology which allow your e-commerce app to carry out location-based marketing by using GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, or 3G/4G etc. to identify users’ devices location. By leveraging this new technology, you can send out customized marketing messages in the form of mobile push notifications, text messages, alerts etc. whenever a users’ mobile device enter a virtual boundaries. For example, whenever a customer leaves your store, you can send mobile push notifications for promotional offers applied next time customers shopping at your store or via e-commerce app. This helps business to take advantage of real-time marketing to provide customers with a personalized shopping experience.
- Mobile Cloud Computing:
Mobile cloud computing uses cloud computing to deliver applications to mobile devices [1]. By taking advantage of mobile cloud computing, you can ensure that your app stands out from competitors by providing quality and high-level performance. This is due to cloud servers provide better response time and as a result, increase your app speed. Mobile cloud computing combines cloud computing and mobile to provide a pleasant app using experience to users.
A recommendation systems will enable your e-commerce app to automatically perform cross-sell and upsell, increasing overall revenue. A recommendation system analyze customers’ shopping behavior from data regarding their purchase history, then provide personalized suggestion. It recommends the list of additional products that are suitable and most likely to be purchased by users. An algorithm needs to be developed using machine learning to help the system learn about customers’ shopping preference and then recommend the related products.
- Gamification:
Gamification is applying game principles such as points, scores etc. for non-game environment like shopping and education. By incorporating Gamification in your e-commerce app, you can offer users fun experience playing mini-games to earn points which can be used and applied for deduction for subsequent shopping. These incentives such as rewards points, achievements help improve app engagement with your customers and make them coming back to use the app for future purchases.
- Notifications:
Last but not least, it’s worth mentioning that Mobile Push Notification is a great method to help retain and engage with customers, thereby increasing app retention rate. Read more about how to use notification for your e-commerce app here.
Honorable Mention:
10. Augmented Reality (AR)
A few years ago, Augmented Reality was more of a cool factor, now it’s actually becoming “Reality” and many e-commerce businesses have successfully adopted and incorporated this new technology into their application to enhance their brand experience. Customers will find it convenient and also a brand new amazing experience to be able to try the products (e.g. shoes, clothing etc.) without having to physically put them on. According to a statistics, 40% of consumers would be willing to spend more if on a product if it offers Augmented Reality [2]. Therefore, integrating AR into your app would provide a competitive advantage that would likely increase sales, and conversion rate for your e-commerce store.
End-note:
At TP&P Technology - Leading Vietnam Software Outsourcing Company, we have successfully developed many mobile applications across various domains fulfilling all specific business requirements by clients. Get in touch with us today to know more about our custom mobile app development service.
Reference:
- https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/what-is-mobile-cloud-computing
- http://www.retailperceptions.com/2016/10/the-impact-of-augmented-reality-on-retail/
