All these data  points towards an exponential growth in the e-commerce industry. With people spending more time online than offline and using their mobile devices to shop, businesses can take advantage of this opportunity by creating an e-commerce app for their business. Don’t know much about e-commerce app development? Don;’t worry because you have landed on the right article. In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about e-commerce app development.

App Development For E-commerce: The Complete Guide

What is E-commerce App Development?

Why Is E-commerce App Development Important?

What Are The Different Types of E-commerce Apps?

What are the Requirements of E-commerce App Development?

What are the Key Features of an E-commerce App?

What is the E-commerce App Development Process?

How Much Time Does It Take To Create an E-commerce App?

What is the Cost to Make an E-commerce App?

App Development For E-commerce: The Complete Guide

What is E-commerce App Development?

E-commerce app development is the process of developing mobile applications enabling businesses to sell their products online and deliver a great shopping experience for users who are using their mobile devices to shop online..

Why Is E-commerce App Development Important?

According to mobile commerce statistics, e-commerce apps have 14% higher conversion rates as compared to e-commerce mobile websites  Mobile shoppers make twice as much purchases on e-commerce shopping apps as compared to e-commerce mobile websites. E-commerce mobile apps will generate 53.9% of total e-commerce sales. Another research shows that 78% of users prefer to access an online store via a mobile app as compared to a mobile website. Here are some of the reasons why. 

What Are The Different Types of E-commerce Apps?

E-commerce apps can be broadly categorized into four different types:

• Business to Consumer (B2C)
• Business to Business (B2B)
• Consumer to Business (C2B)
• Consumer to Consumer (C2C)

What are the Requirements of E-commerce App Development?

Some of the basic e-commerce app development requirements include:

• User friendly storefront
• Product review and rating system
• Payment system
• Customer support
• Third party app integrations

What are the Key Features of an E-commerce App?

Here are some of the key features that every e-commerce app must have.

• Simple onboarding and signup process
• Search and filter options
• Comprehensive product information
• Shopping cart
• Convenient checkout process
• Order management and tracking
• Multiple payment methods

What is the E-commerce App Development Process?

Wondering how I can develop an e-commerce mobile app? Here is a step by step e-commerce app development process you must follow:

• Set clear goals
• Do your research
• Choose the platform
• Decide on the features
• Design the user interface and user experience
• Develop the e-commerce mobile app
• Test and collect feedback
• Improve the app

Let’s look at each step in more detail to give you a better idea about how it works.

• Set clear goals

First and foremost, ask yourself why you want to create an e-commerce mobile app for your business? What is the purpose behind it? During this phase, you should decide on who your target audience will be, how your e-commerce app will help solve their problems and what metrics you will be using to track success. With a clear goal in front of you, you are all set to move on to the next step of e-commerce app development.

• Do your research

During the research phase, you should identify who your competitors are and what strategies they are using. Study the shopping behavior and patterns of your target audience to know about their preferences. Conduct interviews from users on which features they value the most and which ones they don’t care about.

• Choose the platform

With goals and research phase out of the way, now is the time to choose the right platform. The decision could be highly influenced by your target audience and a host of different factors. Every platform has its pros and cons and you must understand it in order to make the right choice.

Moreover, you should also understand development tools, technologies, frameworks and programming languages. For instance, if you choose android as your preferred platform for e-commerce mobile app development, you will be working with Java programming language, Android Studio and SDK and JetPack Compose. On the contrary, if you opt to go the iOS route, you will be working with either Swift or Objective C programming languages, Swift UI framework for XCode development tool.

• Decide on the features

After looking at the competitors, collecting feedback from users, conducting research and choosing the right platform, you have reached a point where you have to decide on the features your e-commerce mobile app would contain. The number and complexity of those features will directly influence the cost of your mobile app. The more features your e-commerce mobile app contains and the more complex they are to develop, the higher will be the overall cost of your e-commerce mobile app.

• Design the user interface and user experience

Everything from choosing the colors, themes and different design elements for your e-commerce mobile app is done during this phase. Make sure that the design is simple and does not feel cluttered as it would overwhelm the shoppers and force them to abandon your app. Design the user interface of your e-commerce app in such a way that it can deliver an optimal shopping experience.

• Develop the e-commerce mobile app

Develop a basic version of your e-commerce app with bare minimum features instead of going all in. This will give you an opportunity to collect feedback and improve the app and saves you from costly and time consuming rework. Following the iterative development model will help you bring continuous improvements to your e-commerce mobile app and deliver a refined user experience.

• Test and collect feedback

Once you have a minimum viable product ready, it is time to pass it through rigorous testing. After smoothing out all the bugs and errors in your e-commerce mobile app, you should pass it through user testing. Collect feedback from users who use your e-commerce app. This will give you a better idea about whether the users are liking your e-commerce mobile app or hating it. More importantly, it will highlight weaknesses in your ecommerce mobile app and areas for improvement. This will make it easy for you to fix those issues.

• Improve the app

Following the iterative model to mobile app development means that you will be constantly improving your e-commerce app at each iteration. After multiple iterations, your app won’t have any issues left and is ready to deliver a seamless shopping experience your target customers want it to. Keep repeating the whole process and keep bringing continuous improvements until it reaches perfection. 

How Much Time Does It Take To Create an E-commerce App?

E-commerce apps can take anywhere from a month to six months to complete. According to a survey conducted by GoodFirms, 47.6% of e-commerce app development companies took 2-3 months to develop e-commerce apps while 38% of app development agencies needed 3-5 months to fully develop e-commerce mobile applications. Only 9.5% of app development companies took 1-1.5 months while a meager 4.6% took more than 6 months to develop ecommerce app.

What is the Cost to Make an E-commerce App?

E-commerce app development cost depends on a lot of different factors. Some of the factors affecting the cost of e-commerce app development.

• Type
• Platform
• Features
• Location
• Time

Once you have understood the different factors affecting e-commerce app development cost, now let’s look at the average cost of e-commerce app development. A survey conducted by GoodFirm revealed the following findings:

• 43.75% of e-commerce mobile app development companies charged anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000
• 25% of e-commerce app development companies charged their clients $4000 to $8000
• 25%of e-commerce app development companies charged businesses $20,000 to $30,000 for an e-commerce mobile app.

Are you looking for an e-commerce app development company that can give you the best e-commerce app? If yes, then look no further than Branex.

The post App Development For E-commerce: Everything You Need To Know appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

Being associated with Branex, a mobile app development company in Dubai, I got a chance to have a look at the new innovations and trends that are being fervently followed and adopted by enterprise apps developers. So, without further ado, I’ll get down to business and share how the enterprise app development scenario is transforming and what are the latest enterprise app development trends that will make an impact in 2017.

1. Security Will Be Top Priority

If you ask any app developer about their app development priorities and they will tell you security comes at the bottom. Due to this, more than 85% mobile apps are facing serious authentication, access control and confidentiality issues. This makes them more vulnerable to identity theft and cyber-attacks.
Thankfully, businesses will start to take app security more seriously in 2017 and make it their top priority to establish foolproof security for enterprise apps. Not only businesses, app developers will develop the apps with security in mind. The focus would be on identifying and fixing the loopholes that undermines security of the user.

2. Data Storage on the Cloud

We have all been hearing the term “Cloud computing” for a long time now. We will see its true applications in enterprise apps in 2017. In order to enhance accessibility, reduce cost and improve efficiency, businesses will harness the power of cloud app development. Businesses will not have to purchase additional hardware to run operations.
Businesses will use cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine and VMWare Cloud Foundry to develop, manage and deliver enterprise apps. It provides the flexibility businesses are looking for. With ready to use tools and fast development process, the future of cloud computing looks brighter than ever.

3. Rise of Hybrid Apps

The demand for enterprise apps will skyrocket in 2017. With billions of mobile devices, different screen sizes and multiple mobile platforms, the demand for cross platform and cross-functional apps will grow. Hybrid enterprise apps that can work on variety of mobile operating systems and deliver a native experience will come into its own in 2017. What’s more, businesses can develop hybrid apps quickly with fewer resources. This means that your hybrid enterprise apps will hit the market much quickly as compared to traditional enterprise applications.

4. Wait for Citizen Development Avalanche

Back in the day when the concept of enterprise applications was a novel idea, lack of coordination and synchronization among business units and IT departments was quite apparent, which resulted in app development delays. Today, the situation has completely transformed. Business units are following shadow IT processes with readymade apps, instead of depending on IT department to give them one.

The biggest drawback of this shadow IT application is that IT will not have any control over data and system. To overcome the issue, citizen development will pick up, where end users can build applications using shared services, fourth-generation language (4GL)-style development platforms and cloud computing services. With citizen development tools readily available, businesses can create an app without worrying about security vulnerabilities.

5. Reliance on Front-End Technologies Will Grow

We might see many enterprises ditch the client server architecture and model to make way for front-end technologies such as JQuery, Javascript and Angular JS takes center stage. You do not need to rely on high performance servers anymore. As front-end technologies evolved and web browsers become more capable, hybrid apps started using web browsers for storing data.
This resulted in a paradigm shift in the app development landscape. Tools like GitHub and programming languages and frameworks like Angularjs and JQuery are making it all possible. Extensive use of front-end technology in developing enterprise level apps will become the new norm.

Conclusion

There is no denying that the aforementioned enterprise app development trends will dominate in 2017. Enterprises riding on the waves of latest trends can take the first mover advantage and reap the benefits. If you know about any other app development trend that will dominate enterprise app development in 2017, feel free to share it with us in comments section below.

The post Enterprise App Development Trends to Watch Out For In 2017 appeared first on Branex Official Blog.