What does it take to develop a shopping app like amazon or even better?

Today we are going to review the success of the world’s largest retailer, Amazon, and find out how you can create a shopping app that will make your sales soar.

With the advancement of technology, we have seen a drastic shift from offline shopping to developing eCommerce market applications in recent years. In 2019, global online sales reached $ 3.5 trillion (18.5% more than the previous year). That number is set to grow to $ 6.5 trillion by 2023.

These days, customers don’t need bags, shopping carts, or shopping malls. They can order everything online without leaving the safety of their homes, just by clicking.

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index 2020, online shopping is by far the most satisfying way to buy purchases (especially during the pandemic). While traditional stores were closed due to the lockdown, online stores with eCommerce apps experienced record-breaking traffic.

Since more and more people use phones and tablets during quarantine, a great mobile experience is necessary to make money from online sales.

Source: merchantsavvy.co.uk

So the question is, what does it take to develop a shopping app like Amazon that will attract many customers and keep them coming back time and time again.

We will look at every step in online shopping app development and discuss the intricacies of creating a top shopping app. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Shopping App Market Research

Almost every software development company begins its work by identifying customer needs and requirements. It would be best if you had a clear understanding of what you want to sell online through an application.

Once you’ve decided what to sell and who to serve, research your market, take a look at the services and applications that sell the same type of your products. This will help you understand which features are essential for your niche.

Let’s have a look at Amazon, the industry leader in both sales and customer satisfaction index. The company grew into an online bookstore and quickly became one of the most successful startups in the field.

In just 27 months of its inception, Amazon served one million customers, a number that doubled over the next six months. The company survived the dot-com bubble and became the e-commerce giant we know today. What made Amazon such a successful internet retailer?

[su_highlight background=”#fddcce”]The critical factor that helped Amazon win the hearts and minds of its customers was an easy-to-use interface.[/su_highlight]

Amazon had a powerful search engine and numerous lists and categories to help customers make their decision. It also had a referral center where customers could do this. Choose books based on your mood, preferences, reading history, etc. The application had the option of a gift package, customer reviews, and an automatic notification system.

Essential Features for your Shopping App

It’s time to define the scope of your project. Suppose you plan to develop a mobile application like Amazon for your business. In that case, you need to know about the essential features your application should include, such as meetings, push notifications, live chat, etc.

Don’t just create an Amazon clone; let’s strive for an extraordinary shopping experience.

Since the eCommerce industry is very competitive, you should launch your application as soon as possible. Based on the core functions, start with the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to provide a user-friendly experience in a few months and improve it in the next iterations.

The faster you build a shopping app, the more time you’ll have to improve based on user feedback, create valuable content, interact with customers, and market your app.

So what features should you choose for an MVP app?

Customer Login:

Allow customers to browse your store as guests without having to enter tons of personal information. Offer additional registration options, for example, via email, Facebook and Google.

Product Search:

It should be lightning fast. Add lots of filters and high-quality indexing to help users quickly find what they are looking for in your app. You can also add auto-completion, spelling corrections, root word recognition, and auto-suggestion to speed things up.

User Reviews:

This simple feature can increase your sales by 18%. E-market research shows that customers trust reviews almost 12 times more than product descriptions. The more reviews, the better. Encourage customers to rate and rate purchased items (e.g., email a questionnaire or notify buyers directly through the app). Allow users to switch between the most helpful, latest, positive, and negative reviews.

Smooth Checkout:

Online shopping app users fill their shopping carts with the items they like, but statistics show that up to 87% of shopping carts are abandoned on mobile. There are many reasons for that. Customers are looking for free shipping options because shipping costs can terrify them. The slowness of the application process and the lack of various payment options can also influence their decisions.

So, to increase sales, you can:

• Add a guest checkout: ​We’re all looking for quick and easy ways to shop. Adding a required login or creating an account can prevent people from buying or using your app. At the top 100 mobile phone retailers, the guest checkout generates 13% more sales than registered customers.

• Display the progress of the payment: Show users how many steps to take before taking action. Customers are more patient when they know precisely how long to stay in your business.
• Make payment as easy as possible: Do not confuse customers with unnecessary questions and decisions. Direct registered users straight to the order summary screen without confirming credit card or shipping information.

A reliable and secure payment gateway

It’s the easiest and safest way to accept payments online. When a user makes a purchase, a payment gateway collects their credit card information, verifies it, sends that information to their bank, and transfers money.

As this process contains sensitive information, your payment gateway needs to be 100% secure and reliable. Only use systems that are reputable and comply with payment industry standards, such as PCI DSS.

Based on our experience, InApps can recommend PayPal and Stripe. After extensively using both gateways, we had no significant problems. And don’t forget to close multiple payment options like Google Pay, Amazon Pay and Apple Pay to increase your sales.

Shipping 

One of the reasons for Amazon’s success is having a network of warehouses for quick delivery. Most users now expect ultra-fast shipping that is free or very cheap, so stay tuned.

There are many shipping APIs that you can integrate with your eCommerce application to deploy faster and cheaper shipping.

To make the experience as smooth as possible, please indicate the delivery time and price on the product page. Make your submission forms as user-friendly as possible. Allow multiple input formats and ensure that input fields are not covered by your user interface elements (e.g., keyboard).

Recommendation Engine

One more reason for Amazon’s popularity was its system of recommending products based on user preferences and behavioral data, which generates up to 35% of conversions. According to a Forrester study, more than 15% of shoppers admit buying recommended products. Add a personal touch that will increase user engagement, open up cross-selling opportunities and ultimately increase your bottom line.

Recommendations are most effective when displayed on your home screen, on product pages, and in the shopping cart. However, you can also email specific discounts to people who searched for specific product categories.

Implement an appealing Design for your shopping app

Professional design is another powerful tool for attracting customers. Most users form their opinion about online shops solely based on visual elements. And while the basic templates are fine for an MVP, the professional design will help you increase the application’s popularity and brand awareness.

Here are some essential tips for a restarted application. Design a well-defined logo. This is the first thing a potential customer will see before deciding to use your app. You’ll never get a chance to make a first impression again, so don’t do it. Make your products outstanding. Users remember the information they see about 80% and only 20% of what they read.

Tips to make your pictures stand out:

• Use a white background.
• Have quality pictures made from every angle.
• Show off large photos to grab viewers’ attention.
• Enable the option to zoom in smoothly.

You can also use short videos showing the products, a proven strategy to get more attention than even the best of photos. And remember that your design should highlight any available product information, including photos, descriptions, in-store availability, color choices, size, etc.

Choose a Platform for your shopping app

iOS devices are most popular in North America and Europe, while other parts of the world prefer Android to explore their market, the best platforms for their target group can determine.

The standard practice is to create an iOS shopping app first. Then migrate it to Android as iOS users are willing to pay more than their Android counterparts.

From a developer’s point of view, iOS development is more convenient and time-consuming as you only need to optimize for the latest two versions of the devices and the Apple operating system.

Android has to be optimized for various devices and screen resolutions, which take longer to develop.

Of course, you can save time and money by supporting only the most popular Android devices. The platform’s dominance in fast-growing markets like China means you should consider developing a shopping app for Android.

Also, you can get the best of both worlds with a cross-platform application.

With technologies like React Native, developers can reuse up to 95% of the code between iOS and Android, resulting in an app that looks, behaves, and works like its native counterparts.

By building a cross-platform application, you can reduce time to market and save money on development.

Native apps are exposed to tough competition in app stores and suffer from poor findability. In addition, finding an app, downloading it, accepting all permissions, and installing it on your phone will hinder acceptance.

Take Care of Product Growth and Support

Now that you’ve successfully launched your app, it’s time to improve your product. This phase includes collecting user feedback, doing additional research, and deciding which features to implement in the next development cycle. So this is what you need to focus on after starting an MVP.

Speed up your app

In 2012, Amazon calculated that each additional second of loading time would cost $ 1.6 billion, or 1% of annual sales. The latest data shows that every additional second can reduce your sales by 7%. This speed is more important if you are loading the application from home: screen, product page, and payment.

At some point, when something goes wrong, you’ll have to deal with unsatisfied customers. Many users prefer to communicate their frustration without leaving an application or make phone calls, so a page for complaints and suggestions is required. It is also recommended to have comprehensive, frequently asked questions, a list of contacts, and a staff ready to support complaints from users 24/7.

You can make your customer service more efficient by creating a specialized chatbot.

Business Insider states that customer support bots could save US businesses nearly $ 23 billion annually. These AI-powered programs are available around the clock, have almost instant response times, and can process hundreds of requests simultaneously. You can even take a page from the eBay book and use a bot to order products.

Promote your app

Many online shopping apps fail because they underestimate the importance of early marketing. You should spend at least twice as much time marketing an application as you spend developing it.

The first thing to do to promote your application makes it visible on the App Store. Some of the optimization techniques make users 210 times more likely to download your app.

And do not ignore social networks. Facebook and Twitter are now compulsory to promote the application of their online shop. Watch customers directly offer loyalty and discount programs. Do not always try to sell products because they can deactivate potential customers.

Instead, start a blog, and balance the content to be at least 50% and 50% promotional.

Wrapping Up

We hope this article is exactly what you are looking for.

Once you identify your niche and target audience, you can follow this 5-step guide to make an outstanding online shopping app. These tips will help you whether you want to hire a team of professionals or do all of the work yourself.

We want to stress one last tip: keep improving your app day by day. By exploring new business opportunities and listening to user feedback, you’ll know how to create a shopping app that attracts your user’s attention.

If you need any technical advice or a team of experts to develop your app, you can always trust InApps. Just drop us a line.