How to make a shopping app - Appy Pie

How to Make A Shopping App?

Originally Posted By Justine Healey  | June 13, 2014  | 5-min read
Abs on August 8, 2020  

Global online sales increased by 18.5% from 2019 and reached a whopping $3.5 trillion in 2020. By 2023, this figure is projected to skyrocket to $6.5 trillion. With such tremendous success, everyone wants a piece of the pie. In 2020, the American Customer Satisfaction Index claimed that by far shopping online is the most satisfying way to buy goods (especially during the pandemic). As the use of phones and tablets has surged, improving the mobile experience and creating free shopping apps have become a must for online sales. With e-Commerce and shopping apps experiencing record-breaking traffic, how does your app get noticed? Here’s all the ammunition you need in your arsenal to build a shopping app that will bring customers back, again and again. Before we learn how to create an app for online shopping, let’s first understand the reasons for their popularity.

Table of Content


Why Are Shopping Apps So Efficient?

Creating a free online shopping app will help your users to regularly make purchases and benefits your business in many ways like:

  • New Sales

    • Shopping apps will give your clients all the benefits of mobile collaboration. In no time, the first successful purchase leads to multiple purchases and turns a casual buyer into a regular customer.

  • Customer Loyalty

    • Your typical customer has a smartphone and is actively using it hence you must create a free eCommerce app to earn some brownie points? Apps can study user behavior and provide them with individual discounts, bonuses, or loyalty points to increase the loyalty factor.

  • Optimization of Internal Business Processes

    • If there’s a mobile app at hand, managing internal processes becomes so much easier. Building a shopping app brings in greater efficiency in managing the company while lowering the cost.

  • Expansion of Interaction with The Client

    • Your customers will love features like leaving a review, ‘early bird’ offers, and an invitation to a shopping event. A shopping app helps your business to engage the audience better.

  • Increased Sales and Growth of The Audience

    • Targeted push notifications and other built-in marketing features allow you to expand your customer base and improve the sales curve.

Building A Shopping App – the Process

So, you’ve decided to build a mobile app on your own. Good! Do you know how to make online shopping apps? The industry experts have spilled the secrets for building a successful shopping app. Here are 5 easy steps to create a shopping app for free or by hiring a developer.

  1. Conducting Market Research and Analysis

    2. A smart business starts by first identifying the customer’s requirements and needs. Conducting market research and analyzing the demand and supply rate is primal. It should have broad objectives like:
    • Competitor (both global and local) analysis - What do they offer and who they are?
    • Consumer’s expectations - What problems can you solve for the user by creating a shopping app?
    • Types of goods - What type of goods do you want to sell? A wide range of products or a particular commodity?
    • Target audience - Whom are you going to serve?
    Taking a good look at apps and services that your competitors offer can help you understand which features are essential for your niche. Here is an infographic that tells you all you should know about creating a shopping app.Appy Pie - How To Make A Shopping App

  2. Deciding Essential Features

    3. You don’t just want a clone of your competitor’s application. You need to aim for a fabulous shopping experience, and since e-Commerce is a very competitive industry, you might want to launch the app ASAP. Here is a video to help you learn 3 effective ways to launch your app.
    (Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.) The faster you create a shopping app, the more time you will have to implement the user’s feedback and improve your app.

    Features You Must Include in a Shopping App

    • Recommendation Engine
      • Recommending goods based on user behavior and preference data can drive sales by almost 35%. Your app could use anything from a simple algorithm to a complex AI/ML platform like Amazon’s. Recommendations in a shopping app boost sale, open up cross-selling opportunities, and add a personal touch to increase user engagement.
    • Shipping
      • Most customers expect free or dirt cheap, lightning-fast shipment which is tough to keep up with at all times. Show the shipping price and time on the product page and integrate shipping APIs to provide low-cost and fast shipping.
    • Safe and Reliable Payment Gateway
      • The easiest and most secure way to accept online payments is by implementing payment gateways. As a lot of sensitive information is involved, your payment gateway should be 100% secure and comply with PCI DSS payment industry standards. Always add multiple payment options like PayPal, Razor Pay, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
    • Smooth Checkout
      • The slowness and lack of preferred payment options can cause about 87% of users to abandon their cart. Here’s what you can do to avoid this loss and boost sales:
      • Make checkout as simple as possible without confusing the customer with unnecessary options and questions. Instead direct logged-in users straight to the order review page.
      • Display the checkout progress to show the customer how many steps they need to complete before completing an order purchase.
    • User Reviews
      • User reviews is a feature that is capable of boosting your sales by nearly 20% since they are trusted 12 times more than the product descriptions. Encourage the customers to always leave a review or rate the purchased item in exchange for some loyalty or bonus points. Here is a video to help you learn how you can increase the number of good reviews on App Store.
      (Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)
    • Product Search
      • The product search should be laser-focused, use filtering & sorting, and be lightning fast. Add high-quality indexing and tons of filters to help the users find what they are looking for. Here’s more you can include in the product search feature:
      • Auto-complete option
      • Spelling corrections
      • Root word recognition
      • Auto-suggestions
    • Customer Log-In
      • Customers love to browse through shopping apps as a guest without having to provide tons of personal details. Providing ‘one-step’ sign-up options via email, Google, and Facebook makes interaction easier for the customer and encourages them to register on your app.

  3. Implementing A Professional Design

    4. Your shopping app and its visuals have a lasting impact on the customers and are usually the basis for their opinion. You need to focus on the logo, the product pictures, and a professional design that increases brand recognition and app popularity.

    What Should the App Design Focus On?

    Users tend to remember just 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see, hence, make your visuals stand out by:
    • Sticking to The Reachable Zone
      • Top-tier designers emphasize using a thumb-friendly layout and design a.k.a. the reachable zone. It simply makes the app easier to use.
    • Making the ‘Add to Cart’ Button Noticeable
      • Provide an easily noticeable ‘add to cart’ button within the reachable zone for the users. Ensure that users can finalize their purchase from any page on the app while browsing different products.
    • Simplifying Feeds and Navigation
      • Avoid overloading the feeds with unnecessary information that customers don’t need. Keep in-app navigation clear by using bigger pictures, and easy-to-use navigation menu.
    • Crafting a Logo That Stands Out
      • The logo is probably the first thing that your potential customers will look at even before the app launch, so focus on making a good first impression. The logo should be attractive and recognizable. Ask your designers to redesign or optimize your logo for mobile device icons. You can go for Appy Pie’s Logo Maker to create an attractive and meaningful logo to help your brand stand out.

  4. Choosing the Platform

    5. North America and Europe prefer iOS devices and the rest of the world uses Android, hence researching your target audience is crucial. From a mobile developer’s point of view, iOS development is more convenient and takes less time due to minimum optimization. However, with Android gaining popularity in no time, it’s advised to make an app for Android users. Or you can have the best of both worlds by building a cross-platform app reusing the native coding and decreasing the time to market.

    • Mobile Website or Native Shopping App?

      • Should you choose a native shopping app that works across all platforms or just stick to a basic mobile shopping website? The answer is - you need them both. Since 58% of worldwide internet traffic is generated through mobile phones, adapting your e-commerce website to mobile devices is a smart and pocket-friendly choice. But 84% of users are likely to spend more time using native apps than a mobile browser, hence making a native mobile app a necessity.
    Mobile Website or Native Shopping App - Appy Pie

  5. Product Growth and Support

    6. After successfully launching your app, look to improve it by doing additional research, collecting user feedback, and deciding new features to implement. Focus on:
    • Speeding up the app
    • Providing top-notch customer support
    • Organizing chatbots and other AI-driven programs
    • Promoting the app early
    Whether you want to know how to create shopping app in Android or iOS, these methods work equally well.

How to Create Online Shopping Apps?

Choosing to build a shopping app is a daunting task for people with no experience and may burn a hole in your pocket. Honestly, most businesses don’t have the time to build their own shopping app.Appy Pie AppMakr helps you by letting you build a shopping app in three easy steps. How to Create Online Shopping Apps - Appy PieChoose a layout, add features, and instantly publish the app on the app store of your choice. Unlike other free ecommerce app builders, Appy Pie doesn’t have any hidden costs such as per-sale fees. One of the biggest benefits of using this eCommerce app maker is that you get round the clock assistance and consultation from the Appy Pie team for everything related to your app including getting it live on apps stores. To create eCommerce apps free of cost, this is the only online shop app builder you need.

Wrapping Up

This guide will work wonders for you if you have identified your niche and target audience. Doesn’t matter if you decide to hire professionals or create a free shopping app yourself, these pro-tips will help you massively. But first, let’s get going and take the first step by creating an app.Create a shopping app now!Do you think creating a shopping app is a good idea? Have you ever created one yourself? Which feature do you think is an absolute must for a shopping app? Let us know in the comments section, we’d love to hear from you!

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Abhinav Girdhar

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