In the past few years, the eCommerce industry has undergone a considerable transformation. The pandemic-induced surge in online shopping has been one of the key driving forces behind the market. Data.ai has reported that in 2021, users spent a record 100 billion hours using shopping applications, with a year-over-year rise of 18%.
In this blog post, you will find the eCommerce mobile app development guide. Let’s discuss the main characteristics and trends of eCommerce app development and the process of creating an eCommerce app at Orangesoft.
What is currently trending in mCommerce app development?
Right now, automation, immersiveness, and connectivity are the major trends in mCommerce app development. These technologies are being implemented in mobile shopping, resulting in various tech solutions. Automation allows for streamlined processes, immersiveness creates a more engaging experience, and connectivity opens up new possibilities for customers.
Augmented reality
By 2022, it is predicted that one-quarter of the US population will experience augmented reality (AR) at least once a month. Already, 35 million Americans are taking advantage of AR technology for their shopping needs. Popular examples of AR-based shopping solutions include IKEA Place, Amazon’s Room Decorator, and Sephora’s Virtual Artist. AR is a complementary technology to virtual reality, as it provides an immersive experience by overlaying digital images onto the physical world. This allows shoppers to try on a product virtually before purchasing it.
Big Data
The majority of B2C businesses rely heavily on big data to gain useful insights into customer behavior, which can be used to enhance conversion rates. Through big data analytics, personalized recommendations, dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, and trend predictions can be made, giving retailers an edge in supply chain management and helping them to increase sales.
Geofencing
It is predicted that geofencing will be worth more than $3 billion by 2026. This technology uses either radio frequency identification (RFID) or the Global Positioning System (GPS) to send out in-app notifications to customers depending on their location. This method of geo-targeted advertising allows for more specific marketing messages and can increase local spending.
Livestream shopping
Real-time shopping is rapidly gaining momentum, and it is predicted that by 2024, this trend will be worth an estimated $35 billion. This trend originated in China, but it has now gone global. Live shopping app users can shop in real-time while watching a live event or stream. This type of shopping offers enhanced interactivity, as users can comment and react to the stream in real-time. Brands can host live events either on dedicated platforms such as TalkShopLive, or they can integrate shopping capabilities into their mobile apps or websites.
Chatbots
The use of virtual assistants has become commonplace in the retail industry, enabled by natural language processing. Chatbots can help customers throughout their journey, leading to faster customer support and less effort. Artificial intelligence and machine learning provide bots with the capability to quickly gain data on customers, allowing them to anticipate needs and provide a personalised shopping experience. Chatbots also bring convenience, customisation, and 24/7 availability to online shoppers. By 2024, consumer retail spending through the use of chatbots is estimated to reach $142 billion, an increase from $2.8 billion in 2019.
Voice assistants
In 2021, over 45 million US consumers utilized voice technology while shopping online. This increase in usage resulted in the global value of voice commerce transactions reaching approximately $5 billion. Voice interaction is advantageous not only to shoppers, but to retail staff too, as it allows for faster inventory management and search through a hands-free experience.
Compared to chatbots, voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri embrace speech recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis to communicate with users in a more interactive way. This trend is greatly evident in voice-enabled shopping applications that provide complex queries for better search results and conversational interactions, allowing users to purchase items with just their voices.
Omnichannel shopping experience
The pandemic has caused in-store limitations, leading to the omnichannel strategy becoming the top and center of retail practices. As a result, around 60 to 70% of US consumers research and purchase through both online and physical stores across categories. It is therefore logical to assume that in 2022, there should be seamless integration of mobile commerce app development as part of a unified customer experience, combining physical and online channels to engage shoppers.
Mobile applications have become a critical aspect of the entire shopping system, which encompasses brick-and-mortar experience, social channels, marketplaces, and other distribution channels. From a technical perspective, this means that mobile solutions must enable cross-channel buying through data-management capabilities, process integration, and branded UIs.
One-click purchasing
Years ago, Amazon was the first to introduce and patent the modern shopping cart, which eliminated the need to input billing and shipping information every time. This has now evolved into one-click purchasing, which allows users to enter their billing, shipping, and payment information just once, so they can continue shopping without re-entering the data.
After the patent expired in the fall of 2017, single-click checkout has become the standard for all retailers to reduce cart abandonment and promote convenience.
eCommerce Application Development Process
Define the niche
Start by selecting a particular field or sector for your application to focus on. This decision will guide you from the user experience to the industry, and will be foundational for all other aspects of the application.
Research competitors and target audience
To bring your digital asset to life, you must first define your vision. To do this, it is beneficial to analyze competitors, review customer feedback and determine the technologies, UX/UI designs, and revenue models that are suitable for your solution. Additionally, you should identify your main user by assessing your customer base, carrying out market research, and studying competitors. Your development team should then use this information to construct customer personas that match your target audience. At the end of these two stages, you will have created a checklist of app requirements and business objectives for the development process.
Gather a reliable team
Having a skilled, vetted team of mobile developers is an important part of the puzzle when creating a shopping solution from scratch. Typically, the team should include a business analyst, a project manager, iOS and Android developers, back-end developers, a quality assurance team, and UX/UI designers.
You have the option to hire software experts in-house, outsource to a vendor, or accept bids from freelancers, depending on your exact development needs. Generally, outsourcing offers the best value for money while still ensuring high quality, although freelancers can be a good choice for very defined tasks.
Shape the concept and define the feature set
At this stage, you and your development team will carefully shape your eCommerce app idea. Business analysts will assess the business needs and objectives, while tech professionals will determine the best combination of technologies to realize the vision. The outcome will be the core features necessary to make your minimum viable product (MVP) a success. Additional features which are not essential to the MVP will be added closer to the end of the development cycle.
Design compelling UI/UX
UI/UX developers will use the user persona to design a layout for your application that facilitates the customer journey. As a baseline, mobile UX design will be used and added to with certain must-have elements to ensure that the eCommerce app experience is both usable and convenient, as well as consistent.
Choose the development approach
At Orangesoft, we utilize the Agile methodology for mobile development. This approach outlines how our software project will be managed and guides us at every stage, from feature selection to release speed to testing cycles.
Develop and test MVP
Once your technical and business decisions have been made and verified, it is time to bring the documentation to life. Your mobile team should begin by constructing a basic product. A minimum viable product should consist of the essential components that are necessary for users to trial your mobile solution.
Improve and support your eCommerce mobile app
Your mobile development team uses user insights to create an optimal solution and add nice-to-have features. Once the application is finished, it is released on the app store. It is important to keep up with regular updates and maintenance, to ensure that your digital product is always functioning optimally, no matter how much traffic it receives or how many platform versions are released.
Unlock the Power of mCommerce
Now is the time to make the most of the mobile retail revolution. With the surge in the number of smartphone users and the ease of on-the-go shopping, the potential for mCommerce is huge. Global stores and small businesses alike have already started to take advantage of this growing trend, so don’t be left behind. Reach out to us today, and let’s create a successful mobile shopping app for your customers.