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5 Key Factors To Consider While Building Retail Mobile Apps

16 May 2018

Retailing has gone digital. Far from the days when traditional brick and mortar stores lined the streets and shopping as a concept confined to the big halls of Walmart and Costco, consumers now want the entire shopping experience at the tip of their fingers – and retailers are bringing it to them via eCommerce and retail apps. Data from Statista.com shows that as of 2017, the industry was pulling in over $2.3 trillion in sales every year. With the sustained rise in the number of mobile phones and mobile phone usage, it’s only natural to anticipate an even more significant increase in this figure going forward.

things-to-consider-when-developing-retail-mobile-apps

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As a business owner, or an eCommerce strategist, or a CIO it is imperative for you to tap into this goldmine of opportunity while understanding the technical implications to support your customers. So how do you do that? As a first step, you must build a robust eCommerce platform – an app that connects your customers on an even more personal basis. However, just before you go on with that you should consider a few points.

Pointers to Consider When Developing a Retail App

  1. What does my customer want?

  2. Building an eCommerce app is one thing, creating it to fit the specific needs of your consumers is another aspect. The difference between the two is what makes or breaks any eCommerce application off today. In building its online web store, Amazon implemented amongst other retail mobile app features; a friendly user interface, a robust search engine and a recommendations tab that provided potential consumers with an assortment of buying options. Since significant chunks of its consumers were buying products to use as gifts, it also brandished a gift-wrapping checkout system. It resulted in customers acquiring what they needed, and more each time they logged into the app – there was no going back to other e-commerce sites. In 2017 alone, the company recorded a net profit of $4.1 billion. What was Amazon’s secret? – Well, the company knew what their consumers wanted was an all in one shopping center experience, and went ahead to develop just that.

  3. Build your app the right away

  4. Even though there exist a variety of DIY and low-cost app building platforms, benefit from a professional mobile app development organization that can handle your app development requirements for the retail sector. They are in a better position to recommend and implement the right tools that fit your needs and specifications best. Further with the UI for the solutions that offer ultimate UX and that matches the current industry trends and standards.

  5. Minimalism over complexities

  6. There is sophistication in simplicity, and in the world of app development, this idea is cardinal. Customers get drawn only to apps that simplistically present the most as opposed to those that tend to have a clumsy nature with speed and performance. Even businesses with proficient retail mobile app development feature scale better, and is the reason why you should detail the work of designing your app’s interface to a professional UX design team. While it’s easy to falter the cost implication of this as a deterrent, in the end, it always proves to be a worthy investment. According to Forrester, every dollar spent on UX pulls in an exponential 9,900% return on investment, talk about bang for the buck!

  7. Onboarding your app the right way

  8. While you might have created an excellent app, the most daunting task is to get the customers to download and adapt your app, to mark the process complete. Though, in this overly competitive app development world, it would be a bit difficult to get the features of your mobile app popular with the target customers. Here are some strategies that could boost the user participation:

    • Gamification, i.e., designing an app that is intuitive and fun to use;
    • Complementation – using an app to provide extra features unavailable on your web portal
    • Device specialization – developing apps that fit integrally to a user’s specific mobile phone architecture, have been proven to work.
  9. Post-development support is just as essential as actual development

  10. Just as it is critical to onboard your new retail app, it’s equally vital to give consumers enough reason to stick to it. According to Localytics, 58% of new app users discard an app 30 days after installing, and another 75% follow this route three months later. An important aspect of mobile app development, it centers on additional research, analyzed feedback, implementation of new features & technologies that help mitigate the rate of churn that requires serious attention, i.e., the number of users who drop your app is another crucial part of your retail app deployment process.

Beyond this, there could be many more, which you certainly do not want to miss. Whether you are striving to make your customers’ lives easier or providing them with efficient tools to thrive, it is essential to consider the factors above while building the mobile app, to stay ahead in the competition curve.

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