Years ago, when m-commerce was not in the trend, online business was done mostly through computers. However, the advancement of technology brought smart-phones into use and along with smart-phone usage came the increased use of e-commerce mobile apps. E-commerce includes many areas of trades like online shopping, online bill payments, bus ticket booking, hotel booking, hospital apps, schools apps, college, and education app and ordering food online app and much more.
For successful trading in e-commerce, proper marketing or publicity of the product is needed. Moreover, publicity of the app is also important. Here comes the importance of e-commerce app development. In order to catch the attention of the general people, your e-commerce mobile app needs to be designed and developed skillfully and should be given the appearance which would make the app look and feel better than other apps.
Here, let us discuss some of the important and vital points with seven simple questions which app developers should carefully abide by or keep in mind while developing and launching an e-commerce mobile app.
1. Will You Learn to Code? Simple, hire an eCommerce app development company:
You have a business plan but how do you develop that? It is not possible to learn to code and develop and hence it is better to hire an eCommerce app development company wherein you will get highly experienced and professional developers who will work on your application.
2. How Will You Test Your Idea to launch an eCommerce app?
Undoubtedly, you would be having the best business eCommerce application plan, but to test that before investing much of your capital, you need to check with Wordtracker or Google Keyword Planner to get estimated traffic while searching for your products. With the help of these tools, you will be able to compare the traffic estimates and you will also be able to find if there is any similarly priced product used for selling.
3. How Will You Determine Your Audience/Ideal User Persona?
To understand exactly what your audience requires, you need to understand their needs and troubles and hence need to create difference persona to understand them. ThePaulcan be used in any phase of development. Be it while prioritizing your product functionalities, creating UIs, user flows or while creating detailed wire frames.
4. How Will Your eCommerce App Stand Out and Provide Value Above What’s Already Available?
Did you know that there are around 2.2 million apps available in the Apple App store and around 2.8 million in the Google Play store? So, it's around 99% probability that your eCommerce application already exists but still, you can stand out and will provide value for it. Do not get dejected! Here is what you can do:
Better execution than the others: Use the weakness of the competitors’ applications and try to execute them in yours. Make those weaknesses your strengths to stand out.
Build the most superior product: Now that you are aware that the app is already available, you can build the most superior product which will help you to stand out from the others. Be a fast follower and overcome your competitors!
Already validated hence good demand: When you see that your idea of the app is already there in the store, that means two things: First, you need not spend on validation of your idea and secondly, there is a huge demand for it. Which is good. With the huge demand, e-commerce app development would be undoubtedly better.
5. How Will You Market/Grow Your User Base?
Customers are the lifeline of any business and hence you need to know the ways to grow your user base. Here are a few ways you can grow your market:
Increase options: Request small surveys before launching your business website. With these details and experience of the customers, you can work on improving it if needed.
Fresh content for your website: Always try to keep the content of your website fresh, updated, plagiarism-free and informative. Try to keep a blog section where the latest news and hot topics in the industry related to your business will be posted regularly.
Promote your business in social media: Since social media is in the boom, promoting your business will help you gather much of the user base. Provide value and have your consumers promote for you.
Excellent customer service: Providing excellent customer service is also of the utmost importance for the customers. With proper respect and appropriate action, each customer is sure to be happy and spread the word about your business.
6. How Will You Monetize Your eCommerce mobile App?
There are different ways by which you can monetize your e-commerce mobile app which will let you get business-ready with your eCommerce endeavor.
Affiliate marketing: With affiliate marketing, you can do cross-promotions for your products which will help you generate leads. This can be through mutual contracts based on benefits and models or can be through running campaigns.
In-app advertisements: In-app advertisements is considered as one of the most reliable monetizing endeavors irrespective the segment of e-commerce you are dealing with it.
Free coupons on purchase: This is a quite popular way to monetize your app. With free coupons, people are sure to use more of your application and make a purchase.
Reward points: Try providing reward points for each purchase they make on your app. And set up some giveaways or discount on the redemption of those reward points. It will encourage the customers to make more purchase on your app. 7. How Will You Test and Optimize Your eCommerce mobile App After It Is Launched? Testing and optimizing your eCommerce application after is it launched is a must so that you understand the loopholes in the app if any. Make sure that the application runs very smoothly, and the download is really quick. There is device emulator, or automated testing software, or the real device cloud which will help you in the testing and save your time as well as your hard-earned money. Test on every operating system and device to make sure it runs on every device. Once you have answered the aforementioned questions to yourself, you will get a clear knowledge of the processes involved in building a successful e-commerce mobile app. This will also help you to identify any weak points in your existing plan. Presently, e-commerce app development is evolving at an exponential rate. But you must be very careful with the ongoing trends to be among the top entrepreneurs in this market. Therefore, this blog will help you understand the important 7 vital components to launch your e-commerce mobile app.
Ravi Makhija
An entrepreneur, an IT professional. Tech geek. Founder & CEO at Guru Technolabs - Globally Trusted Web & Mobile App Development Company. Loves writing about new technologies and the latest trends in the IT field.