Are you planning to create an eCommerce app for your business? The best example of a successful eCommerce business app is Amazon. The company made $125.6 billion in sales revenue in the 4th quarter of 2020 contributing to the net revenue of over $386 billion in the same year.
There’s hardly any solid argument to the fact that Amazon has been one of the most popular shopping marketplace apps all over the world for many years now.
Due to the pandemic and ever-changing customer behavior, this is a good time to dip your foot into the pool of the online eCommerce market. If you want to invest in an eCommerce shopping marketplace and create a good experience for your customers, read on to understand the procedure for building an app like Amazon.
Step-By-Step Procedure To Build An eCommerce App Like Amazon
“You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.”
Paul Graham, Y Combinator
We have prepared a step-by-step list for you before you start building your marketplace app like Amazon to make your process a little easier.
Choose Your Niche
Before building the app, you need to select what kind of products you want to offer to your customers in the marketplace. You need to be certain if your app will offer all products like Amazon or will offer a single product niche. Your niche could also include diverse aspects and categories that you would like to incorporate into your eCommerce app.
To select your niche, you must do a thorough research of your competitors, identify & solve the potential problems in that domain, test your idea, understand your customer base, finalize your geographical area after extensive market research, etc. are some of the most crucial things you need to ensure when selecting your niche.
Budget Projection
It is important to plan out your expenses before starting any business, you need a budget to set everything up. Learn about the resources you’ll need for your business & if you need extra funding from third parties, etc. Preparing a budget will prevent you from going overboard with your expenses.
While preparing your budget, some steps to focus on should be performing a preliminary budget analysis, setting revenue goals and expectations, establishing projected expenses, creating a contingency fund, preparing the budget, keeping in mind a set time frame, etc.
USP Identification
To stand out among your competitors, your app needs to offer something unique that the other apps are not offering. You need to study and understand what will make your business better than the competition. Trying to find answers to questions like, why would customers choose your app over your competitors, what is it that your app offers that is not already being offered in the market, etc. will help you identify your USP.
(Source)
To identify your USP, list down some features that you think are unique about the products you are offering, point out the emotional needs that your product is offering to the customers, identify the specific features of your product that your competitors cannot imitate, etc.
Final Design & Development
App design is the first thing that a customer is attracted to, making it a crucial part of the app-building process. It enhances the visual experience for customers & for best results, you can hire an app developing company like 42Works. Choosing a team of developers who are experienced will be less time-consuming and will get you the desired results.
(Source)
To build an Amazon-like app, you must follow the specific design frameworks that they have followed like: using one column structure in the interface to showcase products, simplicity while performing high-level functions like cart, search, wishlist, etc., minimum product information upfront, and more detailed information who need to learn more, using minimal graphics & easy colors and interface to keep things clear and concise.
App Optimization
Optimizing an app is of key importance to increase the number of downloads done by users. The higher your app ranks in the app store, the more it will be visible to all your potential customers. You should plan your optimization strategies based on how your competitors are performing, focus on the keywords they are using, etc. You may also rely on a team of app developers for the optimization process.
Some tips for optimizing your app are making sure your app functions without ANRs & crashes, choosing the right keywords, adding relevant screenshots for preview, encouraging customers to give ratings and reviews, driving traffic to your app store page, etc.
Marketing & Promotion
Once you have completed all the steps mentioned above, the next step is to make people aware of your app. This is why you need to have a solid advertising and marketing plan when launching your app in the marketplace. To make your app reach the right audience you should promote it using different platforms like social media, google ads, video ads, launch offers, etc.
(Source)
Customer care is another important aspect of promoting your app in the market & when you run an eCommerce marketplace you need to be prompt when customers write reviews for your app. Some marketing ideas are: use bloggers and influencers to promote your app, implement traditional SEO tactics, etc.
How Much Does It Cost To Build An App Like Amazon
It is a sensible decision to launch business apps these days as most of the population around the world uses mobile phones to utilize different kinds of apps for different kinds of needs.
(Source)
Similarly, Amazon is a multi-vendor app, and developing an app like that can easily cost you between 20,000 USD to 80,000 USD.
Some points that determine the cost of developing an eCommerce app like Amazon are:
• It depends on what kind of features and functions you incorporate into your eCommerce app, whether it is simple or complex. Must-have features for an app should be: user profile, user sign up, product categories, search bar, checkout process & payment gateway integration.
• Cost also depends on the type of platform you have chosen to build your app such as Android, IOS, etc. There are 72.83% android users around the world as compared to IOS users. Therefore, there is a chance that using an android platform will help you reach a wider audience.
• The design of the application also determines the cost of developing the app, including different aspects like scalability, flexibility, performance & versatility.
• There are some secondary reasons for increased costs as well like software license cost, marketing & advertising cost, application store charges, database and server charges, equipment costs, etc.
Building an eCommerce app can be an exhausting process but you can hire an eCommerce app developing company to help you through the process and to manage your costs efficiently to stand out among your competitors.
Contact us at contact@42works.net if you want to create an Amazon-like eCommerce app and increase your sales turnover.
