A handy guide for ecommerce app development!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: March 22, 2023
Ecommerce App Development

Do you have an ecommerce app? Have you ever wondered how an ecommerce mobile app will be your path to business success?

The online business requires optimum visibility to reach its targeted audience and the ecommerce apps are the mediums to reach every customer’s touchpoint. Ecommerce mobile apps are the key sources to sell your products these days. These apps are the crucial revenue-generating elements for an organization.

Large-scaled businesses or start-ups, every business ought to have ecommerce apps to run the business smoothly. We all use some or other apps in our day-to-day life. Thus, we know the importance of these apps and how important they are for a business in terms of sales and profits.

So, how do you create an ecommerce app? When you know these apps are critical for your business, you must own the best app for an error-less business operation.

There is not a set definition of ‘best.’ Everybody has their own set of ‘best’ things. Therefore, your ‘best’ is something that can achieve your intended business goals. And to create the ‘best’ app for your business, you should follow some practical steps.

Keep perusing the article to know how to develop an effective ecommerce app.

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Ecommerce app development – Importance and types

Ecommerce is important because modern end-users (customers) want or prefer this type of shopping experience due to several reasons like ease of use, time saving, multiple options, etc. It has become a lifestyle now to shop online for any and every small or large requirement. Fashion, groceries, gadgets, appliances, you name anything, and ecommerce store has that product or service. If an ecommerce store is unable to provide you with your asked product, it will lose a sale.

The ecommerce apps cover a large area of services with opportunities to reach out to a significant number of users. An organization can utilize different marketing methods to boost sales via ecommerce apps. Moreover, these apps help streamline supply chain management objectives by optimum utilization of the available resources and increasing ROI.

Ecommerce apps provide a next-level customer experience and when you have more satisfied customers, you are on the path to success.

There are some distinct types of ecommerce apps based on the different business models. Every business has its versatile requirement; accordingly, ecommerce app development happens. Since the ecommerce app development has a vast scope to expand, you should choose carefully which type of ecommerce app your business requires.

  • D2C: The direct-to-customer (D2C) is the ecommerce app model, where a brand or organization sells its product or service directly to its customers. No third-party retailers are involved in this type of app. Even customers prefer to buy the products and services directly from the brand for its reliability.

  • Multivendor: This type of ecommerce app is one of the most popular and significantly increasing in demand. Here many businesses can sell their products and services from a single platform, listing themselves as a vendor on that platform. Multivendor marketplaces are increasing like anything because of their robust, secure, and scalable features.

These two types of apps are either built in-house or the organization hires some development partners to create the apps for them. Yet, there is one more way to develop an app and that is white label development.

White label ecommerce app development is where an organization escapes the time-consuming and expensive app development process and buys an app from a white label ecommerce development company. These agencies have readymade apps with some scope of customization as per the client’s requirements.

Factors that influence an ecommerce app development

An ecommerce app development depends on a few crucial factors that are to consider before you start the real-time execution. The work starts when you feel the need for an app followed by considering the other facets like customers, products, market, etc.

  • Customers

    This is the most crucial factor for any business. You must know who your customers are, what is their expectation from your app, and what problems they’ve faced earlier with other stores or traditional business models. When you start knowing your customers, you analyze the challenges and conceptualize your ecommerce app accordingly. Gather as much customer data as you can because it helps in creating an app that becomes your users’ favourite.

  • Your strength

    Before the app development begins, contemplate your strengths and weaknesses. Brainstorm what is your expectation from the ecommerce app. What are your business vision and goals (short-term and long-term)? Think over it because your strengths are the reasons you will be able to drive more traffic to your ecommerce app. Additionally, try to overcome your weaknesses and if possible, convert them into strengths. If you can utilize your strengths properly, it will make your app sustainable.

  • Marketing strategy

    A business needs properly defined strategies to run its ecommerce app smoothly. Your marketing strategies decide how and when you will reach the customers and how long customers will use your app. These strategies directly impact sales and conversions. You have ample tools and plenty of methodologies to create and improve marketing strategies for an ecommerce app.

  • Use of social media

    Social media is great exposure for every ecommerce business. The social media platforms give additional tools to create brand awareness and help ecommerce apps to build a customer base via these platforms.

    Ecommerce apps can be integrated with social media accounts for direct marketing campaigns and outreaching more customers. Also, social media assists in engaging customers with your brand. The interaction between you and your users becomes easy which increases the conversion rate.

  • Every facet alignment

    When an ecommerce app comes into existence, it deals with many business facets at one time, such as end-users, vendors, partners, staff, etc. Thus, you must consider aligning these factors in a way that they won’t create a hindrance in the operations of ecommerce apps. Moreover, the app should be flexible enough to handle the versatility of your business.

After brainstorming on all the above and other crucial factors you must have one efficient platform to build your ecommerce app. The market is flooded with myriad software, but you should choose one which is best suitable for your business. Names of some of the best platforms are Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, WooCommerce, etc.

Features that an ecommerce app must have

The market is flooded with umpteen apps, out of which, many of them will be having the same product niche as yours. So how will you reach your target audience and survive in the market? The only way out is to stuff your ecommerce app with useful and attractive features and if they are unique, nothing like it.

Let’s see what essential features an app should have.

  • Cross-channel availability

    If your business goal is to reach a larger segment and make your brand popular faster, then your ecommerce app should be available across the channels. Make sure the app’s complete availability on not only the web but on Android and iOS platforms as well.

  • Interactive UI

    The first impression is the last impression and how your app will leave its first impression on your users? Yes, via its user interface. The interface of the app ought to be minimalist, user-friendly, and easy to navigate to offer an untroubled user experience.

  • Handy cart

    The ecommerce apps contain a cart for users to add their products. It allows users to choose as many products as they want before they checkout. But if an app doesn’t have a cart or a properly functional cart system, then it will lose potential customers.

  • Lightweight

    If your ecommerce app is heavy-weighted and its speed has issues, don’t expect traffic on the app. Nobody will waste time on any slow-speed app. Thus, focus on optimizing the app to ensure its blazing fast speed.

  • Simple navigation

    Complex navigation can be a major issue behind less conversion rate. Try to make the app navigation simple by providing drop-down menus, pop-ups, buttons, or other easy interactive tools.

  • Offers

    Offers and discounts hold your users to your app, and they keep exploring your ecommerce app. It is one of the appealing ideas to clutch your users tightly and increase the revenue of the business.

Now you know what features you should include in an ecommerce app, what factors can influence the app development, and you have a list of platforms to choose from to create your ecommerce app. But do you know, how to develop an ecommerce app? We shall discuss the steps and you will be good to start.

Steps to develop an ecommerce app

To create an efficient and competitive ecommerce app, you must consider utilizing every available resource. Here are some simple steps to develop a systematic and thriving app.

  • Decide which type of app model your business niche requires. It may be a single-store app or multi-vendor. But choose carefully!

  • Analyse what features your app needs. Whatever features you include, categorize them as per their user-friendliness, complexity, and advancement.

  • Create a wireframe or prototype of the application as per the model and features. So that you have a clear picture of the app and designers & developers can carve the work plan and transform it into reality.

  • Choose the technology for backend and frontend development.

  • Focus on design, development, and API integrations. Design should be intriguing yet simple and modern. All the third-party integrations must be done right, such as payment APIs, product APIs, cart APIs, etc. Developers should keep in mind the business goals and requirements of developing the app.

  • After development, testing is essential to avoid errors and ensure flawless functioning of the ecommerce app.

  • And finally, launch the app and witness the users’ reaction.

Wrapping up

Whenever your customer makes a mistake while using your ecommerce app, it is because of the issues on the app. It might be a navigation problem or complexity of the app, or they cannot find what they are looking for. Therefore, build an ecommerce app, which is accessible and available easily to everyone. The right approach will hit the right chord and the aftermath will be pleasant for an organization!

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If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

What is ecommerce customer journey mapping? How is it essential?

By | Date posted: | Last updated: April 2, 2022
Ecommerce Customer Journey

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”– Bill Gates

This line says it all. Your unsatisfied or unhappy customers show you the right path to improving and growing your online business.

Every business revolves around its customers, similarly an ecommerce business as well. The motivation behind a product or a business is its end-users. So, when this one facet is important like anything, then obviously a business ought to pay attention to its customers as a priority.

To make the business strategies, you try to understand your customers. You comprehend their shopping behavior, their interests, what issues they face at your online store, etc. This entire process of knowing your customer and making the right strategies is a complete cycle, which is known as customer journey mapping.

Customer journey is a path of experiences that a customer goes through while every step of shopping. When a person comes to your landing page from where he/she starts his/her journey with you until the checkout. They expect a smooth and engaging experience with the kind of products or services they are looking for and being an ecommerce owner, you ought to provide the same for them.

The customer journey can be natural, or it can be designed by you in a way that the best experience provides to your customers for getting the desired outcomes. Designing a customer journey can accord you the long-craved aftermaths like increased conversion and revenue. To better understand your target customers, you may need to develop an effective ecommerce customer journey strategy.

Let’s learn more about the customer journey and how to map it for the desired outcome.

Customer journey mapping – A critical factor for ecommerce shopping

Customer journey mapping is a process to know your customers and create a map of the customer experiences at separate phases of their shopping journey. This assists you as a business to see your brand and products from customers’ perspectives and give insights to improve them. You also get to know the major pain points of your existing and potential customers. These pain points are the culprits behind a higher bounce rate.

The process of customer journey mapping helps every ecommerce business to improve the overall performance of the store. When you know the issues, you can optimize the store according to the problems and provide a better-personalized experience to the customers. It is time for retailers to create more unique ecommerce stores and think of them as their own ecosystems. Personalize your ecommerce store to give your customers exactly what they want, it grows the customer shopping experience, sales, and loyalty.

Do you know, what are the points to consider in customer journey mapping?

Buyer’s persona

Buyers’ persona is an imaginary representation of your ideal customer who is going to use your ecommerce store. Using the buyer’s persona, you can create the brand and marketing strategies to attract customers. When you create a customer’s persona, you try to understand how your customer will behave and what they will expect from your ecommerce store.

Moreover, think of all the stages of the customer journey and then create the buyer’s persona accordingly. It will surely help you to smooth out the customer experience.

Business objectives

Once you understand your customer’s persona, then the next step is to set your objectives. You know what your customer might expect from your store. So, set your objectives and have a clear vision to achieve the objectives. You have data from different resources like customer surveys, asking several questions to customers in distinct phases of their shopping journey, customer support emails, user testing data, and many more: this aids in setting the objectives and targets of your ecommerce store.

The touchpoints

There are touchpoints on your website when a customer interacts with you. For example: adding a product to the cart, opening an email newsletter, engaging with any of your social media posts, etc. You may notice that the touchpoints you have on your website are not sufficient or they are too much. If the touchpoints are fewer, then how will you engage a customer for a longer time on your website? And if they are more than you need, it may hurt the website’s performance. So, identify the touchpoints and add or remove them as per the need. Make sure all your touchpoints are up-to-date and updated enough to provide a seamless ecommerce shopping experience.

The map types

The type of customer journey map you want to fabricate is related to your business objectives. You think about a map as per your ecommerce business goals and objectives.

You might create a map, where you can think of customers’ actions, thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, which they will experience with your brand in his/her current state. Or a map in which you can visualize the experience of their actions, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors when they will interact with your brand in the future. There can be a situation when your customers use your products in their day-to-day life. Here, you think of their habits and interests.

If you have your ecommerce store’s clear objectives and the information from different resources, then you can decide which type of map you will create.

Plotting the customer journey map and earning the customer loyalty

When you have gone through all the above steps successfully, then start plotting the customer journey step-by-step and focus on the customer’s actions. Your careful vigilance and improved process give them a satisfactory experience. That enhances their loyalty to your brand and store.

Keep on updating

It is an ongoing process. Likewise, your customer behavior, customer’s needs and shopping behavior keep on changing and evolving, your customer journey mapping ought to change with time.

So, these are the steps to consider while mapping a customer journey. But why do you need to map their journey?

Importance of customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is important because it is a planned strategy to persuade your customers. You can optimize the customer experience with the help of customer journey mapping. When a customer thinks of starting his/her shopping journey with an ecommerce store, he/she goes through three significant stages, and they are – awareness (when does the customer feel the need to buy), consideration (when does a customer consider a few brands to satisfy his/her need) and decision (when does he/she buy a product).

These three stages are part of a customer journey mapping. Mapping is important for every ecommerce store irrespective of its size. Customer journey mapping aids you to provide an optimized experience to your customers. Through customer journey strategy, you understand your customers more. You comprehend what are the satisfactory points for them and what are all the pain points. Based on that, you work on your website and improvise the store for betterment.

Customer journey mapping also improves your ROI. When you start knowing and understanding your customers, you provide them with the kind of products or experiences they are looking for. It increases your return on investment and that is not in terms of money, but it reduces the churn as well and the onboarding cost of new customers.

Hence, customer journey mapping helps your ecommerce store to perform better for each targeted customer and enhance your profits.

Wrapping it up

When you start mapping your customer’s journey, you come across pain points when the customer’s needs do not get fulfilled. You focus on providing them with a personalized experience and making them feel special. Your effort results in customer loyalty and hence enhanced conversion.

Customer journey mapping is a critical yet beneficial approach for your ecommerce business. As we read above, it enhances the revenue and ROI and improves your brand image.

If you are looking to reinvent ecommerce store personalization, fresh marketing opportunities for your existing online store, revamp your existing online store, or want to create a new online store, please explore our ecommerce solutions! We also provide ecommerce website maintenance services, online store maintenance services and more. For more information, please visit our ecommerce maintenance services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

Custom Shopping Cart Development: Tips, Benefits and Everything You Need to Know!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: May 5, 2022
custom shopping cart development

Running an e-commerce business is all fun and profits until the pain of cart abandonment hits your business hard. It is one of the hidden factors that people forget to focus on the initial development of their e-commerce business.

When they recognise the problem, it gets late, and the business starts to suffer.

Did you know?

The top reasons for cart abandonment noticed among the customers are hidden costs during checkout, account creation, slow delivery, complicated checkout process, and others.

This parameter has become a major concern among e-commerce business owners. But no such problem exists in a world that doesn’t have a solution.

Hence, there’s an effective solution for this one too!

It is custom shopping cart development. For all the extensive damage that has occurred in your business, this solution will help you rectify and recover from it.

Wondering about this complex technical term? Let us get into the detail.

Custom shopping cart development

A shopping cart is a solution in an e-commerce website that completes the process of purchase of a product on an online store. From personal information to the address and payment, it takes care of everything included in the procedure. Even the payment information is also delivered to the various stakeholders like a payment processor, merchant, or any other party included in the process.

To summarize, at the front, one may think it just completes the buying cycle. But it does a lot more than that.

Understand it as a cash register, clearance counter, payment processing system or even a shelf that is holding the products of your customers on your online store.

What should you get in custom shopping cart development?

With selecting the custom shopping cart development, it can be built according to your e-commerce business requirements. You can get third party integrations (for example, payment) to it for added value and to deliver a unique experience to your customers. You can also incorporate your potential client preferences with the aim of conversion.

So, as you move ahead with your plan of getting a custom shopping cart for your online business, let us acknowledge you with some great tips to keep in mind during the process.

  • Keep in mind that when a visitor browses your store, they can shortlist the result in multiple ways. So, make sure that the shopping cart offers the flexibility to search for a product based on color, category, price, brand, material, or any other option.
  • To enhance the credibility of your product on your online store, make sure that the shopping cart should include product reviews and ratings by the customers who bought it.
  • Nobody likes a complicated or lengthy checkout process. The shopping cart should include not more than two steps during the checkout, along with multiple payment options for the customer to complete their purchase.
  • A loud call to action, prices as per quantity, seller details (if available) and no hidden charges should be made sure in your shopping cart development.
  • Don’t miss the section “Apply coupon” in the shopping cart. Even discounts and other offers can be highlighted accordingly in the shopping cart.

This way, your single page shopping cart will cover all the important aspects with ample information for the customers to trust your brand in completing a purchase on your online store.

#Fact: The number for average shopping cart abandonment rate stands close to 67.91% for an e-commerce website.

With the successful implementation of these expert tips in your shopping cart, your customers will enjoy completing your purchase on your online store and won’t simply abandon your shopping cart again in the future. Check out this blog to know the multiple ways to reduce the shopping cart abandonment.

Let’s move ahead to the exceptional rewards of building your shopping cart. We will throw light on some of the best-known advantages that will leave you awestruck.

User-friendly experience

It is the best thing you can get with a custom shopping cart development for your e-commerce business. By flaunting your own designed shopping cart, you can distinguish yourself from your competitors. You can bestow the trust and unique experience to your customers that they will remember and choose you in the future for your product base. Explore this blog to take your business to the next level by providing seamless ecommerce user experience.

Next-level marketing

When you incorporate a generic cart, there are no special marketing features included in the same. But with the custom-built shopping cart, you can offer a lot of promotion and marketing products on the same page. With individual SEO tags for the listed products and the pages, you can generate more traffic to your website through search engine results.

Flexible pricing options

While working with the generic shopping cart, you can only leverage the fixed pricing option that is pre-configured in the same. On the contrary, a custom shopping cart offers you the flexibility of elaborate pricing options you can implement for various product categories. From discounts and promotional offers in the pricing makes you can make your product listing more lucrative.

Scalable to your requirements

The custom shopping cart option offers you the scalability to grow your e-commerce business as the demand comes. You can add various features and functions to meet the customer preferences, increase traffic or business queries altogether from the same.

Some other advantages that you can look out to while building your shopping cart are:

  • Quick changes incorporation
  • Increased control
  • Flexible product listing and others.

It’s an investment that you will cherish for your ecommerce business lifetime!

Thus, if you are looking to grow your ecommerce store like a shooting star, this is the best factor to stick to. With excellent features, functions, and design elements, you can deliver an excellent experience to your customers, which will significantly decrease the cart abandonment rate on your website. Custom shopping cart development is necessary now a days to boost the conversion rate and increase the sales revenue.

Building your own shopping cart will help you address this problem of yours in one go. We would recommend that you take assistance from the experts who will help you add other important things that you may ignore in the process.

We at Skynet Technologies offer ecommerce shopping cart development, custom ecommerce development, ecommerce web application development and much more.

We also provide ecommerce website maintenance, online store maintenance services and web application security audit to make sure your existing website never let your customers down when they visit it! Please visit our ecommerce maintenance services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

E-Commerce Store Maintenance: Best Practices and Checklist

By | Date posted: | Last updated: December 8, 2021
e-commerce store maintenance

It must only be the tribal people living in the forests far away from humanity that would be unaware of online shopping in the present era.

E-commerce stores have cut the gap between the market and the customers. It offered the comfort of shopping to the people right from their couch. The number of digital shoppers increased steadily from 2014. A sudden rise was noticed due to the pandemic making the number of digital buyers reach 2.14 billion in 2021.

Even though the number of digital shoppers has increased, so has the number of e-commerce stores on the online marketplace. Businesses nowadays are moving more rapidly than ever to the internet to cater to more customers. But why it is that only some e-commerce stores can dominate the market.

For instance: Amazon is the king of e-commerce. It has spread its empire throughout the entire world.

There are some practices that such leading e-commerce brands follow to ace their performance in the market. Today we are going to bring some of the best practices to spotlight with which you can superfast your e-commerce store performance and its conversions. E-commerce support and maintenance are pivotal to run a successful business.

Let’s get started!

If we are to talk about e-commerce store maintenance, few things require utmost attention.

Inventory maintenance

Under this category of e-commerce website maintenance, you need to keep a check that you can fulfil customers’ orders on time. It helps you deliver a unique shopping experience to your customers, imparting them the trust to shop from you again.

Security maintenance

Since data is on a major threat these days, keep up your website security maintenance top-notch. Leave no ground for cyber-attacks as it will not immensely affect your brand credibility. Apart from it, your website ranking on search engine results pages will also be affected from the same.

Website SEO and performance maintenance

To ensure a unique user experience, you need to upscale your website SEO strategies. You need to strategize your steps to improve your site ranking on search engine results.

Website backups

You can’t afford to the crucial data of your customers. Data is worth oil in every industry in the present era. To take precautions, it’s advisable to back up your website regularly.

If one loses data, it’s hard and awfully expensive to restore it. Many companies add information to their online platform daily. In such cases carrying out daily data, backups are necessary every day. Make sure that the data stored is kept separately from everything else. You can also choose to have more than one iteration of the same.

Tip: A wise man decides to doubly protect in case your primary backup gets damaged too.

Let’s make a note of the checklist now!

Fix broken links

The first thing on your e-commerce store maintenance checklist is to fix all the broken links whether it’s an image or a page. Search engines such as Google use links Included in your website content to index the same. Also, these links are helpful to provide valuable information to your potential customers about any product or service.

It is necessary to fix these broken links, as if not done Google won’t be able to index those pages. Your users will also be misdirected to an error page which can make them abandon your website.

Check your website performance

To get a sight of the big picture, analyze the various pages performance on your website. Check for the most important pages like the product pages, contact pages, and likewise, to ensure that they are driving sufficient leads and sales to your e-commerce store.

Make a note of unusual high bounce rates, any decline in conversion rates or goals, unusual spikes on any page, and others.

Changes with products

Change is the law of nature. The same applies to your e-commerce store where you need to change your products constantly. No visitor would like to purchase a product that is old or out of trend.

Start with some minor changes on a regular basis. It helps in retaining the existing customers and attracting new ones. Updating the shopfront periodically also allows you to display your new range of products. With this, you can grab the attention of your e-commerce website visitors to introduce them to the newly launched products on your website.

Promotion and price changes

If you are planning to make price changes or set up products on discount, make sure that the message is relayed to the audience very clearly. Quote the price changes, discount code, the time for which the discount is applicable, and others, specifically in the advertisement.

Organized advertising will help you to hit the bulls-eye in one go. Ensure that your marketing team advertises the promotion and price changes through email marketing and social media marketing for a wider reach.

Test your checkout process frequently

The checkout process on any e-commerce store is a vital component of the customer buying cycle. You may have aced it the first time but it’s important to test it regularly to ensure that the order checkout flow is working smoothly and efficiently.

In case you come across any issues, get them fixed by the web development team immediately for a smooth check-out process. It helps in maintaining an exceptional user experience on your e-commerce store.

Reduce Cart Abandonment

The shopping cart abandonment is the most faced problem by all the online sellers. You need to check the number of abandoned cards regularly in your e-commerce store. Utilize this as an opportunity to turn a visitor into a loyal customer. Send your customers a reminder email about their abandoned cart and let them get back to your online platform to complete the checkout process.

Try to figure out the root cause of shopping cart abandonment. Check for any errors or user experience flaws in the checkout process. Make sure that you deliver a seamless and easy-to-follow online presence to your customers.

Get started!

Constant maintenance of your e-commerce store is as crucial as keeping a healthy body. It protects you from any security threat and ensures that you deliver a high-quality customer experience.

In case you fail to do this task properly, you are inviting risk to your business. Your Google rankings can slip down, and the search engine can also presume your e-commerce store to be a dodgy website. Ultimately you will lose all your customers. Thus, if you are unable to make time for website maintenance, just get in touch with a professional who can keep your website updated for you. It will be worth your time and money. Keep your storefront up-to-date with our e-commerce store maintenance and retainer services!

We wish you a happy and successful e-commerce business ahead!

Do you have an ecommerce store and not getting the desired result? We would be happy to support you. We provide complete ecommerce solutions including ecommerce website development, web design, SEO (search engine optimization), maintenance and support, performance optimization, and much more. Please explore our ecommerce solutions!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!