eCommerce App Development is booming in popularity in the recent time. The pandemic was a catalyst that boosted the already uprising trend, most businesses have completely or partially started offering their services online. And having an online store is in the to-do list of most start-ups these days.
So let us look at how we can develop and app that best fits the needs of an eCommerce business.
As per research by Ashwin Ramasamy there are between 2 million and 3 million e-commerce companies in the world. Which is a huge number of online stores, and if you want to learn how to stand out as an eCommerce brand, do explore other articles, this one will be all about developing a cross platform eCommerce app what are the perks of going cross platform for the development.
What’s App Development?
App Development is the whole process of building an application for various platforms such as mobile, desktop and web. During the App Development process first we look into what the customer needs are, then the business needs and goals as well as what’s the best way to develop it.
For eCommerce App Development, that’s a huge checklist as it has to make the customer journey pleasant as well as the app is able to handle handle the purchases, shipment, traffic and everything else in between.
That’s what this article is all about! A complete guide on eCommerce App Development and the best practices along with what works best for you.
App development in it’s bare skeletal form comprises of three things in general.
- Front end App Development – The front end that the user interacts with
- Back end App Development – The back end that does all the heavy lifting and process with database
- Data Base – The data base that stores and receives data, and the back end decides what data to be stored and processed and delivers the front end user.
To learn more in-depth about app development do explore this article on app developemnt.
When it comes to an eCommerce business, it’s lot more than just that for sure!
Here is our comprehensive checklist for eCommerce app development.
- App development Cost
- App Development Duration
- Functionality and features
- Customization capability of the app
- Scalability and multi-platform support
- Speed and size, is it fast? Is it lightweight?
- Update cycle and debugging cost and duration
And it’s always the best practice to evaluate the pros and cons and choose one that is best for you, one that is more cost effective and trims the development duration. That’s what you should be aiming for when it come so eCommerce App Development.
Best practices for app development
It is always best to go for a App Development cycle that is easy to work with and doesn’t hurt the business’ R&D cost and time. As a matter of fact when it comes to eCommerce app development one thing to consider will be the series of constant updates as new product ranges are added, seasons change and when there are new trends in the industry. And users love it when the App is fresh and constantly updating as per trends and their interests. So choosing a solution that is easy to customize across each platform is something that can really help the business in the long run.
Another pro tip will be to add cutting edge features such as psychographic marketing which aid in personalized experience for each individual users which is something that is really overlooked when developing eCommerce apps.
What is psychographic marketing and research?
It’s the process of understanding what the user wants from their behavior and using the data to give the user a personalized user experience. Of course psychograpgh was just an example and there are many not so often thought about features like this that can make or break the experience.
Adding features like these can really improve the user experience as well as aid marketing efforts. Do consider features such as these instead of making another generic app so that the people love your brand. To find out latest trends you can always ping us to know new in the field.
With that said, ensure the solution is packed with features as well as easy to work with so adding the features we missed can be a breeze.
Here are the streamlined best practices for app development
- Minimum Cost
- Minimum Duration
- Loaded with Functionality and features
- Fast and lightweight
- Easy to debug and add features and update
- An app for each platform – Mobile(iOS & Android), web and desktop(Windows & Mac)
Taking all this to account it’s best to go for one that ticks all the boxes and the pros out weigh the cons. That is invest in a solution that is both easy to customize across platforms as well as cost effective.
Let’s looks at the options we have –
- Hybrid App
- Cross platform App
- Native App
Now let us look at the difference between each!
Cross platform app development vs native vs hybrid
Cross platform as the name suggests facilitates code reusability for multiple platforms using frameworks to achieve this while native apps doesn’t facilitate this as the codes are unique to the platforms and finally hybrid apps are just websites made to work as apps.
Choosing each platform comes with it’s own upsides and downsides
So if we were to go for eCommerce App Development less look at what would work best for us.
As you can see for eCommerce cross platform App is the best way to go if we consider as it has significantly better development process as well as offers almost a native experience and doesn’t have the cons that come with hybrid apps.
Why to choose Cross platform App for eCommerce?
- Easier to build apps across platform compared to native
- Less time needed to make app go public
- Easier to Debug and Update across platforms than native
- Better code re-usability
- near native experience compared to hybrid apps
- Don’t need separate team for each
- Better RIO due to less development cost compared to native
- BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!
App development of Cross platform App is also way more favorable when given the time to develop as we don’t need need separate team and development process for each platform, which also translates to better cost cutting in the App’s Development phase.
If we go the native route for eCommerce App Development it’s significantly going to eat more time as well as money for a marginally less benefit that going for Cross platform App Development.
A Cross platform App developed on a framework such as Xamarin.Forms by Microsoft can significantly help your development cost and save you time, and comes with all the goodies we mentioned & will be able to build apps for multiple platforms easily and more effectively. Which is a way better route to go than to to go for native or hybrid as this is what we can call a Best of Both Worlds.
Why to Choose Xamarin.Froms over other frameworks?
- It’s Simple and Convenient – Shorter time needed to develop, standardized UI
- Flexibility – Open Source and Cross Platform libraries
- Performance – Near native level of performance
- Availability – Offline mode / Reduced lag
- Scalability – Easy to add features and grow
- Support – benefits of Azure cloud + better debugging
- Security – Azure cloud security benefits
- API Integration – Easier to integrate APIs
These are some of the reasons for you to go with Xamarin.Forms, with is a framework by Microsoft the mostly uses .NET and C# as it’s primary coding languages.
And now let us look at some reasons to not use Xamarin.Forms as your framework
Why to Choose other frameworks over Xamarin.Froms?
- Larger File size
- Comparatively more time taken for front end / UI Development, limited customization
- Limitations in sharing codes outside of Xamarin.Forms
- Development cost compared to alternatives, yet significantly less than native
In our opinion, these aren’t much of a deal breaker when it comes to all the goodies the App Development Framework provides. And this is also why we suggest Xamarin.Forms as the go to framework for eCommerce App Development.
here are some alternative options to Xamarin.Forms if you are looking for them, we will list some of the most popular alternatives here.
Popular alternatives to Xamarin.Forms
- Flutter
- React Native
- Ionic
These are some very popular alternatives to Xarmin.Forms which do come with their own sets of pros and cons. So do decide depending on what your objectives are with the app. As for our suggestion Xarmin.Forms is the way to go for eCommerce App Development.
Now that we have decided it’s best to go with Cross platform App Development, let’s look at what else we need to look into when developing an eCommerce app.
As you have already guessed, it’s too much functionalities and if we were to make separate native apps for each, it would defeat the idea of cost & time which we discussed above.
How eCommerce app works, development POV
As we discussed there will be a frond end, back end and a database, let’s take a deeper dive and a through look and who it’s done. Starting with, checklist!
eCommerce App Development Checklist-
- Looks and feel(UI)
- Categories list
- Filters
- Load Speed
- Sort by – New/Trending, Cost, etc
- Register/Log In
- eMail Verification
- payment Page
- Checkout page
- Customized listings and results
- Products page – Title + Description/ Types
- Shipping + API for availability check
- Support + Contact page
- Policies Page
- Sharing buttons
- Referral System
- Rewards System
- Offers
- Most importantly – Admin Panel
As you can see, it’s a huge checklist to meet for a basic modern eCommerce website. And developing and app with all these features is important as it is all that the users are looking for in an eCommerce website. Which makes eCommerce App Development a handful and time consuming.
Since it is time consuming by itself, makes it the primary reason we suggest Cross platform as it significantly cuts on the valuable development time and the developers can focus on what matters such as adding functionality and user experience.
how to make eCommerce app
It starts with analyzing what the needs are and what features you need, then choosing the platform you wish to develop the a app on. And then finally the build phase, then the beta testing phase where you thoroughly test the app before making it go public.
We won’t be talking about the branding and marketing aspects here obviously as it is a topic for another day. But we have discussed already almost 90%+ of what you will need to get started with developing one.
And yes, if you don’t have a team to develop it by your self you can always hire an app agency to do the heavy lifting for you.
As the apps functionality and reliability is a huge part of user experience and customer satisfaction, we suggest you not to go lousy on it, and actually consider and hire an app agency to do it for you
