Things to consider before developing a Mobile App for your eCommerce business

Mobile app is one thing that you cannot avoid in today’s digitally empowered business arena.

With over 4.40 billion mobile users and the expectations of them reaching over 5 billion by 2019, the importance of a mobile platform for your business is unequivocal. In eCommerce arena, the trends in traffic flow clearly highlight that the major percentage of traffic nowadays is driven by mobiles and tablets. The on-the-go and handy nature of these devices fall compatible with the quick, hassle free, seamless and on-the-go nature of eCommerce. By now, you must have realized the importance of having a mobile app for your business. However, what you need to know is what are the areas that you should look for before adopting a mobile app for your eCommerce business.

Things you should look for before latching on for mobile app 

Now we will have a look at those areas which one should consider before going for a mobile way for their business.

1. Who will be the developer: This is the one question that you have to ask yourself immediately after deciding on to build a mobile app. You have the option of developing the app yourself or outsourcing the same both, have its added pros and cons. By going for outsourcing you will be able to save your time and stress of management handling while you will loose on central control and command of the mobile aspects. However, if you go for self- development you will be holding the central control but at the same time, you will have to bear the burnt of development and maintenance process. 

2. Multi-platform or popular platform: The next thing that will bother you is which platform to target. You need to take a call between a multi-platform or a popular platform app. It is general advice to have a multi-platform app that is for Android, Windows, and Mac instead of a platform specific app so that you can latch on to a wider market base. In case you are confused or have budget constraints, you can take a traffic analysis (Google analytics will come in handy) of your users and then decide to the effect.

3. Functional aspects: Once you have finalized on the above two aspects you can now ponder for the graphic, design, and functionality of your app. You must ensure that all the features of the desktop version of your website shall get surfaced in the mobile app, so that, the visitors don’t get surprised by a large variation. Another important thing you should consider is the loading efficiency of your app so as to avoid any snap during the process.

4. Test to the effect: Before launching your app on the public platform officially, you must test it to effect. You should take a test run for your mobile app for a certain amount of time before making it go public. This will help you to locate the lacuna which were left unsurfaced during development and testing phase. This will eventually help you in improving the very first impression of your app in the market, thus catching the eye from the scratch.

How one page checkout optimizes your conversion rates?

One page checkout is an effective CRO strategy.

While grabbing more visitors on your website is the first priority, their contribution in optimizing your conversion rates is what that exactly counts. In order to ensure a seamless experience for the visitor it is important to make sure that his/her entry and exit should be as smooth as possible. In this regards, the effectiveness and efficiency of a one page checkout is what we will be discussing here.

What is one page checkout? 

Before we learn about how a one page checkout optimizes your conversion rates, we need to understand what actually it is? A one page checkout refers to a smooth online purchasing process where the visitor on your website after deciding to purchase a product fills certain necessary information like name, address, pin code, mobile number etc. to complete the final product purchasing process. The whole checkout process is compacted into a single page architecture, unlike the generic checkout pages with multi-page architecture.

How it can help you in conversion rate optimization practices ? 

To understand the effectiveness of a one page checkout, we can visualize the analogy of a supermarket where customers are seen attracted towards the counter with shortest queue or the one with an efficient and fast cashier. In a similar way a one page checkout act as that counter which attracts more visitors to its side and thus optimizes the overall conversion rates for you store.

It is normal human tendency to follow the path which is less turbulent or smooth. In e-commerce where the whole idea is only to make the visitors, experience as smooth, adoption of these effective checkout techniques plays a crucial role. Here you can deploy various plugins for your website based on the CMS platform you are using for your website. Say, there are extensions like Magento’s super checkout, OpenCart’s one page checkout and other checkout plugins of various other CMS platform’s that can help in optimizing the online shopping experience of your web store.

One page checkout and conversion rate optimization practices 

After doing away with the basic understanding about the one page checkout process, we will now look into how it actually optimizes your conversion rates.

• Allows the visitor to easily track his progress through the checkout process which allows him/her to transact more freely and effectively. 

• Prevents the user from the hassle of frequent redirects and multiple page checkouts. which can create user frustration and cart abandonment. 

• Eliminates the scope for unnecessary information which usually is of no use in most of the cases. 

• Better customer satisfaction as he/she enjoys a smooth sail throughout your website. 

• More customer visits and conversions will automatically add to the popularity of your websites on the internet which will result in higher search engine rankings and further scaling of profits. 

Conclusion 

Keeping an eye on the fierce battle in the e-commerce sector today, one can not overlook the importance of making the visitor’s experience on your website a worth remembering one. Here the importance of a smoother checkout can’t be bogged down as it is the critical link in the conversion rate optimization chain.