TechKnowable
E-commerce is quickly taking over the internet and already has a good business model, to begin with. A good mobile app is essential for delivering a good experience to customers. Thus, mobile developers are tasked with an important job to develop glitch-free apps.
There is a literal tsunami of apps that get released each year. However, not all of these apps get to reach the top spot. Only a handful few get to reach that spot and maintain it. It can often be attributed to a number of things.
Ensuring a good experience for your customers means improving your mobile app. People are becoming more aware of their needs and satisfaction. If a mobile app is not satisfactory, it is not going to help your e-commerce business at all.
Thus, businesses and companies hire developers who help in making the perfect mobile app. If you are a business owner or a developer, there are certain mistakes you need to avoid. Below are 9 mistakes that you should avoid while developing e-commerce mobile apps.
1. Lack of Testing
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Lack of testing freshly developed apps can lead to undesirable results. From this lack, a number of issues arise. Above all, most of the features that your mobile app will depend on might not work.
Lack of testing can also lead to loopholes in the security and privacy of the mobile app. E-commerce deals with the sensitive data of customers. If your mobile app puts your customers at risk due to this, your mobile app might fail horribly.
As a company or a developer, testing is an essential step that should not be skipped. However, you can skip this process by having someone else do it. Professional testers can help you in ensuring a final and well-tested app is released.
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2. Not Implementing Personalization
Personalization is important in most apps we use nowadays. There is a good reason behind it. Personalization helps users feel more connected to an App. This makes it easier for them to return to it.
If your app fails to cater to your customers individually, it is not going to do well. Personalized searches, suggestions, profile creation, dashboards, History, and other things as well. A lot of mobile apps fail to make an impact due to this particular reason.
3. Registration Wall
We live in 2021, and if your mobile app uses a registration wall to greet a new user, you need to fix it. Registration wall is a feature that should not be part of your final product. This is because people won’t be able to check your app without registering.
This just makes people not want to experience using the app anymore. This is bad since, as an e-commerce app, this can seriously affect your sales. For example, having a registration wall is similar to forcing people to pay to use an app. Imagine your favorite app doing this.
4. Lacking a Fleshed-Out Search Option
The search option is one of the most basic and crucial aspects of any e-commerce mobile app. In order for your customers to find exactly what they are looking for, they should be able to search it.
A Fleshed-out search option goes even beyond a normal search bar. It includes filters, options, and suggestions to help serve your customers much better. After all, if people can find what they are looking for, there is a higher chance of them making a purchase.
5. Lacking Visuals
What kind of a mobile app built for e-commerce does not support visuals? The bad kind. If your app does not have proper images, videos, and other forms of visuals, you should add them. These things help customers make a proper choice to buy or not. Visuals also help in attracting more customers. People would be able to analyze it and buy better.
6. Bad User Interface
The first thing that people unconsciously take note of is the UI/UX. A Bad UI/UX stops users from fully exploring your app. This is especially true for mobile apps since the margin for error is even less than on PC systems.
With the increased use of mobiles, people are spending more time surfing apps, and a bad UI/UX will impact you. Ensure you conduct proper testing and compatibility across all platforms. A smooth customer experience should be at the heart of it.
A good UI will not only allow users to search and find what they need, but it is also glitch-free. It is good to look at and doesn’t bring a negative reaction from the user. The number of features you can implement through a good UI increases as the UI becomes better.
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7. Not Researching Features
Most of the time, companies think that what people want is features. This leads to a mobile app having features beyond the necessary point. This can cause the app to malfunction or make the app undesirable to use.
Developers need to research and understand which features are important and which ones aren’t. Having an app full of unnecessary features is bad enough, but if this causes an app to not have necessary features, it is a big problem.
Remember to focus on your business, target audience and develop an app with appropriate features. For example, making an app with no option to sort ‘themes’ but with a feature to ‘order food’ is not exactly what people want.
8. Not Maintaining the App
The maintenance of an e-commerce app is even more important than building a good app. One of the most prominent mistakes in the industry is not giving proper care to apps.
Maintenance of an app in this day and age should not be a complementary action. Rather, it should be involuntarily built into the app. That is right; having safety features to notify developers and managers of a glitch is a good idea.
Once implemented, such features help in eliminating false information, covering loopholes, securing breaches, and much more. An e-commerce site has a lot of junk, and it is important to build safety measures to deal with such problems.
9. Not having a Review or Rating System
Do you think you could build an e-commerce mobile app without including a review system? It doesn’t bode well for the image of your company. A review system is important for business purposes. It helps customers know what they are actually buying, while companies can assess the response from the public.
A good review system asks for reviews and displays them alongside a product. Feedback through reviews and Q&A is a popular mechanism nowadays. Ensure you don’t make a novice mistake of not including such a system.
Conclusion
E-commerce is a growing and developing industry. Developing apps in this industry is a serious business. As a developer, a faulty app can cause great economic damage as well as loss of goodwill.
Thus, keep in mind these 9 mistakes that you need to avoid while developing an eCommerce mobile app. Ensure you do not provide people with inadequate apps. Always look from a customer point of view when analyzing whether an app is good enough or not.
