E-commerce stores look much different now compared to what they did in the late 90s. If you have been a regular online shopper for the past decades, you must have noticed the sheer effortlessness of ordering products today.
A consistent push toward user experience optimization has made online retail customer-centric. Even in terms of app development, online retail has come a long way. It has become super easy to start an e-commerce website or build an app for your online store.
E-commerce CMS options like WooCommerce and Shopify are helping businesses set up an online store without coding. Similarly, no-code app makers have simplified app development to a great degree.
So, what is the main challenge? Well, it is to ensure that your app is feature-rich and meets the demands of your users. It is vital to create an e-commerce app that stands out among competitors and gives modern-day shoppers the experience they desire.
Here is a piece discussing ten features you should have on your WooCommerce app or any e-commerce app for that matter. Stay tuned till the end and also learn how you can launch the perfect app for your online business.
In this blog
- Seamless website and app sync
- Simple registration and login
- Interactive home screen
- Intuitive menus and navigation
- Smart search and product discovery
- Engaging product pages and descriptions
- Easy cart management and checkout
- Multiple payment gateway support
- One-click chat support for customers
- Built-in communication and marketing tools
Essential features for your WooCommerce app
Features can determine the overall appeal and success potential of an application or software. Whether you convert a WooCommerce website into an app or create a shopping app from the ground up, it is important to incorporate competitive features that aid your growth.
Here are the features worth considering for your e-commerce app:
Seamless website and app sync
The whole point of launching a WooCommerce app is to offer a mobile experience that is in harmony with the website. It is thus important from an app management and branding standpoint to have WooCommerce website and app sync.
Therefore, if you have a WooCommerce website, make sure that your site is connected to the app and that the updates are reflected in real-time. Fortunately, AppMySite ensures the same.
It enables you to connect your online store and mobile app easily. The website-app sync ensures that your mobile app is automatically populated with product data and content coming from your store, saving hours’ worth of effort.
Simple registration and login
Simplifying user onboarding and profile creation is unfortunately not given enough attention. Businesses set up login and signup screens without taking steps to simplify the process and minimize the number of steps for the process.
You should ideally have one-step registration on your shopping app. This simply means that incoming users should only have to go through one screen (or very few screens) to login or sign up for your app.
Besides one-click registration, you can also add social login options to simplify user onboarding further. For instance, AppMySite enables you to add guest browsing and checkout features to your app.
Interactive home screen
The home screen is the first page every incoming visitor sees upon launching your app. There is no way you can realistically ensure app success without designing a great home screen.
But what makes a good home screen?
There are no strict creative guidelines you need to follow while designing a home screen. Every different audience cohort has a different kind of expectation. Some shoppers like a product-rich home screen with a lot of variety. Others prefer working with a personalized and minimalistic layout with limited niche suggestions.
Thus, you should study your primary audience personas and design your home screen accordingly. AppMySite makes this process simple by providing a smart design editor and a ton of design features and tools that help you create a great home screen. Use the tools and create a welcome screen that inspires users to take action and move forward in the journey.
Intuitive menus and navigation
One big part of running a good ecommerce app is ensuring smooth navigation. You should not expect your customers to go through four or five steps to reach a particular app screen. Instead, your job is to create an app where every app screen is accessible with only a few clicks.
A simple way to improve app navigation is to add interactive menus on your home screen. Make all your app screens easily navigable from this page by adding hamburger, and bottom bar menus.
Work on arranging the hierarchy of sections intuitively and aim to increase the visibility of popular pages. This will further expedite the purchase journey of your customers. Make it easy for users to go from one point in the app to another seamlessly and increase their session time.
Smart search and product discovery
Discovery is a big part of online retail. Customers don’t always arrive on an ecommerce app with a clear product in mind. They are keen to browse through your app before finding something they like.
Online window shopping is a common phenomenon, and you must allow your customers to enjoy that. Even for serious customers, product search and discovery become a key feature in the shopping journey. It helps enhance discovery and further boost the overall conversion rate.
Moreover, enhancing discovery options can help customers get exactly what they want and enable you to push and upsell related products. Thus, add smart search, filter, and sort features and help customers discover the products that fit their needs and requirements.
Engaging product pages and descriptions
Your product page should be designed from a conversion-standpoint. It should deliver all product information a customer needs to feel confident about a potential purchase. Moreover, your app’s product page should also be a reflection of your website’s page if you have one.
You must use high quality media (images, gifs, videos, etc.) that gives a realistic visual appeal to users. Add descriptions that clearly define the product and answer all standard queries a user can have about the product.
Other additions like product variants, rating & reviews, stock availability, and more should ideally be a part of your product pages. It ensures that users trust your product listing and get interested in exploring it further.
Easy cart management and checkout
Checkout is often not given much thought when companies design mobile apps. And yet, it plays a key role in the volume of sales you manage to make. In fact, a streamlined and expedited checkout process is the best way to ensure a high conversion rate.
Customers’ attention span has decreased tremendously over the years and a long-drawn out checkout can cause them to abandon quickly. On the contrary, an integrated cart and checkout process reduces the steps and makes sure users are motivated to move forward.
Therefore, design and smart and simplified checkout process where users are able to calculate the bill amount, generate invoice, calculate taxes, apply discount offers and coupons, and more. Make the process simple yet interactive and inspire more conversions.
Multiple payment gateway support
Payment is one of the key features for an eCommerce app. Excluding ads and other earning prospects, it is the payments made by customers that account for the revenue of the app. Thus, you should create a smooth and frictionless payment channel.
Add multiple payment gateways that support your targeted customers’ currencies and other needs. This will enable you to accept payments from the widest range of customers possible.
Moreover, you should keep your website and app payment gateways consistent. This will allow customers to smoothly transition from website to app and get a familiar checkout and payment experience across all channels.
One-click chat support for customers
Customers rely on support for communication with the brand and resolution of their queries. Nowadays, most customers prefer chatbots over other channels such as email support, call support, etc.
Chat makes it convenient for users to get access to the support resources and agents with a click. It also allows app owners to capture potential leads and get them to explore or indulge in conversations about a product or offer.
Thus, you can add a chat feature in your app and allow app users to get access to support with a click. Ensure fast resolution of complaints and concerns and elevate your levels of customer satisfaction and retention.
Built-in communication and marketing tools
Apps are a great tool for communication and marketing. Besides running campaigns to increase app downloads, you can use in-app content to bolster your promotional endeavors. For instance, you can invite user-generated content in the form of reviews, ratings, feedback, posts, forum postings, etc., and boost communication.
Additionally, incorporating a push notification feature can further power your marketing goals. You can segment and send mobile app push notifications to engage your customers and inform them of new product arrivals, offers, discount campaigns, and more.
Moreover, you can enable the social sharing feature to make sure that your users are sharing the app and its contents in their circle. This will strengthen your social proof and earn free publicity for your brand.
How to create an app for your e-commerce store?
Starting an ecommerce app is not a decision to be taken on a whim. There are many steps you must cover before you are finally ready to launch a mobile app for your business. Start with an extensive mobile app market research and get a lay of the land.
Next, you can proceed to finalize a tool for developing your app. We recommend AppMySite’s free app creator as it is the best way to build apps without having to worry about intensive coding, long project timelines, and costly development processes.
AppMySite offers many products that enable you to achieve all types of app development goals and create aesthetic and feature-rich apps without coding. You can build one from scratch or use your existing website to develop your app. The choice is yours.
Create a detailed plan and launch the perfect apps for your business. While the list of features covered here is not exhaustive, you can consider them for your project as they are essential and viable for any e-commerce app owner. To know more, you can explore our other blogs or get in touch with AppMySite directly.