“Cross-platform app development is the smartest way to skyrocket your e-commerce business.”
Every e-commerce business owner desires to launch a mobile app because users are shifting to mobile apps for a seamless shopping experience. But how do you cater to both iOS and Android users without increasing the efforts and cost of ecommerce app development? The answer is cross-platform app development.
According to Statista, mobile commerce represents 73% of global e-commerce sales. As mobile commerce usage surges, businesses are realizing the importance of building an e-commerce app. Building apps for both platforms is necessary to reach a large customer base, but creating separate apps for Android and iOS can consume a lot of time and money.
That’s when cross-platform development comes into play. Cross-platform development allows business owners to build an advanced application that works on both Android and iOS, saving time, money, and resources.
But there’s more to uncover and this blog explores why e-commerce businesses should choose cross-platform app development along with the development process. After reading this blog, you will gain a better understanding of all the benefits of cross-platform ecommerce app development.
But before that, let’s discover;
- The Role of Mobile Apps in E-Commerce
- Provides Improved Customer Experience
- Bring Higher Conversation Rates
- Allows Integration of Advanced Technologies
- Bridging The Gap Between Offline and Online Shopping
- Key Reasons E-Commerce Businesses Should Opt for Cross-Platform Development
- Save Your Money On Ecommerce App Development
- Launch Your Application Faster
- Reach A Large Customer Base
- Maintain Your App Easily
- Keep Your Brand Voice Loud
- Test Your E-Commerce App Seamlessly
- Find A Wider Developer Talent Pool
- Make Your App Future-Ready
- Cross-Platform eCommerce App Development: Step-by-Step Process
- Step 1: Identify Your Aim And Conduct Market Research
- Step 2: Choose The Right Cross-Platform Development Framework
- Step 3: Design An Appealing User Interface
- Step 4: Include Core Features In Your E-Commerce App
- Step 5: Test Your Application Across Devices
- Step 6: Optimize The Performance of Your E-Commerce App
- Step 7: Launch And Monitor The Application
- The Bottom Line
- FAQs
- 1.) What is cross-platform app development?
- 2.) Why is cross-platform development ideal for e-commerce businesses?
- 3.) How does cross-platform development reduce costs for e-commerce businesses?
- 4.) What are the key benefits of a cross-platform app for e-commerce users?
The Role of Mobile Apps in E-Commerce
Mobile apps are changing the e-commerce industry because they are driving unmatched growth and changing customers’ shopping habits. According to reports, mobile ecommerce has 72.9% of total e-commerce sales around the globe. This data highlights the important role of mobile apps in shaping the e-commerce industry. Let’s understand it more deeply by looking at the crucial advantages of mobile apps in e-commerce.
Provides Improved Customer Experience
Mobile apps provide a personalized shopping experience compared to mobile websites. Apps are faster and more responsive, resulting in seamless navigation and user-friendly interfaces.
With offline accessibility, mobile apps utilize customer data to deliver tailored recommendations that allow a consistent user experience. The prime example of this is Amazon which uses AI to recommend products based on your browsing history and it helps them increase their customer retention rate.
Bring Higher Conversation Rates
When it comes to driving conversion, mobile apps easily surpass mobile websites. They include features like one-click checkout, stored payment details, etc to minimize the chances of customers abandoning the cart. Due to faster load and fewer interruptions, mobile apps reduce the number of drop-offs.
Allows Integration of Advanced Technologies
Mobile apps allow the integration of advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and voice assistants. AI allows personalized recommendations to make it easier for customers to find the products that suit their preferences.
Augmented Reality enables them to visualize products in real-time which results in enhancing their confidence in purchasing decisions. Big companies like IKEA and Sephora use AR features to help their customers interact with products online.
Bridging The Gap Between Offline and Online Shopping
Mobile apps allow businesses to provide a consistent customer experience across various platforms. Apps can be easily integrated into physical stores, social media, and websites to help businesses offer advanced features like in-store pickup, real-time inventory tracking, and tailored shopping assistance.
This flawless integration allows e-commerce businesses to bridge the gap between online commerce and offline shopping which encourages a positive user experience for users. This approach improves customer shopping experience to meet customer needs.
Key Reasons E-Commerce Businesses Should Opt for Cross-Platform Development
After understanding the role of mobile apps in e-commerce, you must have known that having a mobile app is crucial for e-commerce businesses. There’s a huge debate about native vs cross-platform app development and businesses face confusion while choosing one. Native app development is costly and time-consuming but the question arises, why should you develop a cross-platform e-commerce app? This can be answered after exploring the benefits of cross-platform app development in e-commerce.
Save Your Money On Ecommerce App Development
It is well known that choosing native app development for Android and iOS requires two development teams with expertise in each platform’s tech stack. It increases the time and app development costs. But cross-platform strategy uses a single codebase to build a mobile app for both platforms which results in reducing the number of developers needed during ecommerce app development. It saves a huge amount of money and time.
Read Also : How Much Does React Native App Development Cost?
Launch Your Application Faster
Cross-platform app development uses a single codebase which makes the development process faster because developers have to manage one codebase. It allows businesses to launch their app quickly which helps them meet current trends and customer needs. When you launch your application faster, it helps you gain a competitive edge by reaching your target audience at the right time.
Reach A Large Customer Base
The mobile app market is divided between Android and iOS users. Choosing cross-platform app development is crucial to expand your customer base. Your e-commerce app becomes accessible to a large number of smartphone users who are your potential customers. It results in increasing your customers by providing seamless user experience and revenue opportunities.
Maintain Your App Easily
Maintaining separate native apps for each platform can consume a lot of time and resources. You need to pay independent attention to bug fixes, feature updates, and security threats which takes a lot of time. But cross-platform app development makes it easy because it uses a single codebase for both platforms. This means that you need to update and fix bugs once and it can be affected on both platforms, saving time and resources during the maintenance.
Keep Your Brand Voice Loud
Customers want a flawless brand experience across all platforms. If you choose cross-platform development, then you can maintain a consistent user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) across both Android and iOS versions of your application. You need to partner with a UI UX design agency to provide a good user experience, reinforce brand recognition, and build trust.
Test Your E-Commerce App Seamlessly
Testing is easy when you use a single codebase across different platforms because it saves time and money as compared to testing native apps. For example, when the development team wants to develop an app for e-commerce, they can focus on testing the single codebase instead of conducting separate tests for every mobile operating system. It allows businesses to launch their e-commerce application with greater confidence in user experience and functionality.
Find A Wider Developer Talent Pool
Native app development demands specialized skills for each platform to build an advanced application. You may see a limited amount of developers with specific languages and tools. Cross-platform app development leverages world-class frameworks that are known by a broader range of developers. This makes it easier for brands and retailers to find certified development teams for the development and maintenance of your e-commerce platform.
Read Also : Top Reasons To Choose Agile Methodology for Mobile App Development
Make Your App Future-Ready
Modern cross-platform app development frameworks are built to integrate with emerging technologies like AI, AR, and IoT. The integration of these technologies allows e-commerce businesses to stay ahead of the current trends and deliver unique features without modifying the ecommerce app development process.
Cross-Platform eCommerce App Development: Step-by-Step Process
Now that you know the key reasons for opting for cross-platform app development for your e-commerce business. Let’s explore the step-by-step process of cross-platform ecommerce app development.
Step 1: Identify Your Aim And Conduct Market Research
The most important step in developing a cross-platform e-commerce app is to identify a clear aim for your app and what you want to achieve with it. The important factors that you should consider are target audience, business goals, unique selling point, and important features.
It’s important to choose custom mobile app development that aligns with your goals. After completing these steps, you need to conduct market research to know more about the preferences of your customers, what your competitors are offering, market gaps, and the latest trends in the industry.
Step 2: Choose The Right Cross-Platform Development Framework
Now, the next step should be selecting the right cross-platform app development framework. This is one of the crucial foundational steps that will have a huge impact on your app development process, performance, and success.
You need to evaluate the top cross-platform app development frameworks based on their capabilities such as performance, scalability, community support, and compatibility with the requirements of your project. You can talk to a cross-platform app development company to choose the right framework.
Step 3: Design An Appealing User Interface
After choosing a cross-platform development framework, you need to design an intuitive and visually appealing user interface that can run seamlessly across various devices to provide a positive user experience.
Remember to collaborate with an experienced UI UX design agency to create wireframes and prototypes that show your brand identity and meet customer needs. Their design team will use advanced ui ux designing tools to provide consistency across devices to ensure seamless navigation and responsiveness.
Step 4: Include Core Features In Your E-Commerce App
After finalizing the design of your application, the ecommerce app development company begins implementing the core features of your cross-platform e-commerce app. These features are;
- Product Listings: Display product with details, images, pricing, and availability.
- Search Functionality: This allows users to search for desired products based on keywords, categories, filters, and sorting.
- Payment Gateway Integration: Integrate payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, or other methods to encourage secure online transactions.
- Shopping Cart: Enable users to add items to their cart so they can buy products later and don’t lose that.
Step 5: Test Your Application Across Devices
When you complete the design and development of your e-commerce, the next step is testing the app properly to ensure seamless performance. This step is important to know that the application works flawlessly across various devices, screen sizes, and operating systems.
The Quality Assurance team will conduct functional testing to ensure that all the features work properly. Furthermore, the QA team also identifies and addresses issues related to device-specific behaviors, browser compatibility, and platform inconsistencies. At last, they will check the app’s performance under different conditions. If you are building MVP, then you can follow the best ways for MVP testing for a successful app launch.
Step 6: Optimize The Performance of Your E-Commerce App
Optimization plays an important role in delivering a flawless and responsive user experience. The security of the app plays a major role in performance optimization so it’s important to follow best security practices to fortify your cross-platform mobile app. You can optimize the e-commerce app’s performance by addressing these crucial factors;
- Loading Times: Minimize loading times by improving resource loading, caching frequently accessed data, and utilizing techniques like code splitting and lazy loading.
- Latency: Reduce latency by enhancing network requests, lowering unnecessary data transfers, and using techniques like data prefetching and preloading.
- Seamless Navigation: Provide smooth navigation by optimizing rendering, reducing UI jank and stuttering, and using hardware acceleration.
Step 7: Launch And Monitor The Application
After testing and optimizing the application, the application must be deployed to the app stores and web servers to let your customers use the application. After launching the application, you need to monitor the performance, user feedback, and analytics to identify areas for improvement and address new issues.
Remember to leverage tools such as Google Analytics to track user engagement, retention, and conversation rates, and generate revenue. You should consult the cross platform app development company to regularly update your ecommerce app with new features, bug fixes, and performance improvement.
The Bottom Line
Undoubtedly, cross-platform app development is a compelling option for building e-commerce apps, especially for businesses with budget limitations or who are looking to launch faster. From saving your valuable money to reaching a large customer base, cross-platform app development provides numerous benefits to e-commerce businesses so that they can thrive in a competitive landscape.
However, it’s important to partner with an experienced e-commerce app development company. Rannlab is a leading company with years of experience in developing next-gen cross-platform e-commerce applications. We have a team of certified developers who have deep knowledge of the industry. So, we can understand your vision and help you establish a strong foothold in the e-commerce industry with a feature-rich application.
FAQs
1.) What is cross-platform app development?
Cross-platform app development is a process of creating mobile or desktop apps that can run on multiple operating systems using a single codebase. This approach allows developers to save time and money.
2.) Why is cross-platform development ideal for e-commerce businesses?
Cross-platform development is important for e-commerce businesses because it can help them reach a wider audience, save time and money, and provide a seamless shopping experience.
3.) How does cross-platform development reduce costs for e-commerce businesses?
Cross-platform app development can save valuable money for e-commerce businesses by allowing them to leverage a single codebase for various platforms.
4.) What are the key benefits of a cross-platform app for e-commerce users?
A cross-platform app can provide several benefits to e-commerce businesses such as wider reach, consistent user experience, faster updates, quick launch, and data-driven insights to improve the application and foster trust.
