Ecommerce Website and Mobile App Development. Which One Will You Choose in 2022?
The ecommerce website and mobile app development battle continue to batter the minds of ecommerce retailers. Now, it’s time to leave the conflict and reach a decision with certainty. Read on to find out.
If you are a brick-and-mortar store owner with some impending plans to migrate to an ecommerce platform, congrats! Your decision is a futuristic and fabulous one as the statistics say that 95% of all purchases will be made through ecommerce by 2040. Let’s move on to the core purpose of this blog now. How to choose between ecommerce website and mobile app for your ecommerce business? Here we go…
Gone are the days when a solid website was more than enough for an ecommerce business to succeed and thrive. The scenario is drastically different in the modern world. An increasing number of ecommerce stores are investing in ecommerce mobile app development besides already having an ecommerce website.
So there is a feeling of uncertainty that strikes the minds of established and potential ecommerce vendors: “Do I need to invest in ecommerce website and app development or either one will do the job?” Before reaching a conclusive view, let’s figure out what these can mean to your ecommerce business.
Ecommerce Website and Mobile App. What Are They?
Ecommerce websites and ecommerce mobile apps are two of the competing choices that keep ecommerce businesses in a fix. As a leading software solutions provider with about two decades of ecommerce website and mobile app development experience, we can educate and enlighten you a lot on it.
What are ecommerce websites?
Websites that facilitate the business model of ecommerce or electronic commerce are referred to as ecommerce websites. Every online shopping website is an ecommerce website. These websites act as virtual storefronts and enable you to purchase products over the internet and involve sales transactions. Customers can shop online by finding the products, adding them to their carts, and executing the payment processes to complete the purchase.
Every ecommerce website has a domain name (like any other website). Anyone with an internet connection can gain access to the site. They can reach the ecommerce website through search engines, paid advertisements, referral traffic, and so on. Any transaction that takes place on the internet can be broadly termed as ecommerce and websites with ecommerce functionality can be ecommerce websites.
Amazon and eBay are some of the veteran ecommerce websites that made ecommerce website more popular and easily accessible.
Ecommerce website development is on a boom nowadays as today’s customers prefer online shopping over shopping from a brick and mortar store. Building your online store is a combination of art, creativity, and technical skills. You need to make your online store a smart, user-friendly and appealing shopping cart solution. If you are keen to override your competitors with an impressive digital shopping solution, make sure to get it done with an experienced ecommerce website development company.
What are ecommerce mobile apps?
Ecommerce mobile application runs on mobile devices. Given the increasing number of mobile users and offering services through mobile devices are no longer a luxury. More than 70% of the people are depending on mobile devices to do online shopping. They are built across Android & iOS - two popular operating systems. In order to access ecommerce mobile apps, users need to download and install them on their phones Google Play or Apple Store. Once these ecommerce apps find a place in the smart phones, people can do shopping on the move.
What are responsive ecommerce websites?
Many ecommerce retailers are doubtful about putting in efforts into ecommerce mobile app development if they already have a responsive ecommerce website. Now let’s see what responsive ecommerce websites are.
When your website is made mobile responsive (or responsive to small screen sizes), your online store can be intuitively accessed from the mobile phones of your customers. As they are browser-based users can access them through the internet. There is no need to install any application from the play store. Responsive ecommerce website development is touted as an economical and time-saving way to place your digital storefronts into the hands of your consumers. Building a mobile responsive (M-commerce) ecommerce website can do wonders for your business.
Be aware that these mobile websites may pose the risk of not meeting customers’ expectations fully. Performance and usability issues can spring up due to slow loading times, small images, absence of information, and network issues all contributing to a poor purchasing experience followed by frustration and discontent.
Now, responsive websites are a great way to unite mobile experience with standing business strategies. If you can successfully cut out buyers’ frustration with mobile site navigation, responsive websites can do a lot.
So, What’s the Best Pick Between Ecommerce Website and Mobile App?
Now, let’s face it! How are you going to choose between ecommerce mobile app development and ecommerce website development? Reaching the answer to this question involves an investigation into many crucial and relevant factors connected to these two choices. Let’s explore them one by one.
Cost & Timeline
The cost of ecommerce mobile app development and ecommerce website development depends largely on the scope and complexity of the projects. The features you need, UX/UI web design, tech stack, specific web development services that you hire, and their pricing, etc. are some other crucial decisive factors.
Another plain fact is that that building an ecommerce mobile app is costlier than building an ecommerce website. Timeline is also more for mobile app compared to website development.
The factors that favor ecommerce website development are mainly the availability of multiple CMS options such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, etc.
These platforms offer ready-to-use and attractive themes & plugins helping it economical and fast.
Verdict: Ecommerce website wins on cost and timeline factors.
Personalized User Experience
Ecommerce is one area where personalized user experience (UX) is of prime dominance. Your customer expects a consistent, cross-channel experience that adjusts to their needs and goals instantaneously. The absence of the right call to actions at the right spot of the customer journey, unidentified bugs, etc. hampers this a great deal. The UX of your ecommerce website is very important in retaining and engaging your customers.
Between ecommerce website and app development, the latter is the king of personalized UX even though the former can present a rather commendable UX. Ecommerce mobile apps have an edge over websites as customers can engage with them at any time they want.
Verdict: Ecommerce Mobile Application wins the personalized user experience (UX) factor.
Search Engine Optimization
Do you know online stores can drive organic traffic if they have a properly executed SEO strategy? Yes. That’s true. If you are a small online business owner trying to grab the attention of Google to get some traffic for free, ecommerce website development is your choice.
You can optimize the content on your website through vivid product descriptions dotted with the right high-volume keywords, attention-grabbing images, etc. Facilitate their purchase decisions by placing a good number of customer reviews and employing a variety of content marketing strategies.
Though we can say that ecommerce mobile apps are far from materializing the SEO goals, many companies are smartly making use of application SEO or ASO (App store optimization). This is a way to enhance an app’s visibility in an app store. This helps in boosting organic app downloads. But, website optimization yields much better results. If you are targeting to increase the ROI, think about hiring a seasoned SEO team.
Planning for SEO for your ecommerce website and other digital marketing services? We can help.
Verdict: Ecommerce website has an edge over ecommerce mobile app when it comes to SEO capabilities.
Offline Usability
As we know, handheld devices are people’s best companions these days. And how about them gaining access to your business even when they don’t have any internet coverage? Sounding cool, right? If you want your customers to visit your ecommerce store when they aren’t connected to the internet ecommerce mobile app is your option. Offline usability of mobile apps is enabled by their ability to store data on a user’s device which can be retrieved anytime.
Verdict: Ecommerce mobile app is a clear winner here.
Advertisement and Marketing
Sending potential customers to your ecommerce business is easier when you have an ecommerce website. As you do marketing on social media platforms and other digital channels, it’s easier to get visitors to your websites rather than mobile apps. The reason? They can shop from your store via a website with a few clicks. In the case of apps, they can’t do it unless they are downloaded on their device.
Verdict: Ecommerce website fares better here.
Upkeep & Maintenance
Upkeep and maintenance are important for both ecommerce website and mobile app. These involve all the preservation and repair activities carried out by your web and mobile developers. These activities are essential to keep the site and app up-to-date. You can hire the services of an experienced web developer or an agency.
Whereas, for the upkeep of mobile applications you need to hire Android and iOS developers. If in case, your app is built using cross-platform app development technology, you can get it done with a single developer.
Verdict: Both ecommerce website and mobile app perform equally in this regard.
Which Is the Better Solution for Your Ecommerce Store?
Well regrettably, picking a conclusive one-size-fits-all answer to this question is a rather difficult one. Your choice should depend on your budget, business goals, target customers, business domain, etc.
As a leading ecommerce website and mobile app development company, we can say from our experience that many of our clients have said that having an ecommerce mobile app is a smarter choice than having a mobile responsive website.
Having both the ecommerce website and mobile app can indeed do wonders for your business. While the much-needed online presence will be offered by your ecommerce website, the equally needed personalized user experience will be taken care of by your ecommerce mobile application. You can even engage your visitors with attractive features such as discount coupons, loyalty rewards, personalization, and augmented reality.
Moreover, today’s customers are in the habit of using ecommerce mobile apps for browsing and putting items in a cart to make purchases later on the desktop via the ecommerce website.
Globally, ecommerce giants have adopted an approach of having both websites and mobile apps. This may not be viable for small business owners. You need to take into account many data-driven elements to reach a smart solution.
Are you looking for a personalized suggestion for your ecommerce business to choose between ecommerce website and mobile app? We are ready to give a free consultation. This will be the first step towards getting a tailor-made ecommerce solution for your business.
About Preethi Saro Philip
Preethi Saro Philip is a Post Graduate Research Degree holder in Economics with more than 10 years of experience in writing, editing, research and teaching. She has an intense passion for content crafting and calls herself a ‘wordsmith’. She enjoys writing on wide-ranging topics including business, technology, health & lifestyle, education, environment etc.
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Hi
I read your blog and found it very helpful, thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing useful information.