Summary: Features are the first and most necessary things you need to think about before proceeding with eCommerce app development. This post compiles a list of several must-have features of eCommerce apps.
Going through the entire post will help you select the right features for your eCommerce application to make it more purposeful and conversion-oriented.

According to Forbes, mobile commerce sales is likely to reach up to $4.5 trillion by 2024. So, if you are planning to develop an eCommerce mobile app, the above stats may have excited you.

It’s vital to understand that developing a successful mobile app requires considering a lot of factors, and features are one of those. So, you need to be aware of eCommerce mobile app features before you proceed to develop it.

Features are also significant in ensuring the success of a mobile application and thus ensure the growth of your business. If you don’t have any idea about eCommerce features, you have landed at the right place to gather the relevant information.

Here, we will explore some of the top-notch eCommerce features to ensure vast engagement with improved conversion and ROI.

30+ eCommerce Mobile App Features to Include

Now, it’s time to explore some of the robust features of an eCommerce mobile application, which users love to engage with. These features make your app more purposeful by driving engagement and sales.

1. User-friendly Product Descriptions

While talking about some commercial e-commerce mobile app features, it’s good to start with a product description. It’s the first thing users go through before buying any product. So, it’s one of the must-have features for your eCommerce mobile application. Make sure you create a user-friendly description for each product in your application.

They should be attention-grabbing, apart from being informative and inviting. The description should provide users with a complete glimpse of a product in terms of its features and various advantages.

The description should be written as a perfectly crafted story and should speak directly to the needs and preferences of your target customers. It should focus on pain points and thus portray your products as a problem-solver. It’s advisable to include some bullet points to make the description more engaging.

2. CTV Advertising

CTV advertising stands for connected TV advertising. It provides a golden opportunity for brands to lure customers onto a big screen. It’s nothing but a modern form of traditional TV advertising.
It’s useful for a brand to make their reach to viewers since they can stream their favorite content on various streaming devices, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and others.

CTV advertising allows you to deliver a high-quality, immersive ad that tantalizes users’ attention and thus boosts engagement. This advertising serves its sole purpose of connecting you with your target customers in a meaningful way.

3. Social Media Integration

Social media platforms have recently emerged as the most effective marketing tools for driving your brand’s reach and influence. You can integrate your eCommerce application with some of the leading social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It’s necessary to encourage users to share your products on these platforms while providing a seamless experience. Social media integration is crucial for increasing your brand’s presence. It also improves a greater sense of social proof and community, increasing word-of-mouth referrals and, thus, user engagement.

4. Personalized Product Recommendations

Personalized experience has become increasingly important since it caters to individuals’ needs and preferences. Therefore, your eCommerce application should have a feature like personalized product recommendation. Using this feature, you can suggest complementary products based on users’ shopping history.

It lets you highlight items that are trending among the same shoppers or recommend several products according to their browsing behavior. Personalized recommendations help you anticipate and match the needs of every customer. By offering a timely recommendation, you can drive customer engagement, conversion, and loyalty.

5. Integration with An Online Store

Every eCommerce business owner has an online store and creates an eCommerce mobile app mainly to serve smartphone users. Integrating mobile applications with your online store is crucial for providing a seamless experience for many users and ensuring product pricing, offerings, promotions, etc., across different channels.

Integrating an eCommerce app with an online store gives you useful insight into customer preferences, behaviors, etc., across multiple channels. With this insight, you can devise the most effective marketing strategy to boost your sales.

6. Invoice with Company Data

An invoice is a receipt for purchasing any product. It ensures full transparency and credibility for transactions and thus creates great trust in your customers. Make sure your invoice includes various crucial details, such as your data, including contact information, company logo, shipping details, etc., apart from lists of the purchased items.

You need to provide comprehensive and clear invoices that can fulfill certain legal requirements and leave a good impression on your customers while ensuring long-term loyalty.

7. Real-time Shipping Status

Real-time shipping status is another necessary recommence mobile app feature for your eCommerce app. It fulfills the expectations of customers who expect the status of their purchased orders to be real-time.

Offering a real-time shopping status not only makes your customers engaged and informed but also helps with the fulfillment process. It helps you manage the expectations of customers while minimizing inquiries about the actual status of your order.

A tracking feature in your eCommerce application enables customers to get information regarding the product’s journey from warehouse to delivery. With this feature, you can also ensure visibility and transparency in a complete shopping process. It helps you create trust and confidence in your brand.

8. Detailed Order Summary

When it comes to detailed order summaries, it offers detailed information regarding customers’ purchase journeys while ensuring clarity at every step of the transaction. It includes various details such as a list of products, costs, taxes, discounts, rewards, shipping fees, etc.

Your app should have a user-friendly interface to provide these details with more clarity. It helps customers review their orders thoroughly before they go for checkout.

With a detailed order summary, you can minimize the risk of errors or any misunderstanding. It also allows customers to make a fully informed decision while purchasing.

9. AR (Augmented Reality) Solutions

We are aware of how Augmented Reality has redefined online shopping and made it an exciting activity. It allows online shoppers to get a glimpse of the product in their environment before they make their final decision to buy.

You need to integrate AR solutions into your eCommerce application to create an interactive and immersive experience for users. AR solutions work effectively to engage customers and fill the gap between online and offline shopping.

For instance, you let customers wear their desired clothes virtually and help them buy the right product accordingly. Apart from clothes, customers can also try various other products virtually, including test-fitting eyewear, home décor, makeup, etc.

10. Product Gallery

A visually enticing picture can catch the attention of potential customers. You can include high-resolution videos and images to highlight your products better. Make sure the images you include display the product from different angles. It should enable users to see the products with different features such as zoom in, zoom out, rotate, etc.

Your mobile application should include a complete product gallery to showcase your products and inspire curiosity among customers. A product gallery is pivotal for showcasing advanced gadgets, fashion trends, or the beauty of artisanal crafts and delivers an outstanding shopping experience.

11. Analytics

Your eCommerce application is incomplete without this feature, which allows data-driven decision-making. Make sure your app has a powerful analytics dashboard that can track important metrics like website traffic, user engagement, conversion rates, sales performance, etc., in real-time.

You can use this data to analyze which product is the most or least engaging and to identify areas for improvement. It helps you formulate an effective marketing campaign while delivering an excellent shopping experience.

12. Secure In-app Payments

Secure in-app payment gives customers peace of mind by ensuring that their data and payments are fully protected against fraud. You should integrate a seamless checkout process into your mobile app.

It should include encrypted payment information and follow industry-standard security protocols, which ensure the safety of transactions. Focusing on security in your eCommerce mobile app ensures the safety of your customer’s sensitive information and also creates trust and confidence in your business.

13. One-click Purchase

Online buyers don’t wish to go through a lengthy checkout process to buy products. So, your mobile app must have a one-click purchase function. It makes the entire checkout process less complicated, minimizes friction, and is less time-consuming.

An eCommerce app should have a single button that allows customers to complete the transaction process with just one click. This contributes greatly to increasing conversion rates and also improves the overall user experience.

14. Customer Feedback

Customers are a better source for knowing what’s going well with your app and what’s not. They help you know about areas of improvement in your application.

Your eCommerce app should have a dedicated feedback section that encourages users to express their feedback about products. Users can write both positive and negative reviews about your products and services.

By getting feedback directly from your customers, you can highlight your value and gain valuable insight that can inform marketing strategy, product development, customer service initiatives, etc.

15. Voice Recognition System

Voice recognition systems are gaining popularity daily. A voice-enabled shopping experience lets customers search for products hassle-free. They can add various items to the cart and thus complete the entire transaction process with the use of their voice.

So, integrating voice recognition technology into your e-commerce application helps you create a frictionless shopping experience. This allows you to cater to multitasking consumers.

The major advantage of a voice recognition system is that it enables customers to place their orders even while they are engaged in other activities.

16. Different Shipping Options

An eCommerce app should provide a range of shipping options to offer flexibility to customers and thus get full control over delivery preferences. It helps you match the expectations of customers with different preferences by improving their overall shopping experience.

Offering a variety of shipping options, whether flat-rate options, free shipping thresholds, or carrier-specific services, is necessary to ensure customers can choose the appropriate method based on their actual requirements. This ensures higher customer satisfaction.

17. Product Ratings & Reviews

Product ratings and reviews are the first things customers go through before they buy any product. These basically act as social proof and verify the quality of products, thus giving customers every reason to buy them.

Your eCommerce app should have a dedicated section that can allow customers to share their experiences, opinions, and recommendations to buy any products.

The ratings and reviews help other shoppers make better purchasing decisions. Showing authentic feedback from customers helps make your brand trustworthy and credible.

18. Push Notifications

Push notifications act as a communication platform between brands and customers. It delivers timely and personalized notifications to ensure vast engagement and action. An eCommerce app integrated with push notifications can send notifications directly to users based on their purchasing behavior, browsing history, location, etc.

Push notification notifies customers about new arrivals, lucrative deals, and discounts. It helps you stay top-of-mind with customers and engage with them, increasing repeat purchases. With this, you can deliver timely and relevant messages that resonate with your customers and boost engagement.

19. Wishlist

Wishlist acts as a virtual shopping cart that enables users to list items that they wish to purchase in the future. While browsing an eCommerce application, users quite often stick to a product but don’t wish to purchase it just yet.

In this case, they can add products simply to their wishlist, where they are stored safely until they are ready to purchase them. So, if your eCommerce application has a wishlist feature, it reflects your wish to repeat user visits. You can create different categories of wishlists, including a holiday gift list, birthday wishlist, etc.

20. Item Availability

Item availability is another essential feature of an eCommerce app, which helps you manage customer expectations by minimizing their disappointment. Customers quite often get disappointed because items are out of stock.

If your app displays accurate information regarding the availability of items, it prevents customer disappointment by ensuring transparency and reliability.

Make sure your mobile application displays proper information regarding estimated restock dates, stock levels, alternative options, etc. This will help provide a seamless shopping experience for customers.

21. Personalized Content

Personalized content is pivotal to unlocking user engagement. To create personalized content, you need to get various details about your customers, including purchasing patterns, browsing history, etc. Leveraging algorithms makes this easy, and you can send personalized product recommendations, promotional deals, etc., accordingly.

With a personalized shopping experience, the application improves user satisfaction, increases conversion, and builds long-term customer loyalty. By offering personalized content, an app can create a deep connection with users and thus propel sales.

22. Buy Now, Pay Later

You can offer your customers the flexibility of buying now and paying later. You can integrate the ‘buy now, pay later’ feature into your eCommerce application, allowing customers to make quick purchases even without the restriction of any upfront payment. This minimizes the friction at checkout and encourages buyers.

Whether it’s diffusing payment to a later date or splitting payments into installments, this feature increases purchasing power. It’s the best option for those who don’t have enough budget to buy products or seek higher financial flexibility.

23. Membership

Your eCommerce application should include a feature like a dynamic membership program that provides a variety of exclusive advantages and rewards. By incentivizing users to become members, you can encourage them to do so.

The application improves a sense of belonging and community while offering tangible incentives for patronage.

The membership program improves the overall user experience by providing early access to sales, personalized recommendations, and members-only discounts. Once users increase through membership tiers, they can unlock various rewards, drive retention, improve lifetime value, etc.

24. Loyalty Programs

Implementing a robust loyalty program is essential to improving a culture of loyalty and appreciation. It also rewards users for their support and engagement.

Your eCommerce app should provide reward points, exclusive perks, discounts, etc., to encourage customers based on their overall spending and purchase frequency.

A loyalty program is beneficial for maintaining a greater relationship between applications and users. Whether users redeem rewards, earn points for every purchase, or get VIP status, a loyalty program creates a win-win situation for both brands and customers.

25. Advanced In-app Search Engine

An in-app search engine is essential to encourage users to find various products quickly and conveniently. You can incorporate various advanced features like sorting options, filters, predictive search functionality, etc.

These can streamline the overall discovery process, enabling users to find exactly what they are looking for even with minimum effort. In-app search engines greatly increase user satisfaction in several ways, such as refining search results by brand, category, and price range, predicting search queries, and incorporating user input.

The search engine works well by delivering great results in seconds. When you integrate an advanced in-app search engine into your application, it ensures users can effortlessly navigate vast product catalogs.

26. Customer Support

Another feature that your eCommerce application should have is powerful customer support. Your eCommerce app should provide expeditious customer support through in-app messaging, live chat, a dedicated helpline, etc.

The application should be capable of offering users quick access to knowledge support agents who can resolve their queries and provide complete guidance throughout the overall shopping journey.

When you provide personalized support and timely assistance, the application improves user reliability and relationships. It minimizes concerns between the brand and customers. It helps users feel highly supported by providing product recommendations, technical issues, troubleshooting, tracking orders, etc.

28. Intuitive Returns

A simple return and exchange process with a user-friendly interface and smooth flow effectively boosts trust in users. The application should be capable of offering guidance to users through every step of the return process, whether tracking the refund status or initiating or returning.

It should provide complete instruction and also instinctive design elements. An intuitive return process ensures increased repeat purchases by highlighting the application’s commitment to customer service and convenience.

Your application should be capable of offering users great confidence, whether it’s facilitating in-store returns for added facilities or returns for online purchases.

29. Barcode Scanning

With Barcode scanning, users find it convenient to gather detailed information regarding products hassle-free. By scanning OR codes in-store or barcodes, users can gather a variety of details such as product specifications, reviews, pricing, availability, etc.

With these details, users can make detailed price comparisons, find related items, check product ratings, and more. This helps them make the right decision about whether to purchase a particular product.

30. Shopping Cart

Your mobile application should optimize the shopping cart experience to streamline the entire checkout process and minimize cart abandonment rates. You can integrate simple cart management to improve the overall user experience.

It contributes greatly to maximizing your application’s conversion rate and thus excites users to complete their purchasing process with full confidence. Integrating an advanced in-app search engine into your application ensures users can effortlessly navigate vast product catalogs.

Whether customers wish to add items to the cart from product pages, edit quantities, or change preferences, shopping cart management helps them shop more efficiently and with less effort. It ensures a successful transaction.

31. Sales, Discounts And Giveaways

Offering discounts and giveaways are tried-and-tested ways of accelerating user engagement. Your app should be capable of displaying discounts, sales, exclusive offers, etc., to cajole potential buyers.

Through this feature, you can notify users about flash sales, limited-time promotions, or rewarding loyal customers. Offering sales and discounts excites buyers and thus encourages them to act promptly.

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Conclusion

After going through the above discussion, you may now have complete information regarding eCommerce mobile app features. It’s a good idea to make a list of all the features that you want to integrate into your mobile application.

You can also discuss these features with your eCommerce app development partner. They will advise you whether these features are appropriate for your eCommerce mobile app or not. They will also suggest any additional features that you can integrate into your app, apart from letting you know the overall eCommerce app development cost.

FAQs

01

What is an eCommerce mobile application?

An eCommerce application is software that enables customers to explore a list of products and buy various items from a store. These applications help businesses connect buyers to online stores and buy products. 

02

What is the difference between a mobile app and a website for e-commerce?

An eCommerce website serves as a platform where a company can list its products and access them through laptops, tablets, and mobiles. An application, on the other hand, can be downloaded and installed by smartphone users. A smartphone application is meant to serve mainly mobile users. 

03

Should my eCommerce store have an app?

Yes, your eCommerce store should have an application. It contributes greatly to increasing the conversion rate, which can boost profits. Mobile applications also work effectively to create brand credibility and thus strengthen customer relationships. 

04

How do I create an eCommerce mobile app?

To develop an ecommerce application, you can first perform thorough market research to understand your target customers, market scenarios, etc. After this, you can create a user-friendly interface to design your application with smooth navigation. Select a robust platform and then integrate a fully secure payment gateway. You can then create a powerful backend infrastructure for order process and inventory management. After this, you can complete the application testing and launching process.
About Author

Jayanti Katariya is the CEO of Moon Technolabs, a fast-growing IT solutions provider, with 18+ years of experience in the industry. Passionate about developing creative apps from a young age, he pursued an engineering degree to further this interest. Under his leadership, Moon Technolabs has helped numerous brands establish their online presence and he has also launched an invoicing software that assists businesses to streamline their financial operations.