According to a recent survey, more than 57 percent of shoppers use their mobile devices to search for product information before they actually shop.

This stats proves the importance of mobile component for e-commerce business. While this fact leaves no doubts, let’s concentrate on the features that are essential to have in a mobile app to ensure that you use the most out of it for your business. No matter how you opted to build your online e-commerce business — whether utilizing the hosted e-commerce platform, such as Shopify or BigCommerce, or using e-commerce plugin or extension on top of your WordPress site, or built an absolutely custom solution from a scratch, the features below are what your customers expect to have when download and install your mobile app.

Customization

When a user installs a mobile app, they expect it to offer easy navigation, personalization and excellent user experience. Thus, it is very important to make the user experience engaging and allow users customize the app to align with their preferences.

Simple registration

It’s hard to find consumers who love filling out registration forms or signing up via social networks. Don’t ask your users to too many questions up front before they intend to make a purchase. The best practise of e-commerce iOS and Android apps is leave those questions for the checkout process. In the end of the checkout process you can ask the users if they want to save the information they entered for future reference and sign them up automatically, if they opted to keep their information.

Even if you decide to sign them up before they make a purchase, make the registration as simple as possible — allow them to register with their mobile number or email address.

Push notifications

The examples of successful apps all show the effective use of push notification. According to Econsultancy, around 38 percent of consumers want to be offered exclusive offers after downloading a retail mobile application, and 30 percent of users expect a loyalty program embedded in the app.

Use push notifications to deliver the special offers and perks to your users to meet their expectations and build strong relationships with your customer base.

Don’t forget to pair up the push notifications with analytics so that you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing content and offers, and be able to boost your sales based on gained experience.

Analytics

Besides just offering excellent user experience, the target of m-commerce iOS or Android mobile app is to drive sales and grow revenues. Thus, being able to measure and analyze mobile app effectiveness for your business is the key feature that you must have within your app.

Cost of conversion, consumer behavior, click-through rate and, of course, understanding the buying pattern are all extremely important metrics you will need to have a close attention to.

If you still think of building a mobile component of your online business, it’s high time to have started with at least one mobile platform — it’s recommended to start with iOS mobile app, since according to Custora, in 2016 there are more shoppers among iOS mobile users in US.

If you are lucky to run your business built on Shopify, there is an easy and affordable way to turn your web store to mobile app Shopify and have a free trial of full 6 months with no prepayment needed.

As consumers are getting smarter, it gets essential to provide more features for them, but it’s also important to prioritize the features and concentrate on what really matters.

Imagine the normal mobile conversation: A couple of mates quickly connect via chat to check if they can still go to a concert that night. To find out if tickets are still in stock, they have to leave their messaging app, go and open their mobile browser or a ticketing app they have installed on their smartphones, and purchase the tickets; then they come back to the chat session to inform on success.

In 2016 the entire process — including the ticket purchase — can take place right within their chat, and within minutes without any interrupting steps in between.

With no doubts, mobile commerce has been overtaking traditional e-commerce. And now messaging and chat are catalysts of this process. It’s all about ease of use, integration, and velocity. E-commerce businesses that allow the purchases inside messaging apps for their customers — such as Facebook Messenger — empower faster and easier mobile purchases than we ever had.

Asia is ahead of US market

While in-chat e-commerce just gains the momentum in US, Asian-Pacific market evolves at its full blast. According to a recent Braintree stats, 46 percent of consumers in that region used their mobile phone to make a purchase in 2015, and the high price for SMS made the users switch to free messaging apps quickly.

The Asian messaging app WeChat, with its 650 million active customers, has played an important role in accelerating in-chat e-commerce in that region, with users who got used to peer-to-peer and B2C payments for anything — starting from restaurant meals to utility bills with WeChat wallet.

Against this backdrop, unlimited SMS plans in US didn`t stimulate free messaging apps use, until Facebook made the strategic decision in 2014 to place all messaging functionality in a separate Facebook messenger. Along with that many new messaging apps were emerging quickly, and over the last two years the number of the new messaging apps appearing has doubled.

However, despite the smartphone penetration rate of 72 percent in the US, the percentage of mobile users who made an online purchase on their mobile phones was only 27 percent. Clearly, there is a considerable growth potential for in-chat e-commerce in North America.

The strong and clear US opportunity

Users now expect to shop and pay conveniently as quickly as possible.

And the April update from Facebook on chatbots for Facebook Messenger gave a push to the industry. If you are not familiar with this, in simple words, chatbot is an artificial intelligence feature of a messaging platform that imitates a human chat with a user in order to give them the information or service they require.

The entry of Facebook signals a significant opportunity, taking into attention 1.6 billion users that Facebook and WhatsApp, acquired in 2014, counts altogether. These two apps have really powerful reach globally, and it is expected that by 2019 the number of messaging app users will reach 2.19 billion, that is approximately 80 percent of smartphone users.

Key in-chat players in North America

Just after a few months after Facebook`s chatbot announcement, quite many US well-known companies expressed a desire to join the chatbot game. Uber, the online transportation network company, initially shot ahead, allowing users to order an Uber taxi using Facebook Messenger. Ticketmaster, the ticket sales and distribution company, is catching up working on a feature that will enable users buy tickets via Facebook Messenger, and the global companies such as AmEx, Staples, Bank Of America are also on their way to add Facebook Messenger chatbots to their basics.

As usual, Shopify platform proved to be progressive, and was the first commerce platform to announce an integration with Facebook Messenger short days after Facebook’s F8 developer conference. For Shopify store owners integration means the following benefits and competitive advantages:

• When your customer makes a purchase, your dialog starts via Messenger, that the customer is already familiar with.
• Your users will receive automated updates from Shopify via their Messenger, enabling them to stay updated on the order status and ask any questions they come up with — all just in one place.
• With the Messenger you have an easy way to engage with the customers — answer their questions and invite them to check other related products.

Although in-chat e-commerce adoption is still in its initial stages in US, it evolves rapidly and industry giants move towards making it work for their end users. The conclusion is that if you are a m-commerce company, it`s high time to have started incorporating in-chat approach into your marketing strategy. And with no doubts, Shopify platform, with all its capabilities, including Facebook messenger integration and ability to easily convert your web store to Shopify mobile app, sounds like an optimal solution for you.

Subscribe to our blog to read more on the latest e-commerce trends and best software for businesses, as well as learn some tips and tricks on how to use it to your benefit!

We all are unique, the same as our e-commerce businesses are. Whatever you sell — consulting services, mobile phones, clothes or digital downloads of a mobile app that you developed, you need a software to build your online store that meets all your business needs and wants.

The NexusMedia team did a research and reviewed the most popular e-commerce solutions, both self-hosted and platform as a service options, to prepare the selection of what we think are the top solutions for businesses of all sizes.

Our approach: web, mobile apps and e-commerce features vs. costs

Our research was based on the following aspects:

• Reviews of the business owners. First, we decided to ask experienced business owners what they use and what their “ideal fit” is. Some of them have tried a few e-commerce solutions already, so they are able to compare different solutions and emphasize important aspects, that are not always obvious for beginners, such as ease of mastering and management of the online store, time to market, ability to convert their web store to a mobile app and resources associated with this.
• After that we researched the most popular e-commerce solutions that appear on popular web sources, trusted business lists in the combination with the user reviews found in professional communities and networks.

All above resulted in 3 e-commerce solutions shortlisted out of nearly 35 software platforms and plugins that were the part of our study.

As we wanted to make our list more versatile we ended up with the selection that includes Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento.

Our team used the following criteria in our assessment: cost, ease of use, hosting and design, features offered, mobile app options as a part of the solution, analytics, marketing tools, customization process, customer support, third-party integrations and payment system options.

WooCommerce — minutes to e-commerce on top of your WordPress site

If you have a self-hosted WordPress site or a blog and think of turning it into an e-commerce website, WooCommerce is an ideal solution for you.

The plugin offers everything you will need for your online store — a shopping cart, payment processing, a variety of responsive themes, marketing and management tools.

One of the best things about WooCommerce is that this free plugin offers a massive number of features included. With no doubt, you can use various paid or free extensions from WordPress developers to add an extra functionality to your store, including a mobile app for the web version, but the experience of many entrepreneurs shows that you have pretty everything you need built-in already as a part of the WooCommerce plugin, that is free to download and install.

The look and feel of WooCommerce websites is fully customizable, and if you feel like you`d like to have it customized, most of the themes go at a very affordable price of $70 — $140, depending on the features included.

Another advantage of this plugin is that it integrates directly with PayPal, so you don`t need a merchant account to use it, which saves you a good couple of dollars from your bank`s fee. You can process and receive payment to your PayPal account and transfer the funds to your bank for free.

On top of that WooCommerce also offers such advanced features as task automation, order fulfillment, reporting, marketing tools, third-party integrations and many more. Very well organized support and an extensive community of WooCommerce developers is an additional advantage of this e-commerce software.

Magento — fully flexible from small to enterprise

Magento is an open-source and ready to use e-commerce software that you can use as is or customize it according to your needs. It offers both hosted and self-hosted editions. If you need something very special, we can recommend Magento as a fully flexible solution for fast-growing businesses, and for someone who doesn`t tolerate limits in website customizations.

According to online entrepreneurs` feedback, it`s absolutely cost effective, so depending on your volumes, you can set up your store from ground at little or no costs at all.

The basic version of Magento solution offers everything you need at the start — the shopping cart, order management, marketing tools and various third-party integrations. The community of Magento users will help you to customize your online store using Magento extensions and plugins, technical skills may be required here though. Despite the fact that there are plenty of extensions that are available at no cost, the average pricing for paid extensions is considerably higher compared to the one that WooCommerce or WordPress plugin directory offers. Thus, the pricing for paid extensions for a native mobile app for your online store is in the range of $300–500 in average.

For larger businesses Magento offers Enterprise level that allows you access to more advanced functionality and support of backend flow customizations to meet your very unique business needs and support your internal processes. The Enterprise level requires quite tangible investment from approximately $18,000/year and allows access not only to entire open architecture and server implementations, but also to certified Magento partners to give you a hand with the customizations you need.

However, according to user feedback, the reverse side of this powerful solution is that learning how it works comes at a quite steep learning curve and often requires technical skills.

Shopify — easy mobile app development and customizations, minimum time to market

Our top pick is Shopify, which is a hosted e-commerce solution, that offers an extremely quick and easy setup even for non-technical users, and helps you automate your operations so that you can concentrate on your customers and sales growth.

It`s a truly all-in-one solution, since it offers everything starting with hosting, design, analytics, marketing tools, Shopify mobile app for your web store, and it`s packed with plenty of features in its basic version and with almost unlimited extra functionality to any taste and need through Shopify apps and plugins available in Shopify marketplace.

According to our research results, the other thing that the business owners like a lot about Shopify is that it offers a great flexibility and scalability for your business by offering various subscription packages — from $14/month for beginners (who just start their business and want to test their idea at a minimum cost, while still maintain high standard of e-commerce experience for their users) to the regular subscription plan, that starts at just as low as $29/month, to sell unlimited products and have an impressive set of advanced features at your disposal.

Through Shopify marketplace the e-commerce platform offers a mind blowing number of well-designed themes with excellent user interfaces, apps and plugins, that are designed by Shopify partners, the software development teams that specialize in e-commerce and Shopify customizations. These apps add an extra required functionality to your store — whether it`s an integration with a third-party service you need, a customization of a product page layout in your online store, additional marketing tools or whatever your business requires. Many of these plugins are free, and many go at a symbolic price of just $1-$30 per month.

Obviously, if you feel that your requirements are very extraordinary, you can contact one of the Shopify partners to order custom Shopify development for your business.

In any case, with Shopify you can start small and scale your business when the need arises.

The other important advantage is not only the fact that the Shopify themes go already responsive, which means your website will look great both on desktop and mobile devices, but also an ability to easily build a native mobile app for Shopify store based on your web version using Shopify API.

Moreover, there is a number of Shopify apps available in the marketplace that will help you to get a native Shopify mobile app easily without technical expertise required for that. And if you are not convinced that a mobile app is a “must-have” in a modern e-commerce world, check out our previous post with some interesting stats on m-commerce trends.

Subscribe to our blog to stay tuned and learn more about best Shopify mobile apps and plugins in our following posts!

There has been a lot of noise about the mobile commerce (m-commerce) lately. Whatever platform you use to sell online — whether it is a self-hosted custom solution or one of the popular e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify or BigCommerce, you should have a deeper insight into this question. Why is it so important to pay attention to the mobile aspect of your business? We are here to help you to investigate this matter.

In the situation of a fast growing mobile market more and more people prefer browsing the Internet using their mobile devices. Why? Because they can do it anywhere and right on the go: at schools or universities, at work and during launch, on their way somewhere. And you can use this opportunity and make your business available for them to check and get familiar with.

But let’s imagine that you have the only desktop version of your website… What will the users see when they visit your website on a mobile device? Will they stay or leave immediately once see it? Your visitors are worthy to see your store beautiful and user-friendly. And if your website looks good on a mobile device, they will stay to check your products or services and may find what they look for.

You do have a chance to significantly improve your sales by designing a mobile app or at least by adding an adaptive layout to your online store. Again, a responsive website layout is not even a recommendation today, it is rather a must-have for a modern e-commerce business that doesn`t want to stay behind its competition.

Under such conditions most of the software vendors for online entrepreneurs have optimized their solutions to this need already, meaning that if you build your website with, let`s say Shopify platform, the website themes go already responsive, you don`t necessarily need to put an extra effort to make your site responsive. But is it enough to have just a responsive website with no mobile app to stay competitive? The figures on the chart below say strict “No”.

A mobile website works well when it comes to allowing access for your customers to your products or services from a mobile device, but it is not an ultimate goal of an online business. Multiple studies show that the time spent on a website directly affects the purchase amount. Longer time spent on your website may result in a bigger purchase, and therefore higher income for your business, and a mobile app is a perfect tool to engage with your audience and keep them with you for longer.

A responsive version of your website lets your visitors see your content properly from their mobile devices, but only a mobile app allows you to interact with your visitors when YOU need it. Next time they surf the web, they may not even find you or may bump into your competition, but the mobile app lets you stay in your customers` phones and tablets.

Once they install your mobile app there is no need for them to look for you on the Internet — they will stay up to date with your special offer alerts, discounts and so on.

So having a responsive website design is a must to make the right first impression on your customer, while a mobile application is a powerful tool for the customer retention, which is a straight way to your profit increase.

To make it sound even more convincing, let’s have a look at some more statistics (based on IDC, Criteo and comScore Inc.):

• Just imagine the temp of the smartphone industry growth. It took 72 years for radio to gain the 1 billion audience. And it took as few as just 5 years to do the same for smartphones. Impressive, isn’t it?
• The amount of search queries in Google sent from mobile devices exceeds the ones sent from desktops;
• On Black Friday night and Cyber Monday 2013 the number of visits from mobile devices increased from 40% to 60%;
• According to an American market research, analysis and advisory firm, IDC, within the next 5 years the worldwide shippings of mobile devices will reach 1,977 million in 2016 compared to 1,970.2 millions in 2015. And within the following 5 years (2015 -2020) it will reach 2146.5 millions according to CAGR;
• comScore Inc., a global media measurement and analytics company, reports that mobile devices enabled businesses to increase their sales by 20.5% in average during Cyber Monday 2015 in US only;
• Transactions from mobile devices increases daily;
• The average amount of orders via mobile devices has become almost equal to the one made via desktop and tablets;
• According to the eCommerce more than 50% transactions in Japan and South Korea were made using mobile devices during the previous 2015. This share equals 40% in Great Britain and 29% in USA;
• In spite of the fact that conversion on smartphones is much lower than on desktop and tablets, mobile devices show greater transaction volumes due to greater amount of visits;
• Flurry, the mobile analytics, monetization, and advertising company, discovered that US users spent 90% of their online time in mobile apps and only 10% in a browser in 2015;
• According to the eMarket forecast, payments done via mobile devices will show a significant further growth in 2016 and will increase by 210% within the year.

We could keep on listing latest facts and statistics of the mobile vs. web e-commerce world, but do you still need further proofs that m-commerce is something that you should have complemented your business with just yesterday?

If you haven`t done it yet, you still have a chance to catch the last train. Fortunately, there are plenty solutions in the market now for any budget, from as low as $50 to an unlimited one, to build a fully functional mobile app to complement your online store.

Obviously, there is no match-all solution that is ideal for everyone, but we will gladly guide you through the best m-commerce solutions available now, giving a detailed insight into their pros and cons, to direct you on your way to find the best fit for your business needs.

Stay tuned, if you want to learn more. Subscribe to our blog to continue this exciting journey to the modern m-commerce world with NexusMedia!