Leobit
Are you planning to build an e-commerce app that will increase the loyalty of your customers? Keep reading and discover the list of best e-сommerce app features to deliver a remarkable customer experience for your app users.
E-commerce Market Overview
Online shopping has been on the rise over the last few years. More people prefer to shop online as they find it much more convenient and faster than visiting brick and mortar stores. An e-commerce mobile app allows them to make a purchase in several taps.
The growth of demand results in the growth of income. The e-commerce market revenue is expected to amount to 2,275,953 million U.S. dollars in 2020, up from 1,935,212 million U.S. dollars in 2019.
E-commerce market revenue
Source: Statista
When comparing the revenue from the e-commerce market in different countries, it is worth to mention that most revenue is generated in China and is projected to reach 1,057,047 million dollars in 2020. The United States follows China with a forecasted market volume of 389,620 million dollars in 2020. The table below shows the top 5 countries in total e-commerce revenue — China, the United States, Japan, the UK, and Germany.
| 1. China | US$1,057,047m |
| 2. United States | US$389,620m |
| 3. Japan | US$98,946m |
| 4. United Kingdom | US$92,845m |
| 5. Germany | US$82,068m |
Source: Statista
As to the market composition, it varies among countries. In the United States, Amazon, Walmart, and eBay are top retail e-commerce companies that take up the largest share of the market. Amazon is a clear leader with a 38.7% share of retail e-commerce sales.
Market share of leading US retail e-commerce companies
Source: Statista
To understand what products help these e-commerce giants generate money, let’s take a look at the product categories with the largest e-commerce share of total retail revenue in the US. You might be surprised to learn that the largest e-commerce share belongs to such products as books, music & video content. The e-commerce sales of this product category take 62.7% of total retail revenue followed by computer and consumer electronics (49.5%), toys and hobby (47.8%), and office supplies (39.3%).
The analysis of popular product categories is essential to build e-commerce mobile apps with the right market focus. Such e-commerce mobile apps will attract customers and withstand the competition for users.
According to Statista research, the number of e-commerce users will reach 4,658.1m by the end of 2024.
Number of e-commerce users in 2017-2024
Source: Statista
In our article, we focus on mobile app development for a good reason. Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is the biggest trend in the e-commerce industry at the moment. The figure below illustrates the growth of mobile commerce revenue in the United States from 2013 to 2020. In 2020, it is predicted to amount to 338.03 billion U.S. dollars, up from 268.78 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. By 2021, the world’s mobile commerce share will make up 72.9% of all e-commerce sales.
Mobile retail e-commerce sales in the US
Source: Statista
As you can see, mobile commerce is trending up. If you don’t have a mobile commerce application, time to think about developing one.
Best E-commerce Features Your Mobile Application Should Have
To develop a mobile e-commerce application that will make your business flourish and deliver a great user experience for your customers, you must equip the solution with a set of e-commerce app features.
Starting the development, you can either assemble an in-house e-commerce app development team or engage a mobile app development company. If you outsource e-commerce application development, hire a competent team of experts that already have profound experience in custom e-commerce development. Then, you will only need to describe your idea, and professional software engineers will include all the necessary features to make the application stand out.
1. The Quick and Easy Registration Process
Make sure that the registration process in your e-commerce mobile application is simple. If it’s too tedious, you can lose customers even before they check out your e-commerce mobile app features. Offer them an option to log in using Facebook, Google, or Twitter, but remember that some people prefer not to link mobile services with their social media accounts. As an alternative, let them use their email address as a login or access the e-commerce mobile application with a personal password.
User benefit. An easy and convenient registration process makes your app more accessible to users. It increases customer satisfaction as they don’t have to fill in a lot of data to use the features of an e-commerce app.
2. Secure Payment Process
Your e-commerce app should provide customers with multiple payment options. Since the payment process involves sharing personal and bank account details, people will only trust familiar methods and app features. Western mobile e-commerce app users are used to pay with mobile wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal, Samsung Pay, etc. Most Asian users are accustomed to a payment method called Cash on Delivery.
User benefit. If users have a quick and secure way to pay, they are more likely to complete the purchase and come back to you. Besides, the use of one-click secure payment increases the number and frequency of purchases.
3. Push Notifications
When the new customers sign up for your app, ask if they don’t mind receiving updates from your e-commerce store. It will enable push notifications that will act as a constant reminder about your e-commerce application. They can alert the users about special, personalized, or limited offers, new launches, discounts, orders, and delivery updates. After receiving notifications to their devices, users are more likely to visit your e-commerce app. It’s one of the best e-commerce mobile app features as it helps you to increase conversions and drive revenues.
User benefit. Push notifications improve the overall customers’ experience as it’s a great way to engage your customers, ensure maximum interaction, and maintain effective communication with them.
4. Product Gallery
A product page must contain full information about an item, including its price and pictures. It’s also necessary to ensure a quality UI/UX experience and ease-of-use.
Most users make their final purchase decision based on the product gallery. Some customers still prefer traditional shopping because it allows them to assess the desired product better. However, their concerns can be addressed by fully describing a product with its pictures from different angles and in different contexts
User benefit. The product gallery helps users to estimate the product from different angles and be more confident about their choice.
5. Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is shaping people’s shopping experiences and will become one of the main mobile e-commerce trends in 2020. It allows customers to interact with the product right from the screen of their mobile device. With the augmented reality feature, users can see a product and how it will look like in real context. Sephora and IKEA are great examples of integrating AR into mobile e-commerce apps. Although to build AR apps you will need to have specialized mobile app development expertise, the investment is sure to pay off.
User benefit. Thanks to AR technology, customers can make a conscious decision before clicking a buy button without hesitation.
Source: IKEA Place
6. Shopping Cart
A shopping cart aims to assist users in completing their online purchases. It is a must-have feature of each online store, and mobile e-commerce apps are not an exception. Upon checkout, the shopping cart calculates the total price of an order, including taxes, delivery, service fee, etc. Thanks to this feature, users can select products, review them, remove or add extra items before making a final choice. If users have added an item to the shopping cart, it means they have a solid purchase intent. They do not necessarily have to proceed to checkout immediately but can log out and return to complete the purchase process later without losing selected items.
User benefit. The shopping cart saves time and provides users with flexibility and convenience while being at the final stages of the decision-making process. It guarantees a positive user experience, saving time, and making shopping more efficient.
7. Shipping Options
When the purchase is made, it’s important to transport the product to your customer’s delivery destination. Offering your customers fast and affordable shipping methods, you can increase conversions and reduce shopping cart abandonment. When people see that the company will deliver the order to their doorstep within the shortest time, they are more likely to purchase. Therefore, to ensure a great buying experience, you need to provide users with a home delivery option.
User benefit. In certain circumstances, online shoppers are ready to pay a higher price to have a product delivered quickly. Thanks to shipping options in your mobile e-commerce application, they can receive their product in the time frame chosen during the checkout process.
8. Delivery Status Tracking
Your customers will appreciate a tracking purchase feature in the e-commerce application. It allows them to track the item and always have an order’s shipping status within reach. Such transparency in relationships with your customers will foster their trust and loyalty.
User benefit. Accurate and rapid tracking services allow customers to estimate the exact date and time of product delivery and receive high-quality service even after completing the purchase.
9. Easy Return Policy
Online shopping is still a risk for the customers and sometimes the products they receive don’t meet their expectations. Some users abandon their shopping carts if they can’t find a return policy of an e-commerce store. If you make a return process simple and clear for them, they are more likely to buy from you again.
User benefit. A generous e-commerce return policy eliminates customers’ fear of purchasing a product online without seeing how it looks.
10. Customer Support
The online shopping experience differs greatly from traditional brick and mortar one as you cannot interact with your customers face-to-face. Providing e-commerce customer service via chatbox, email or phone helps you to engage with your customers and address their issues online. You can also improve your customer service offering a callback to assist users immediately or at a specific callback time.
User benefit. Your customers can be sure that they won’t be left without an answer. Customer support guarantees a seamless user experience and makes people feel safe shopping with you.
The main requirements for your custom e-commerce development process
The e-commerce application development process has to be well-planned to avoid additional costs and unwanted time expenses. To make sure that your e-commerce applications won’t face any problems, consider these aspects:
Security
E-commerce applications collect a lot of users’ private information to complete a purchase (banking, shipping/home address, email, etc.) Data protection is your priority. If you failed to guarantee absolute safety and security of users’ private data, your e-commerce application would never reach the top charts of app stores.
UI/UX Design
UI/UX Design of your mobile e-commerce application should be visually attractive and intuitive in use. Remember, it is the first thing customers notice opening your app. They use an e-commerce app or not depending on how much they like the application design.
Scalability
You need to make sure that your e-commerce application is scalable before it gets thousands of users. Scalability is the app’s ability to handle the growing number of customers and requests. The scalable application can maintain its efficiency even if the application load increases.
Stability
Bugs and crashes harm overall customers’ experience. Customers won’t use apps that are not consistent or well-balanced. To stabilize an e-commerce app, you can start with regular quality assurance tests and collecting customers’ feedback.
Conclusion
In this article, we mentioned the best e-commerce mobile app features that should help your business to drive tremendous traffic and increase sales. If you already have an innovative idea but don’t know where to start, we recommend you outsource your application development to real professionals with competitive knowledge of the latest e-commerce development technologies.
We, at Leobit, have a profound experience in custom e-commerce application development. Our experts created an e-commerce marketing solution for a Silicon Valley startup that now has over 1 million active users and 5+ million app downloads with 5.00 stars ranking in AppStore and Play Market. Get in touch with us and get free technology consulting on how to build an e-commerce app that will deliver an excellent shopping experience to your customers.
