How to build a great shopping experience with a mobile app

Role of Mobiles in Online Shopping

Mobile is now the medium to shop, share photos, expand business and what not. The entire consumer world is going through vast transformations due to the expansion of smartphones and tabs. Hence, there is an excellent opportunity to bank on and reach out to global consumers for promoting products and services.

One can build a great shopping experience with mobile apps by following these points.

To make a mobile app a strong medium for a genuine great shopping experience the following things must be considered: -

• The Target Market – In general, when developing a mobile app the target marketplace must be recognized. An usual trend found amongst developers and entrepreneurs is to invest into a mobile app primarily and in the IOS platform. Once the business e-Commerce solution is launched in the iPhone market then, measures are taken to expand it to the Android marketplace and for tablet devices.

• User Experience – The main objective of any mobile shopping app development is to offer the users a great mobile experience. In IOS particularly, a weak app is sure to fetch a lot of negative reviews and responses. The ratings given for the app also directly depends on the satisfaction of the user. Hence, care must be taken to ensure a great app.

• Users Engagement –In the IOS platform it is through ratings metric that one can ascertain user’s engagement towards the app. Based on their experience ratings are given. In the Android sector not only are the ratings given for mobile apps better but their number of downloads are also huge. Hence it is clear how popular the retailer is.

• Android must not be ignored-Every mobile app must also have their presence in the Android market or the Google Play Store. App submission in Android is easy. As a result low valued and low efficient apps are flooded. Hence, the app made must be branded properly so the users do not confuse it with other retailers. If users make assumptions about the retailer then the brand gets damaged permanently.

• Standard Shopping Experience - Generally when a mobile app is made from a previously made website version of the product, developers tend to keep the same shopping experience. It is important to maintain the core shopping experiences like UI features and gestures supplementing the shopping flow. Sometimes providing native features not present in the mobile website version can also help in an enhanced shopping experience.

Since consumers today are using mobiles more than anything for shopping, it is important to have an excellent app and marketing strategy to reach out to a larger user base.

Author is involved for years in Magento ecommerce development providing services in the Magento development sector to numerous entrepreneurs having an online store.