In an era of absolute busy life, it is the smartphone, which gets most of the human attention and hence is the main source of web traffic. Thanks to the internet and the various apps available, people are able to access almost everything through their smartphones. Especially, they can now shop online in a secure way and get things delivered to their doorsteps. It is not only the buyers who get benefitted by having an app but the vendors, too, have become empowered to reach a global customer base. This has led the businesses of every scale to opt for building their eCommerce mobile application to get the maximum benefits by reaching more and more people.

So, having an eCommerce mobile app is a bonus for your business. But developing an app and promoting it to reach the right audience is quite complex as a well expensive job. Also, the possibility of your app going unnoticed among the sea of other apps is higher. So to get your hands into a successful eCommerce app development process.

Here the steps you must follow:

The Objective: As they say, without planning you can’t achieve anything. To expand your business, building an eCommerce app can be the best thing only if you are clear on the objectives to be achieved through the app. It is obvious that the reason to build an eCommerce app is to enter into the digital market and sell things over it, but you must set the boundaries for the same. You must know that whom you want to target, and which areas would your app will serve? Will it be serving a global audience or the local ones. What services will it be providing, and which age group will be benefited with the same?

The Target Audience: Now depending upon your business idea, you must look at the audience you want to serve with your app, and take an estimate of what they may expect from your app. For this, you need to think like the targetted audience and research for the things that will help you serve them better. Their requirements, expectations and the benefits that they must get from your app, you need to make a list of all those things and make a plan that would work to achieve all of it. It is the audience which will make your app successful, so their needs and benefits must be the main priority while building the app.

The Competition: People are well aware of the importance of a mobile app, and since its inception, millions of apps have been developed for almost every single thing. In fact, there are numerous eCommerce apps that are successfully serving its customers, some of which even has a permanent resident on their customers’ smartphones. So amid the high competition, you must carry out market research to know more about your competitors, their strategies and what they do for most of the user engagement. This way, you will be aware of what you need to deal with while developing and then promoting your app. Your idea must be unique and at the same time, must fulfil the things, that your rivals fail at.

Development Partner: The next thing you need to do is select a reputed development partner for your eCommerce app development. A team which is experienced enough and has a good work history is all you need. You can go for a local development team, or an offshore app development company. Try to select a team which has already worked on a similar project. You can take an idea of their skill set through their website, the customer reviews, their past projects as well as how up to date they are with the technologies they use.

Platform: Choosing the right platform will help you to reach the right audience. Among the various mobile operating systems, Android and iOS are the ones which are the most popular operating system platforms. Here you need to decide on which OS is more popular among your target audience or you have a mixed audience? For the mixed audience, you have the choice to build two different apps for both the operating systems or you can simply go for the Hybrid app development.

UI/UX Design: To get the maximum the audience on to the eCommerce app, the design of the app matters the most. An outstanding design with great features can get you most of the business and do wonders for your online presence. So choose the design of the app, its colour scheme and the features to be included, wisely.

Backend: The database of an app plays the most crucial role in its success, as it has to provide complete security to the data entered by the user. Also, a speedy database adds to the performance of the app. You can build a local database for the app or use an API for the same, according to the requirements.

Analytics: Setting up analytics for your app can be the best thing to do to track the traffic on your app as well as the source from where it is coming. After you have developed the app, the analytics will give insight on how to get most of the traffic to it and track the user engagement.

Payment Gateway: Since it is an eCommerce app, a secure payment gateway is the most important thing for your app. Including PayPal, there are many other options for the payment gateway which you can choose for your app that is secure as well as capable of handling the online payments efficiently.

App Store Optimization: Like the SEO of a website, optimizing your eCommerce app on the app store is also equally important. The two major OS, Android and iOS have their own app stores, and these app stores are flooded with thousands of apps on a daily basis. So optimizing your app is the most essential step to follow, such that it appears on the top in the results on the app store search.

So these are some steps that are essential and cannot be skipped while developing an eCommerce mobile app.

If you are still in doubt, you can consult the experienced team of Xornor Technologies, one of the leaders in the mobile app development industry, for any of your queries related to eCommerce mobile app development.