Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has been increasing every year, making online shopping now one of the common actions people carry out on their mobile devices. The biggest reason for this is people love having the convenience and ability to buy what they want right from within their own pocket. While the benefits of developing a mobile version of your website have been known for a while, many companies are developing mobile shopping applications to help consumers experience a simpler and easier online transaction. If you want to jump on the m-commerce app trend to increase your business and get a cut of those m-commerce sales ready for the taking, there are a few important things you should know to include when designing your app. The list below will explain to you the important features that should be included in your shopping app.
Security
The first thing that you should be thinking about putting in your shopping app is a good and well organised security system. There are countless hackers around the world that can easily access a mobile app user's account, and for those who are reliant on monetary online transactions, having their information saved on any m-commerce app can be a little daunting. When developing your mobile shopping app be sure that you are thorough in examining any possible loopholes that could happen. These could be unsecured data storage, incorrect validations, and any suspicious data transmission. Taking care of this will allow the correct validation of any user to get sent directly to your server. It is also a good idea to have a continuous test and monitor system along with regular patches to ensure that security is up to date.
Self-Explanatory Layout
The whole point of using an m-commerce app for a simple way to buy products via mobile, so every m-commerce customer wants an app that is easy to understand and navigate. Your customers will be put-off if they have to waste a lot of time trying to find the correct buttons to finish their transaction or having to read a list of direction to use the app. This will lead your customer to give up and move on to a similar app on the market. To keep your customer's attention and interest, you want to develop an easy layout that they can easily navigate through and is self-explanatory.
Quick and Quality Images
For a shopping app, you should know that having high quality images that upload fast will keep your customers browsing through your products more. If a customer clicks on an image of a product they like they expect a quality image that loads quickly, but if there are any delays it's more likely that person will become impatient, lose interest on that item, and exit out of the app. You want to make sure that you strike the right balance here, with images on your app that will load quickly while still having the quality that potential buyers need in order to make their decision. Knowing this will help increase sales and have customers coming back for more products.
Standout Features
With so many mobile shopping apps on the market, it's becoming difficult to get consumers to pay attention to new released ones and even when they do check out your app keeping them interested in it for a long time can become hard. What you need to include in your shopping app are some one-of-a-kind features. These can be exclusive offers, a store locator, a safe and secure virtual wallet, unique push notifications, or social media sharing availability. Another one that is a must have for any shopping app is a mobile coupon feature. Business Insider reported that mobile coupons increased from 7.4 million in 2010 to 29.5 million in the year 2012, so including this feature in your app will become beneficial for your business and attract more customers to buy your products. After all, most consumers look forward to using any type of coupon.
Choosing the Right Platform
Apple iOS has 900,000 apps on their market, Android at 700,000, and thousands more on alternative devices. Popular platforms being used are Google Android, Apple iOS, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. The most that is actually being used is Android-based devices because of their connection with Google. Many app developers are merging to Android devices so their apps can be available on a wider market due to many varieties of Android-based products. Apple iOS has a leading app market, but is limited only to Apple brand devices. Knowing this is important when choosing which platform you want your mobile shopping app to be available on.
Easy Communication
People download shopping apps to make it easier to purchase items online, but if they ever have a problem with the app you want to give your customers the option of contacting you with just one touch. That could be emailing, texting, providing your store's address and directions, live chat, or phone calls. If your app can provide necessary information that consumer needs to resolve a problem, it makes it easier on them and will give your app and business a good reputation.
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