How Online Shopping Apps Can Boost Sales?
Have you ever wondered how Amazon and AliExpress managed to become a craze and conquer an endless population around the globe? Or how Shein and ASOS multiplied their ROI on online sales?
With the rise of e-commerce app development, the secret is pretty simple and lies on the surface—they all have amazing online shopping apps that boast overall convenience, starting from the first glance at the product and ending with the signup of a loyalty card.
Their clients can dive into shopping therapy and hold shopping marathons wherever they are—on the couch, on their way to work, or even while waiting in line at the grocery store.
But how to create a shopping app so that it, if not overtake Amazon, at least comes a little closer to it? Today, we’ll lift the veil of secrecy and tell you how to refresh an application if you already have one.
Persuasive Statistics Demonstrating That Apps Do Work
In the last quarter, the total value of buyer spending on mobile apps worldwide was almost US$35 billion, which conveys a growth of almost 5% compared to the corresponding quarter in 2023.
Mobile shopping has been on the rise from 2019 to 2024, with COVID giving it a boost. Just last year, people spent over $171 billion on apps, and mobile e-commerce platforms use is expected to jump from 43% in 2018 to 63% by 2028!
As far as countries are concerned, retail sales from m-commerce in the United Kingdom, for example, are predicted to beat 100 billion pounds by 2025.
In France, buyers are getting closer and closer to the 150 billion euros mark every year purchasing online, and nearly half of that e-commerce revenue was spawned via mobile devices.
What’s an E-commerce App?
An e-commerce app is basically a mobile program that lets users browse, pick, and buy products right from their phones or tablets. They usually feature product listings, shopping carts, and payment gateways to make buying comfortable and safe.
Types of E-commerce Apps
Normally, you can meet different types of shopping apps, such as B2C (business-to-consumer), B2B (business-to-business), C2C (consumer-to-consumer), and C2B (consumer-to-business).
B2C apps (Amazon, Zalando), let businesses sell directly to shoppers. They often use personalized recommendations and special deals to motivate people to buy.
B2B apps, such as Alibaba and Salesforce, cover companies selling to other companies. They offer bulk pricing and help negotiate deals, which can lead to larger orders.
C2C apps (eBay, Etsy) connect everyday people so they can buy and sell items from each other.
Features of Online Shopping Apps
A good online shopping app must come packed with some features that would make shopping easy and fun for shoppers. Here are some examples:
Search and Filters
Filters and searches allow buyers to quickly dig for specific items based on brand, size, material, and price to narrow down their options.
Personalized Suggestions
Personalized suggestions examine buyers’ browsing history and present products that match their tastes and favorites.
Shopping Cart
Shopping carts collect items shoppers intend to buy and keep them so that they can review them later or make changes before checking out.
Secure Payment Gateways
Payment gateways offer various safe payment methods, such as credit cards, digital wallets, and pay-later options.
Order Tracking
Tracking mechanisms keep an eye on customer orders, providing real time updates, status, and estimated delivery time.
Push Notifications
These alerts let clients know about flash sales, special offers, and new products to keep customers engaged.
Wishlist
Wishlists save items people loved and allow them to return to these products later without having to search again.
5 Tactics for Multiplying Sales via Shopping Apps (For Those Who Already Have Them)
Personalization and Targeted Marketing
Want to stimulate your sales? Start with personalization. There’s no secret here. By tweaking your app’s proposals and promotions based on what users enjoy now and liked before, you can up your sales rates several times.
Today, lots of tech inventors offer numerous ways to implement personalization. It can be custom CRM systems, complex AI and ML algorithms, chatbots and virtual assistants, or even behavioral analytics platforms—it’s up to you to decide.
Need a good reference? Have a look at Netflix. It suggests videos and shows people might enjoy based on what they are already into.
Fix User Experience
If you want your buyers to leave a bunch of money in your store, make your online store app super easy and enjoyable to use, and you’ll see your sales grow.
Go through the entire journey that a buyer takes trying to spot any issues that might spoil their impressions.
This means making sure it’s easy to navigate, loads quickly, and looks adorable. The better the feelings about it, the more likely users will stick around and make buys.
Programs and Awards for Loyalty
Who doesn’t love perks? Adding a loyalty program to your app can really boost sales by keeping customers coming back. You can offer exclusive goodies to members, give discounts for spending more, or let customers rack up points with every purchase that they can trade in for rewards.
Re-Engagement
In the age of ever-present apps, it’s a huge must to never let your buyers forget about you. Push notifications are a great path to remind users about new products, special offers, or even abandoned carts.
Just make sure these notifications are non-obtrusive, relevant, and timely to get users back in the app.
Deep Analytics, Detailed Reports, and Data-based Strategies
The global economy falls and rises again, customer trends and habits change, and the market is replenished with new insatiable sellers. How to survive?
Plunge into your app’s records to understand what your users do and how you can refine it. To bump up your app’s revenue, just see how users are behaving and what they’re buying, then tweak your strategies.
Tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Google Analytics can help with that, but if they don’t quite fit, you can always create something custom just for you.
Common Pitfalls and How to Sidestep Them
When sales start to drop, sellers often panic and make hasty, chaotic changes to everything indiscriminately. When you’re working on reviving your app, it’s vital to pay attention to the following traps.
The first one is ignoring user feedback. If you overlook the thoughts your users share, you may miss out on free tips to make your software better.
Timely checking in on feedback and making modifications based on it can help if not increase sales, then at least return them to the previous level.
Don’t overlook app performance! If your app is slow or glitchy, users might get frustrated and delete it. Keep it running smoothly to keep customers happy and boost your revenue.
And don’t forget to update your app regularly! Invest a share of your revenue to keep your app fresh with updates, fix bugs, add new elements, etc.
Steps to Get Started (If You Still Don’t Have an App)
If you have reached this point without changing your mind and without being afraid of possible problems, now we will tell you how to construct an application that will allow your business to forge a stable income.
Realize your objectives when you begin work on your new retail app. Choose which flagship products to concentrate on initially and which products to provide as ancillary ones in order to raise an average bill.
Next, consider the features you would like to incorporate and the personalization engines you can afford to use to optimize your ads.
To see if your idea is worth pursuing, create an MVP. Once you’re ready to move forward, the next step is building the full shopping app. It’s a good idea to find skilled developers and designers who can help bring your vision to life.
Indeed, you can turn to freelancers (independent programmers), outsourcing development companies, or even hire a dedicated app development team.
Still, if your company is on the rise, the latter option will be beyond your means while freelancers are typically narrowly specialized and can’t provide full support.
The golden mean that can balance expenses and quality is an outsourcing mobile app development company that can take on all the development and just keep you updated on what’s going on.
