How to Create a Shopping App like Amazon [7-Step Process & Cost]

With each passing year, people have become reliant on various mobile apps to shop things online. They love to order many things from the comfort of their home.

Hence, the demand for online shopping app development is increasing every year. Also, many businesses in the past few years have launched their shopping apps like Amazon to reach a wider audience and increase their sales.

Here are some of the notable statistics that prove the demand for online shopping.

As per ThinkwithGoogle, 51% of smartphone users are likely to use a company or brand’s mobile app for shopping or branding.

According to Nasdaq,95% of all purchases in 2040 will be done through the eCommerce stores.

According to Statista, the number of digital buyers in the US were 268 million in 2022. The figure is expected to reach 285 million in 2025.

Moreover, shopping apps are a great hit among the masses and businesses. Hence, businesses are leveraging this opportunity by creating an online shopping app like Amazon to reach a wider audience and increase sales.

If you also want to take advantage of this opportunity, then you should also develop a shopping app.

What if you are new to eCommerce; you should first know how to start an eCommerce business? By knowing this, you can easily get ahead with developing an eCommerce app.

Now, the big question is, how to make a shopping app?

To create a shopping app, you need to follow a streamlined process.

We are a well-known eCommerce app development company. We have delivered shopping apps to clients worldwide. Hence, we know what is required to make an online shopping app like Amazon.

Here we will walk you through the comprehensive process for creating your mobile shopping app for business. Besides this, we will also provide you with the cost to make an app like Amazon.

7 Steps to Create an Online Shopping App like Amazon

Here is the streamlined process on how to make online shopping app like Amazon.

1. Conduct a Market Research

Here are some of the essential things that you should do in carrying out thorough market research:

Know Your Potential Audience

First & foremost, you should create a user persona. It consists of things like name, age, profession, problems, status, etc. By making a list, you will have a clear idea about your target audience.

Planning for Your Online Shopping App

After knowing your potential audience, you need to plan some essential things for your eCommerce app.

You should first be aware of the eCommerce business models and choose the best one according to your needs.

Secondly, you should decide about what you want to sell online through an app.

Planning all these things will benefit you a lot down the road.

Know Your Competitors

Once you have decided what kind of goods you want to sell, the next thing is competitor analysis. You should be aware of all the best apps for small businesses to compete with them and offer something better than them.

If you want to succeed in an industry where other shopping apps are selling similar products, you must provide something extra to your customer so that they visit your online shopping app.

You need to study the best eCommerce apps and look at what they are offering. After reviewing competitor apps, you must have a clear idea about what you want to provide to your audience.

Advanced Technology Integration

It will help if you look after several future technologies you can integrate into your shopping app during the market research. It will further help an eCommerce app development company to make your shopping app scalable.

You must be aware of the latest technologies because they are advancing day by day. For example, some great technologies for the near future are voice command (Alexa skill), augmented reality, virtual reality, the internet of things, etc.

If you already have an online shopping app, then you can think about integrating these technologies into your existing app.

2. Start Small & Take Action

You shouldn’t develop the entire eCommerce app in one go. Why? It will consume a lot of your time and effort.

Instead, it would help if you considered MVP app development. It is the most basic version of the app with minimal features. It allows you to obtain feedback from early adopters and update the app accordingly.

Moreover, you can launch your app quickly and gain the trust of your potential audience.

3. Choose the Essential Features

When you plan to create a shopping app like Amazon for your business, you need to be clear about what essential features you want to include. These features include search, product list, easy navigation, faster checkout, registration/login, payment gateways, live chat, push notifications, newsletters, etc.

In the previous step, we walk about the MVP app. Here are some of the crucial features you can consider for the MVP version of your online shopping app.

Provide User-Friendly Login

Whenever a visitor first visits your mobile store to buy something, you should not overwhelm the visitor with different forms asking for personal information. Allow the user to browse your eCommerce app as a guest.

If a user is interested in your goods/services, you can allow them to open an account with the simple registration form or third-party sign-up.

Product Search Feature

Ensure that the mobile eCommerce template you are using for your app has a search feature embedded in it.

It is a crucial part of any online shopping app as it allows the customers to look for a product that interests them.

You should also include many filters to make sure users can find their desired products instantly. Further, you can provide features like search autocomplete, word suggestion, spelling correction, etc.

To implement these things in your app, you need to know about the role of AI in eCommerce. Also, various companies globally use AI & ML in their eCommerce app to provide a robust product search feature to the users.

User Reviews & Ratings

As per Fera.ai, user reviews help to increase sales by up to 18%. Moreover, the businesses that have 9+ reviews earn 52% more than the average.

These user reviews act as social proof, increase brand exposure, boost online reputation, influence buying decisions, and inform where you need to improve.

Therefore, you should include reviews and rating features in your online shopping app. You can also urge users to rate their purchases. Lastly, you should enable users to sort positive and negative reviews.

Smooth Checkout Options

Many users worldwide add things to their cart while using an eCommerce app. However, a lot of them abandon the cart.

According to Fundera, 69.57% is the average cart abandonment rate on eCommerce stores.

There are some crucial reasons behind the same. Amongst these reasons, shipping charges, slow loading times, and fewer payment options are the major ones.

To increase the sales, you can do the following things:

Provide a Guest Checkout Option: Various customers like to add product(s) to their cart, make the payment, and check out immediately. Keeping account creation compulsory would be a hurdle for many people. Therefore, you should provide a guest checkout option.

Showcase the Entire Checkout Process: You should provide the total number of steps a user needs to take for payment and exit the app. The entire process will give customers an idea of how much time they need to spend on your shopping app.

Simple Checkout Process: Keep the checkout process smooth without adding any unnecessary questions. Provide users to verify their payment details instantly for fast checkout.

Recommendation Engine

A recommendation engine is a data filtering tool that recommends things to the users understanding their preferences and the behavior data. Various leading companies globally, such as Amazon, Netflix, Goodreads, etc., use this engine to engage more users.

Many customers like to purchase suggested goods while shopping on an eCommerce app. There are many benefits of adding a recommendation engine like driving traffic, increasing sales, providing a consistent brand experience, and more.

You can also get all of these benefits by adding a recommendation engine to your online shopping app.

Safe & Secure Payment Options

Your users should feel safe while making any money transaction through your eCommerce mobile app.

Integrate strict security measures in your app so that the financial data of your users stay safe and they can browse and pay for the product of their choice with complete peace of mind.

When you provide different payment options and utilize the best security measures in your app, more & more users will start trusting your eCommerce app.

How Much Does it Cost to Build an App Like Amazon?

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