Pros and Cons of Developing Applications on an eCommerce App Platform

Last updated - March 21, 2022

Remember the days in the past when you had to go out of the house to buy stuff that you need, even if it was raining heavily outside and the queue at the counter took forever? Those days are really over. Now, virtually all brick and mortar stores offer their products online and on an eCommerce app.

Consumers could do the shopping from the comfort of their homes, or on the go, with their smartphones and tablets. For eCommerce businesses, the sky’s the limit. Today more than ever, people shop online.

This statement holds true across all industry verticals all over the world. The power of the web has made reaching out to consumers anytime, anywhere possible. The eCommerce space is witnessing the most significant growth of mobile solutions and the escalating demand for mobile app development services.

Tools for eCommerce Development

There are so many tools or platforms that could be used to develop eCommerce applications. These tools can automate and simplify various tasks for your business. They can also help in utilizing the time effectively and increasing efficiency. Here we will go through some of these eCommerce development tools.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, which makes creating and managing an online store easy and simple, with reasonable flexibility levels as well as other critical features, including secure payments, tax management, inventory, and shipping integration. Arguably, it’s the best and the most popular plugin with integration that lets you include great eCommerce ability and SEO value.

Shopify

Shopify is a renowned and prominent platform for eCommerce that contains all you could possibly need or are looking for in your online shop. It’s secure and enables you to build different pages seamlessly with its built-in editor, selling in several places via integration, local language support, and online store customization. Shopify powers more than half a million brands in 175 countries worldwide and is considered a one-stop-shop for eCommerce merchants.

Magento

Magento is an open-source platform that enables developers to create eCommerce platforms with the use of next-generation technologies. It enables you to create a virtual store and track all the orders of your business. Besides this, it also gives the business owners access to the detailed analytics of the store.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a platform that provides endless opportunities to create and innovate the online store to grab users’ attention. It offers a SaaS eCommerce platform that enables you to set up a store, add products, promote it, and make money. BigCommerce with a lot of in-built features that can make your website look unique.

Wix

Wix is another tool that enables building websites and platforms based on AI. It offers around 500 industry-specific templates that can be used in creating your business site. In addition to this, it has a drag-and-drop feature for editing. Wix also provides various options for fonts, vectors, image galleries, and animations.

JungleScout

Jungle Scout, an all-in-one eCommerce tool that enables businesses to sell their products on one of the top Shopping platforms, i.e., Amazon. Businesses can launch their products on Amazon by using JungleScout.

UltraCart

UltraCart enables the creation of an online storefront. It allows businesses to add a huge number of products to the store. Besides this, it offers fully customized themes for the store which can be incorporated easily.

In the tough competition nowadays, every business should have a mobile app to stay on the competitive edge. However, before partnering with a mobile app provider, such as an Android app development company like Etatvasoft, it’s good to know the extent and limitations of the process.

Making an eCommerce App – Pros and Cons

The Pros

Brand Recognition

Mobile apps support robust connections between businesses and customers. Users, for instance, are willing to share links to their favorite websites, describe the customer experience, and ask for feedback in their social media networks. You can integrate the most popular social media platforms into your brand for customers to discuss your products and services.

Besides this, you can also engage your customers with organic social media engagement. Posting about your brand and what it has to offer on social media can be very beneficial. People can interact with you through that post or if they like it they can also share it with their friends. Therefore, if you have an eCommerce application, take full advantage of its SEO.

Loyal Customer Base

A mobile app may be a copy of an existing website, but it’s well-designed, extremely optimized, and could significantly boost the customer experience, as well as facilitates acquiring and retaining new customers. With an eCommerce mobile app, customers could conveniently shop from an online store, choose products, and make a purchase easily and seamlessly. All these can help in creating a loyal customer base as you offer more than your competitors do and you take care of customers’ choice by giving them customized shopping options.

Detailed Analytics

In an app, data gathering and tracking are easy. Mobile functionality lets you monitor the interaction of users, and provides you useful information about them, including feedback, responsiveness to specific features or content, audience composition, and session length. This could help deliver updates and enhancements, develop an advanced marketing strategy, build personalized content, and efficient promotions and campaigns.

In addition to this, you can also customize offers for regular shoppers and by gathering their contact details you can send them a gift voucher. This kind of use of data gathering can make your users stick up to your brand and also promote it to others.

Increased Revenue and Better Efficiency

Mobile apps, as a rule, are more user-friendly and flexible. While the implementation is quite costly, they likely are quick to pay off and boost sales. The correlation is seamless—a great app with the right functionality and concept brings more customers and more customers result in more orders, and of course an increase in earnings.

Furthermore, push notifications are an effective and cheap channel to increase sales and maintain your brand. Through push notifications, you could deliver vital information immediately to customers and inspire them to do orders immediately.

Contactless Payments

Now, smartphones could replace credit cards and cases because of the contactless mobile payments technology. Payment apps provide speed, ease, and security. At the checkout, you need not get your wallet to take out banknotes, coins, or your credit card. This has become particularly urgent during this pandemic where people avoid touching things and reducing the time they spend in shops. Besides, this feature of eCommerce applications can make you stand out in this pandemic. You can promote your brand and say that we only use contactless payment options, this can help you attract more customers.

The Cons

Maintenance

Mobile applications need a lot of maintenance and TLC and should be created to accommodate every platform, like Android, iOS, and Windows. If one feature is not working as it needs to, then a lot of time gets wasted to make it proper and meanwhile, your customers might switch to any other option for shopping. Besides, making frequent changes in the application because of any issue promotes inefficiency of the app and customers won’t like it. And the most important thing is that for the majority of small businesses, this could be expensive and takes a lot of time.

Higher Expectations

In the app market, the competition is stiff, and even major retailers are struggling to keep up with consumer expectations. If you rush your application and roll it before it is perfect, customers won’t want around for you to iron out glitches or fix bugs, they simply will leave you with a bad review and move on to your competition.

Low Repeat Usage Rate

With countless apps available today, creating apps that engage users and encourage regular use could be very difficult. A customer may find about your eCommerce application and buys a product from you, but is not satisfied with the first experience. In such cases, the customer may turn towards your competitor and your product will have a lower usage rate which can ultimately affect the business.

Continuous Testing and Update

Even if your app goes live, you still have to continuously test and update it, fix bugs, push new features, and make sure that it runs smoothly as new versions of Android and iOS come out often. This means an ongoing commitment of time and money for app improvement and maintenance as previously mentioned.

What a Mobile App Should Offer?

One thing that an app should never be is to be a carbon copy of the website of the company. Mobile apps have an entirely different user emotion behind them, compared to traditional desktop apps, with the view that they predominantly are there to make things more accessible, easier, and streamlines the processes while on the move.

Thus, a successful mobile app should resolve an issue or fulfill a specific purpose, while catering to the requirements of the end-users. Whether it’s to help the sales staff generate leads and demonstrate products or help customers to quickly and safely order and buy products, apps should be able to provide a one-of-a-kind touchpoint opportunity for business-to-business organizations.

But then again, developing a business app is not simple. It’s the most expensive and time-consuming. You need to be updated with the operating system of mobile devices, as well as introducing something new regularly to keep on engaging the customers and prospective business leaders.

Conclusion

This year and onwards, online reviews are not enough to convince a customer to purchase a product. Consumers at present need to trust the brand, the products and services, and experience before they make a purchase. That is why in eCommerce sales, high-resolution images matter a great deal.

Static images, however, no longer suffice. Consumers demand more, which include 360-degree viewing images, which allow prospective buyers to see all the angles of a product. Staying ahead of the trends, and harnessing the latest technologies could help eCommerce companies attract new customers, drive sales, and boost market share.

Brands have become more convenient with the emergence of eCommerce while allowing new market opportunities with a significant potential to boost revenue. An eCommerce ecosystem, with the evolution of the mobile app, has accelerated sales dramatically through an exceptional and user-friendly approach. Now is a terrific time for business owners to invest in developing mobile apps and to engage in mobile app development services to meet the demands in the tech market, have impressive exposure, and to stand out from the rest.