A website is no longer the sole prerequisite of ecommerce businesses. Consumers are looking to have easier and faster digital experiences. In the time of the pandemic, they also want better DIY experiences from different parts of the world. This has increased the demand for mobile apps and smartphones world over.
Modern-day ecommerce companies are hence focusing on providing their customers with flawless mobile apps. In order to develop a perfect mobile app, the following are some common mistakes that businesses should avoid:
Making The App Too Heavy
This is the first prerequisite that users look for in any mobile app, even before the benefits it offers. Customers prefer to use their mobile devices for multiple purposes even while using a mobile app. Having an app that takes up a lot of storage space is likely to slow down the device. Hence it is essential that apps are designed efficiently to have only the most important features and compressed images.
Compromising On Content To Make The App Lighter
In an attempt to increase the loading speed of the app businesses reduce the quality of the images or the amount of the content. This will be detrimental to the sales of products as customers like to see high-quality images to know what they look like along with their detailed descriptions to know their features.
Building For Too Few Platforms And Devices
Mobile devices like iPads and mobile phones operate on various operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows, and Blackberry. In order to have a wider reach for your app, you must ensure its multiplatform and multidevice compatibility.
Not Doing Market Research
Ecommerce mobile apps require a good amount of market research to be carried out before development, much like the products offered by them. Market research involves audience and competitor research. Businesses need to find out their customers’ preferences and expectations from apps in their niche. Knowing which keywords people are using to look for similar apps and using them in your description can help you in getting the right app to the right user base. It is also important to see what similar apps are doing, who they are targeting, and what their users like and don’t like in them.
Trying To Mimic Similar Apps
The purpose of market research is to help you to understand the features and strategies employed by competitors for their apps and marketing. Using these inputs, you need to customise them for your niche and audience. It is necessary to understand that duplicating the design and the success strategies of your rival apps will not always guarantee you the same results as theirs.
Neglecting App Updates
The job of ecommerce companies is not done once their app is launched. Updating apps is an ongoing process, and plays a major role in maintaining user retention. Users expect their apps to keep up with changing trends, and uninstall those that are outdated.
Not Doing A Beta Test
Beta testing of an app involves testing it with a small group of people before launching it. It is a lengthy process but helps businesses to find and fix bugs and other loopholes in advance, thereby ensuring the best user experience. In order to get an unbiased feedback, it is better to test the app with the public rather than an in-house team.
Sending Too Less Or Too Many Push Notifications
Push notifications are a great way to keep your users engaged with and informed about your business. They can be used to send new offer details, personalised product recommendations, app update alerts, incomplete purchase alerts, etc. However, send too many of them too fast and you risk being ignored, or worse, treated as spam. Send too less, and your brand will be forgotten. Research and find out the optimum number of notifications to send, and send them at the right times keeping the time zones of your users in mind. Give users the facility to turn your notifications on or off.
Not Optimizing The App For App Stores
Apps should be able to capture people’s attention quickly on app stores as they only allow for two to three lines of description. However, it doesn’t matter how creative and catchy an app’s content is, unless it is helping the app’s visibility. Like the content of websites, an app’s content should be optimized by using appropriate high-ranking keywords in the title and description. Optimizing apps for multiple app stores in a variety of languages increases their reach.
Conclusion
Listed above are some of the mistakes that need to be avoided while developing ecommerce mobile apps, irrespective of whether businesses build the apps themselves or outsource them. This is important to ensure a smooth launch for the app, enhance customer experience, increase customer retention, and save money for businesses.
