8 Ways Mobile eCommerce Apps Add Value to Your Online Business

To succeed in the highly competitive eCommerce sector, merely having a mobile-friendly website is not enough. Without an eCommerce mobile application, your enterprise will stand to miss out on numerous opportunities even affecting business growth and the inability to attract new customers.

In this article, I will be digging in deep for the top reasons why a mobile application is a pre-requisite for your ecommerce developement company in 2021 and beyond. Let’s begin by discussing the importance of a mobile application when it comes to enterprise relevance in the next normal.

Importance of Mobile Apps in eCommerce Business

Even before the world went ‘remote’ because of the pandemic, the eCommerce industry had been thriving with a value proposition of ‘buy what you want and have it delivered to your doorstep’. Competition in the sector intensified as more and more enterprises choose to walk the path of eCommerce. But with the sheer versatility offered by eCommerce, comes a plethora of challenges like ever-changing customer expectations, appealing product displays, price point competition and a lot more, making new-players especially vulnerable.

Startups and small-scale eCommerce stores are at a major risk of losing business if they do not keep up with the competition, most of which has already deployed a mobile eCommerce application. 

With Global scale players acquiring eCommerce mobile applications, many of the smaller entrants have decided to follow their footsteps in the hope of equivalent success. As a result, the eCommerce app development industry is thriving. Going by statistics provided by eMarketer, 2021 has seen eCommerce sales to the tune of $3.5 trillion. The stats also state that over 72% of all sales were generated with users making their purchases while using mobile devices.

Industry Behemoths like eBay, Walmart and Amazon owe their continued success to user-friendly mobile eCommerce applications.  

If you happen to be an eCommerce business owner, now is the perfect time to reach out to a mobile app development partner and boost your sales as well as your brand reputation with custom app development. Some advanced features that are making a round of the development scene and offer a massive competitive advantage are chatbots, voice shopping and the social currency of your brand.

8 Ways Mobile eCommerce Apps Add Value to Your Online Business

Now that we have discussed how important an eCommerce app is in today’s market, let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about the quantifiable value that a mobile eCommerce app can bring to your online business. Today’s day and age is mobile-driven, and this market evolution has been accelerated even further by social distancing and the home front becoming the hub of purchases. If you, as an enterprise, wish to target customers across the globe while building value-based relationships with them, then a mobile app is the perfect solution. Make sure to check out these mobile app development trends for a closer look at what the sphere has to offer technologically. Here is how a bespoke mobile application can bring value to your business.

• Customer Experience

The customer of today is more tech-savvy than ever before. He demands a personalized and consistent experience across the multiple devices he possesses. An eCommerce mobile application can help lead a user through an enriching customer journey boosting the value of your brand. Moreover, by deploying futuristic technologies like AI and ML, you can now acquire strategic data that could result in valuable insights such as customer purchasing patterns, cart abandonment reasons and a lot more. This would enable you to offer an aligned, hyper-optimized, data-driven shopping experience which results in a massive boost in sales. 

• Marketing Tool 

An eCommerce mobile app serves the dual function of being a virtual storefront for your business but also as a high-value marketing tool. An eCommerce mobile app can offer continuous customer-centric engagement in the form of order status tracking, receipts, dicounts and promotional offers as well as push notifications. This builds a sense of camaraderie between your business and your customer, offering him/her engagement even post-purchase. You could even run app-exclusive promotional campaigns that even further solidify the “why” of a customer downloading your eCommerce app onto his phone.

• Brand Building

Brand building is one of the biggest benefits provided by an eCommerce mobile app. With the technical advancements available today, not only can your user find exactly what he wishes to purchase but can also be offered data-driven suggestions of products that he would be interested in. This leads to a very pleasant and hyper-personalized shopping experience. Your enterprise can build brand recognition by tapping into data and moulding your offerings to fit ‘hot trends’ thus increasing your value proposition and boosting your brand image among users.

• Higher Conversion Rate

It is common knowledge that deploying an eCommerce application boosts conversion rates, sales and thus revenue. With an eCommerce mobile app, your users can browse through your product and make a purchase from anywhere, whether it is in their corner offices or on their journey homeward after work. Customers today desire a seamless shopping process, complete with simple and secure checkouts as well as post purchase service. With an eCommerce mobile application, you can integrate mobile wallets and numerous other prevalent payment methods to make it even easier for a user to make a purchase.

• More Efficiency

One of the most effective outcomes of an eCommerce app is that it brings automation to numerous business processes while increasing team efficiency. ECommerce mobile development doesn’t come cheap however in the long-term it more than makes up for its costs with a significant ROI. An eCommerce mobile application can streamline operations such as inventory management, order management, delivery and after sales support. These efficiencies attract more customers while offering your team the bandwidth to efficiently manage the surge of new orders, increasing your profit significantly. 

• Better Service

If Millennials and Generation Z are your target audience, your services need to nothing less than amazing and bolstered by real-time customer support. A Millenial or a Zoomer demands the latest features and functionalities to make his shopping experience rewarding. Retail therapy is as real in the eCommerce sector as in brick and mortar stores. With an eCommerce mobile application, not only will your customer make a fulfilling purchase, he will also receive 24/7 support through in-built helpdesks and customer support features. You could also integrate third-party APIs into your application to further enhance its usability. 

• Loyal Customer base

As a customer, it is very difficult to remember URLs of mobile –friendly websites. With an eCommerce mobile application, the user is offered ‘one-click’ accessibility to your online storefront. This helps in quality engagements and long-term customer retention.

Running a simple reward program for customers will further enhance loyalty and brand value. With reward-points and special discounts for regulars you can build an exceptionally loyal customer base.

• Reduced cart abandonment

The ecommerce sector faces a major issue in the form of a whopping 69.5% cart abandonment rate. Research states that one of the primary reasons of cart abandonment is complicated and lengthy checkout process. ECommerce mobile applications on the other hand, have just a 20% cart abandonment rate. With an eCommerce mobile application, users ae offered personalized settings, smooth navigation and lower load times all of which positively affect purchase decisions.

In summation

Mobile apps have greatly boosted the consistent growth that the eCommerce business has seen over the past few years. To remain competitive and relevant, an eCommerce application with all the desired features has fast become a pre-requisite. Compared to a mobile-friendly website, an eCommerce app offers enhanced functionalities, simpler usability, faster accessibility and a greatly improved customer experience resulting in higher conversion rates.