Launching a mobile app for your e-commerce platform? Make sure you take these factors into account

A mobile application can be a pretty useful accompaniment for your business. It can boost sales, give you a completely personalized brand presence, open the gates to millions of potential customers and so on. And thanks to products like the MageNative app builder for Magento, launching a fully functional, native mobile app is a matter of minutes — even if you don’t know the “C” of coding. An e-commerce mobile app is an effective way to boost an online store’s sales and attract more customers.

Regardless of how you get your mobile application for eCommerce store up and running though, there are certain things you absolutely need to bear in mind if you are hoping for any success at all.

A decade or so ago, e-commerce mobile App stores were completely new on the horizon. Nothing like them had ever been seen and competition between app developers, such as it was, was pretty low. In 2009 for instance, the iOS app store had well under 1,000 applications.

Now though, the number of e-commerce mobile apps out there runs in the millions.

This has given customers a whole lot of options, true. But it has also made life difficult for marketers. Seriously difficult. Competition is at an all-time high and, it either eats or gets eaten. This has also increased the importance of the strategies marketers need to deploy in order to ensure that the e-commerce mobile app they are working with becomes a success.

There are still some overnight successes (Take a bow, Pokemon GO!) however, they are increasingly rare. So here is the question you need to ask yourself: Is my application totally unique? One of its kind? Unseen and unheard of before? If the answer to any of these questions is no, well, you need to start working on your marketing strategy and start charting a plan out — both for pre and post-launch.

Market Research for your e-commerce mobile app is a big YES:

So you had this awesome idea about an app that is going to change the world. Well, good for you. But chances are, that someone or the other has already had the same exact idea before you. Now if you go out in the market with the exact same product, the response isn’t exactly going to be too warm.

And let’s not forget that your competitors have had all this time to refine their applications, while taking customer feedback into account.

In face of all these factors, launching a new app (or even sitting down to develop it) without the accompanying market research, would be like trying to cross the road blindfolded.

You need to make sure that your product is different, or if that isn’t possible, it doesn’t offer potential customers any less value as compared to what your competitors offer.

A good idea could be to create a spreadsheet and list a couple of your competitors and see how you match up on that scale. This should also give you a heads up as to what additional features you could ask the developer team to integrate into your mobile application (CedCommerce‘s MageNative dev team is incredibly friendly and eager to help).

Marketing research could also include you snooping around your competitor app’s play store pages and checking out the kind of reviews their product has received. Is it all positive? Are there any negative reviews? Which feature is receiving the most praise and which feature is taking a beating?

Studying all this will ensure that you go into the field, better prepared and ready to capitalize on the feedback your competition has received.

Get Marketing involved early in the process:

Development of the e-commerce mobile app is important, no one is arguing with that. However, the marketing process is equally important and it makes a lot of sense to bring in the marketing team when the application is still being developed.

Why? Well, if your marketers (or you) have done your background research properly, a meeting between developers and marketers is likely to result in some interesting inputs.

Besides, marketers will get better acquainted with the app and its features, while the developers can use the inputs they have received, to come up with some additional USP based features.

See how Mobile Apps have become the significant part of our daily routine- click here

Keep a strict eye on things, even after your mobile app is already out there:

So you have had a successful e-commerce mobile app launch. Now what? Is it time to lay back in your hammock and party? Sure. But make sure that you take out some time every day to check out how your application is doing, respond to feedback and see if there is something you can do to improve your application on the ground level.

Also, make sure that the systems that are already in place are being used properly — but are not being exploited. For instance, CedCommerce’s MageNative app will give you access to push notifications.

Good, right? Well, make sure that the feature is not being used to send 20 notifications a day, as all that is likely to accomplish is to piss prospective customers off, and force them to uninstall the application from their smartphones.

Assuming that you can maintain a clear channel of communication between the developing and marketing teams, there is absolutely every reason to hope that your app launch will be a success and the application will help you in growing the business and taking it to new frontiers.

So what are you waiting for? Get a free Android/iOS application for your Magento based e-commerce store today, with the MageNative 30-days trial. And if things don’t work out and there isn’t sufficient ROI from the app, well, no loss to you, right?

So don’t think any longer. Simply click here to get a personalized Android/iOS application for your e-commerce store today!

About MageNative

Established in 2015, MageNative has been heavily involved with customized m-Commerce developments. The company offers a slew of solutions and has a vast, global client base. The company has a full-fledged research division, which constantly strives to create state-of-the-art solutions for eCommerce store owners, looking to expand into mobile commerce.

Magenative also deals with Magento mobile app, Magento 2 mobile app, Shopify mobile app, WooCommerce mobile app and Delivery App which allows the store owners to create and deploy native mobile applications for Android and iOS smartphones. The company is also working on mobile solutions for more eCommerce platforms namely Opencart, Prestashop, etc.

Thank you for your interest.