No one can deny or ignore the paced growth of eCommerce (retail) industry. With Mobile Phones stepping into the online commerce, the trends of online shopping has fully revamped. With the growing use of smartphones & mobile devices, m-Commerce has grown exponentially in the past decade. Almost every eCommerce business has released their own mCommerce shopping apps by now. So, to be relevant and to be ahead of the competition in the market, e-retailers must be aware of various mCommerce trends.
Although, we all are aware of the growth in smartphone usage and mobile apps preference when it comes to online product purchase. Yet, not all the e-merchants are achieving its full advantage for the online business. Mobile Commerce is a must have for every eCommerce website in 2020. The more you delay, more sales and conversions are losing. Taking your website business to the mobile platform isn’t any sort of luxury anymore, but merely a basic necessity. Don’t go for my word, just take a look at the below statistics:
In year 2017, the mobile eCommerce sales accounted for around 34.5% of total eCommerce sales. [Source: Statista]
By the end of 2021, the growth in this data is expected to be 54% of total eCommerce sales. [Source: Emarketer]
In this write-up, we will elaborate the top 4 eCommerce trends that have been extremely useful for the store owners.
#1. Multi-Platform Shopping Applications
Targeting both Android and iOS smartphone using audience will definitely bring more conversions for you. Offer a pair of native mobile apps for eCommerce website and let users shop from the applications as well. Native eCommerce Mobile Apps are the ones that are published on the app stores (Google Play Store & Apple App store). With a featured shopping app, the users won’t be just limited to the browsing products but keeping them everything available at their fingertips will increase more sales.
Choose a reliable ready-to-launch Mobile App Builder and get everything ready in 2-3 days. The readymade eCommerce Mobile App Maker extension allows the store admin to create apps without any coding or programming. Nor they need to hire a programmer and spend a huge money for the same. Just purchase the right plugin for your eCommerce and rest everything will be automatically handled from creation to publishing on App stores.
WooCommerce Mobile App Builder
#2. Progressive Web Application (PWA)
E-Commerce Progressive Web Apps are the ones that are made live on the website (of the store). Whenever mobile website visitors visit a PWA active website, they see a button/tab which says ‘Add-To-Home-Screen’. Upon clicking it, the PWA mobile app gets instantly installed on user devices. That’s it, now the Progressive Web App will work like any other shopping application.
There are a few readymade extensions have the capability to provide fully customizable mCommerce PWA App for online store. The store admin get a very admin friendly dashboard from where they can edit and manage mobile app, send push notifications, etc. These days, to reach out to all possible target audiences, most eCommerce businesses are utilizing both native (Android and iOS) & PWA mobile apps.
#3. Multi-vendor Marketplace & Seller Applications
Store owners that wish to have multiple sellers on the store usually opt for a complete package of Multi-vendor marketplace website and mobile applications. This process is simplified by Advanced Multi-vendor Marketplace with Mobile App extensions. Check out them from below links:
PrestaShop Advanced Marketplace with Mobile App
OpenCart Advanced Marketplace with Mobile App
Magento Advanced Marketplace with Mobile App
Magento 2 Advanced Marketplace with Mobile App
Using these, store owners instantly convert their store into full fledged marketplace & mobile app. On such a marketplace, store owners get a very optimized admin panel which let’s them manage every thing like-
- Vendor Management
- Seller Request Approval
- Seller Commission Management
- New Category Request Approval/ Disapproval
- Tax Rule Settings
- Rating & Review Management
- Seller Order Tracking & Management
- Sellers’ Transaction Tracking
- Payout Management
All of the approved sellers on the store get their own unique vendor panels on which they can get following features:
- Manual & Bulk Upload of Products
- Order Management
- Order Tracking
- New Category Request
- Commission Based Payout & more.
#4. Digital Payments & Transactions:
There was a time when online shoppers hesitated to make online payments & always opt for ‘Cash On Delivery’ options. But with the passing time & advancements in technologies & cyber securities, more & more shoppers have started to prefer digital payments over other options. In fact, nowadays the users first approach is to choose mobile payments over other options.
And reason is pretty simple for that. Mobile Payments offers much seamless and quick medium to pay for online product purchase. Just a few taps and the money is paid. Over the past few years, various advanced digital payments have been introduced in the market like e-wallets, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Braintree, Stripe, PayPal, Bank transfer etc. The eCommerce store owners can now opt for any payment options on their website and mobile application. As per Statista, mobile payments is expected to increase tenfold by 2021.
Its good to have e-wallets and UPIs integrated in eCommerce Mobile Apps. The users shopping through mobile applications (Android or iOS or PWA) can choose their preferable option to pay and make secure transactions. So, for businesses who have already stepped into mobile commerce or looking for a way to do so, choose a solution offering various digital payments to cater all sorts of mobile using audience.
Closing Comments
These were a few examples of how online shopping behavior is transforming. The store owners who are running their business on online eCommerce platforms should be in check with these trends. Ignoring the need of eCommerce mobile apps will only be a losing factor in matter of sales or revenue or growth.
So, if you are thinking of launching shopping apps for your website, its high time to act upon the same. Check the readymade solutions shared above or discuss more on support@knowband.com. We, at KnowBand offer readymade native (Android and iOS), PWA (Progressive Web App) & Marketplace Mobile Apps for the eCommerce websites build using any of the below platforms: