12 Dec
With the increasing online sales, the ecommerce industry is witnessing the most significant growth of mobile solutions development dictated by the need to satisfy customer desires. Consumers require the freedom to purchase goods and services anytime and from anywhere, even on the go.
Hence, more online shoppers prefer mobile ecommerce native applications to websites, as they offer advanced speed, convenience and adaptability. Using mobile native applications makes your store stand out.
Let’s discuss what are native apps and how do they benefit ecommerce brands and consumers.
What are Native Apps?
A native app or native application is a software application built in a specific programming language, for the specific device platform, either iOS or Android. Native iOS apps are written in Swift or Objective-C and native Android apps are written in Java.
Users typically acquire these apps through an online store or marketplace such as the app store on Google Play.
The fundamental idea of native apps in ecommerce is to provide shoppers with fantastic shopping experiences. The optimized user experience is the main reason shopping apps are associated with really powerful statistics that business owners and ecommerce manager loves and that are:
1. Increased Conversion Rates
In Europe, mobile shopping apps have at least 3 times higher conversion rates than mobile websites. Yet in the Middle East, mobile shopping apps typically have 6 times higher conversion rates than mobile websites.
2. Increased Average Order Value (AOV)
Customers browsing on apps are more likely to make a purchase than those on mobile websites. Plus customers using apps also tend to spend more money.
3. Revenue Uplift
Increasing conversion rates and AOV of course leads to an overall uplift in revenue, which is one of the main goals of the app. It is also important to note that although there are clear financial benefits of having an app as part of your Omni channel strategy, apps also provide retailers with a great way of providing additional value to their customers that their existing ecommerce channels cannot.
Benefits of Native Apps
So why are most apps native? The reason is that native apps have a number of significant advantages over the alternatives.
1. Fast and Responsive
Native apps offer the fastest, most reliable and most responsive experience to users. This is unlikely to change in favor of web apps.
2. Easy to tap into wider device functionality
Native makes tapping into the camera, microphone, compass, accelerometer and swipe gestures super easy. It’s still possible using the alternatives, but it’s easiest on native.
3. Match app UI/UX to platform conventions
You’re more likely to please your users due to the way you can match each app’s UI/UX to the platform conventions. There are dozens of UI/UX differences that make users feel at home. By building native, you don’t have to compromise with UI/UX that you hope will be user-friendly for all platforms.
Disadvantages of Native Apps
1. More than one codebase
iOS apps will not run on Android and vice versa, so you will have to work with different codebases for every platform you choose to build in.
2. Native apps cost more, and take longer to build
Native apps cost more to develop than hybrid apps. You’re looking at $100K to get first versions out on iOS and Android, and that’s a relatively conservative estimate. Most developers specialize in one platform (Android or iOS), so to have your application developed on both platforms will require two separate developers (or teams), which adds to time and cost.
Rich Brand Experiences
Apps can provide customer immersive and rich brand experience.
Blogs
Reading blogs on mobile websites can be unresponsive. Yet using apps can be a more efficient way to read blogs. Blogs are presented in a more slick way of giving apps a more community-centric feel. It can help the reader feel more engaged with, and buy into a brand more readily. This in turn increases the likelihood of customers revisiting the app to read the content.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio, and other virtual enhancements integrated with real-world objects. AR shopping experiences are becoming more commonplace. From IKEA, allowing you to place and view furniture in your house to check it fits, to a John Lewis app that allows people to virtually try out thousands of lipstick shades. This is an amazing emerging technology.
Loyalty Schemes
Many of the retailers often use loyalty app to increase brand loyalty. There are many benefits of loyalty apps – brands are able to monitor points easily on an app, and automatically send highly personalized reminders to customers via push notifications.
As customers use their phones so regularly, apps are in front of them more often which means usage of the apps is usually high. Location-based push notifications can be used for more relevant incentives.
Exclusivity
Apps allow brands to build an audience that enjoys exclusive access to product launches, discounts and content in a way that other mediums don’t. Product drops and future events can leverage app technologies such as push notifications to notify users of early access, helping to drive hype and buzz around what the brand is doing.
What Options Do Shopify Customers Have?
1. White Label App Builders like Plobal & Tapcart
Pros
· Fast to implement as using a pre-existing framework
· Cheap to maintain. App updates and bug fixes are taken care of in your monthly subscription
· It is possible to build and edit parts of your app yourself
· White label providers have a good grasp of how Shopify works
Cons
· Design capabilities as a cookie cutter approach is used but it’s limited
· Also, customers must conform to a predefined template.
· You can’t maintain brand look and feel or identity of your brand
· Plus, limited number of integrations with tech partners.
· All customers are rarely able to integrate with all existing tech partners/ stack.
· It is not possible to create bespoke features in white label apps, therefore your app will not be able to mimic features/ functionality that appear on your website – for example ‘Outfit builders’ of ‘Complete the look functionality’.
· Unlikely to be able to provide functionality Shopify Plus customers require, such as Clone store support
2. Bespoke App Development (by an app agency such as The App Business)
Pros
· Complete freedom when it comes to the design of your app.
· This ensures design continuity across all ecommerce platforms
· The freedom associate with bespoke app development will also ensure the app will contain all functionality you require
· I.e. the app will contain and support all of the Shopify Plus related features you currently in your on online store
Cons
· Expensive to set up and maintain
· An app development company is unlikely to understand the nuances of Shopify
· It is likely the app will take a long time to build
3. The Best of Both Worlds: Venn Apps
Venn Apps, build beautiful, bespoke mobile apps that bring your brand and store to life. They design from scratch with the latest technology to provide your customers with a unique mobile experience, synced perfectly with your existing Shopify store.
Our apps are powerful. Whatever your dream app looks like, we’ll make it happen. We implement dynamic functionality like:
· Custom augmented reality experiences
· Apple Pay and Google Pay
· Push notifications
· App-exclusive promotions and products
· Blogs and rich interactive content
· Limitless integrations
Venn Apps are fully managed, saving you money, time and hassle.
· Permanent, always-on management, including support and upgrades of your app
· Actionable weekly sales reports and insights
· No extra work managing dashboards or app assets
And Venn Apps work everywhere, no matter where your business expands.
· Translates for any market with Langify and Shopify language API
· Built to work with all currencies
· Equipped with Shopify Plus Clone Stores to easily duplicate and customize your store for any market
Conclusion
Ecommerce is growing exponentially these days. If you want to build a successful trading enterprise and focus on attracting customers and increasing sales, it’s important to have a native shopping app.
Applications are usually 1.5 times faster than mobile websites and they perform actions much faster too. Also applications store their data locally on your device. These features give customers seamless experience.