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eCommerce App Builder to Create Your E-Commerce App  In Minutes With Ultimate Features Now [Without Coding] 

 
 
Build your full-fledged app for e-commerce business and publish for iOS, Android, and desktop users with simple steps, with all the features to enhance customers' shopping experience. 
Over 8000 customers have created their apps using our platform since we launched in January 2021. 
Create your app free
Try it free - Credit card not required
 
 

eCommerce app development with our platform is simple

  1. Sign up and choose a theme from the collection
  2. Customize the chosen theme to make it unique toy our branding
  3. Add your content
  4. Publish it to Apple App Store and Google Play Store
Build your app

Features

Push notifications

Send unlimited push notifications. Schedule and send  targeted notifications using tag manager to group your customers.

Online chat

Built-in online chat assistant that can chat in your customer's language. Or, you can also change to any one of the popular third-party chat programs that we have already integrated.

Several payment methods

Reduce cart abandonment by giving more payment methods. Our eCommerce app builder supports, Payrexx, PayPal, Stripe, Twint, DataTrans, Wallee, COD, Vouchers, and the list grow.
 
 
Build your e-commerce app
 
 

Loyalty program

Increase customer loyalty by rewarding your buyers. Zappter offers turnkey reward options such as pay with Stamps, or you can also set up a full-fledged loyalty points system, whichever suits best for your business.

Built-in CRM

Our mobile app builder comes with built-in CRM that helps convert more customers through effective communication, build sustainable relationships to reduce the cost of each sale. 

Product listing 

Appealing product listing is an essential part of the user experience. It funnels the user to product detail, then conversion.  You can create multi-levels of category/subpages for organizing items and customize the UI. Then collectively control sell-settings of all items on the category. 
Build your e-commerce app

Simplify product searches

Enhance your eCommerce store's shopping experience by giving options to search for products, add favorite products to user profiles, show related products, and even attach selected product categories to the app's upper bar or bottom bar for popular items. 

Surcharges, taxes, tips, and shipment

Define & dynamically handle your Surcharges, Shipment, Taxes, Tips, and Gratuity charges and costs according to your business needs. 

Checkout rules

Use fulfillment rules to control what to sell, when to sell, where to sell, and also whom to sell. Collect customer data before settlement for insights, enforce a payment method, etc., based on business rules that you define 
 
 
Sign up, build, publish on iOS & Android
 
 

Promotions and discounts

 Set up promotions and discounts, then launch a campaign using built-in marketing tools such as push notifications, emails, social media integrations, and landing pages. 

Integration with Shopify and WooCommerce

If you're already selling on a leading provider like Shopify or BigCommerce, you don't have to redo the catalog on your eCommerce app. The app maker is already integrated with these platforms, and you can easily import all products or selected ones. 

Product modifiers and ingredients

User modifiers to add variations to your product listings. Use ingredients and Article Groups for combo or package sales. 
Build your app

User behavior analytics and insights

Comprehensive reports on transaction and customer data. Use the built-in analytics to get an insight of your business. 

Start rating of your products and services

Set up customer rating of your selling items. And, use it to see insights for improvements or show them on the content for other potential buyers 

Social media integrations

Integrated with over 10 popular social media platforms. 

Marketing plugins

Several marketing plugins to strategize your marketing efforts 
 
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Sign up & start building your e-commerce app

App builder pricing

  • Pricing is only for these features: eCommerce, bookings, event management, and landing pages. These are pluggable features. 
  • The features discussed under the 'eCommerce mobile app maker benefits' section are free. These features are either built-in or pluggable at any time.
  • Check out Zappter Calculator to get an accurate cost to build your eCommerce business app with us. 
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Try building your app free with all the features. Use the Price Calculator to check the cost to continue with features that best address your business needs.
Sign up
No credit card required

Beispiel Text

"I like the adaptability of this product. Most of my clients are startups and established small hotels and hotel tech providers. Whenever they look for a quick, economical, and brandable app for their business, I most of the time suggest this product and I do help them set up their app on a web app, and App Store, 
and Play Store "  
"Cool options to build without large developer teams" 
"Super simple but powerful enough to put me competitive" " 
"I am able to customize my package sales using e-commerce plugin. This is perfect way to increase my revenue because I can sell my items individually or as part of package" 
"It was easy to make my app" 

Beispiel Text

You app themes maybe used by many customers. I need my app with a unique design, is it possible?

Of course, it is possible. When it comes to designing and redesigning, Zappter is at the forefronts. With Zappter, it's not necessary to select an app theme to build your app. App themes or also called app templates are provided to simplify your app-building by using them as starting points. And from there, it's easier for you to customize the theme entirely to turn that into your brand's unique app design.

How much time do I really need to build my app?

It takes only a few minutes to build your app. However, depending on your needs and preference, you can even spend a whole day customizing your app design until you're satisfied with the outcome. 

Do I need to have my own developer account to publish on app stores? 

No. Once you have used Zappter's app store wizard and prepared your app for submission, Zappter takes care of the rest and you can always check status. 
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Learn more about developing your eCommerce app with an app builder as a user.

Your eCommerce mobile app features can make or break your online business success. Here I am showing you how I choose the best eCommerce mobile app builder with features to create a profitable e-commerce mobile app for my business. 

Topics covered:

  1. Do you need an eCommerce app?
  2. These are the options if you're getting into eCommerce
  3. These are the best eCommerce platforms for startups now in 2021, and why?
  4. Here are the best eCommerce platforms for small and medium business, and why?
  5. What are the best eCommerce platforms for you?
  6. What you should expect from an eCommerce platform you choose?
  7. Why you should prioritize on eCommerce (m-commerce) apps and not on websites?
  8. If I were you, here are the thing I look for when I am shifting my business to online shopping
  9. Steps to build your eCommerce app
  10. Boost your business with your eCommerce app
  11. Here is how to stay competitive with your eCommerce app

1. Do you need an eCommerce app?

The short answer is, yes.  We look at it in a different way because we don't say that you need an eCommerce app because it helped many businesses survive the pandemic because the businesses survived as their products or services were still needed during those tough days. However, among those mandatory businesses, whoever had apps were able to do well or at least stay afloat.

Even before we heard of Covin-19, the brick-and-mortar businesses were initiating their moves from offline to online, but at a snail pace. Pandemic only pulled the trend that was going to happen in ten years, now. It's about the trend, your business should catch up in order to meet present and future consumer needs.

2. These are the options if you're getting into eCommerce

eCommerce app development is becoming easier than you think. You now have the business-focused, fully managed app-building tools such as Zappter's eCommerce mobile app builder with built-in features to create eCommerce mobile apps interactively using drag and drop. You don't have to be a developer or hire a development agency to develop your eCommerce mobile app. 

Because your business needs an app that is business-focused and user-centered from every angle to face your competition today, throughout this post, I'm going to be discussing the details and how you can create your powerful eCommerce mobile app in simple terms with easy steps. 

Challenge with e-commerce app development using an app builder

Alright, eCommerce mobile app building platforms are increasingly popping up, and every one of them seems to attract business owners. There is no well-defined answer to which one of them is the best. 
Even the app builder vendors want your ideas and opinions to know how they can improve features of their products. 
Take for instance, we all love MS Excel, a feature-rich, friendly spreadsheet program (Sorry Google Sheets). Some go to the extent to say that the best program Microsoft has ever made. Despite facts and rumors, there are many features, I have seen being hardly used — “useless to many users!” 
  
The same goes with these app builders too. There are plenty of features that appeal to the majority, while a few seem to be the favorite of selected users. 
You as a business owner or manager can only see what value a feature can bring to your business operation - no one else.  
Because out of tons of features these tools come with, it's you who would know which ones will help you achieve your goals or save your business lots of money implementing them. 

eCommerce mobile app development

In this post, I want to be someone who has realized the importance of having a mobile app for my business's success and has just started trying out an eCommerce mobile app builder to create an eCommerce app to help my business take a 360-degree turn.  And gain a competitive edge among the rest. Let us dive deep! 
When you choose to create your eCommerce app with Zappter, you get two distinct advantages:

  1. Fully customizable UI that is only comparable with the custom mobile app development.
  2. The packed eCommerce features that you can turn on and off to customize your app to handle your simple or complex business.
Zappter works with four core business features (plugins):
  1. E-Commerce plugin
  2. Reservations & Booking plugin
  3. Events plugin
  4. Landing Page plugin
Because business app-building can't be complete or meet the needs without comprehensively looking into these areas. At Zappter, we developed these plugins with full functionalities to support businesses of small, medium, and large sizes. 

The plugins are ready to accommodate the requirements to address various business needs of different owners with a few tweaks
Then we have the other hundreds of supportive plugins that adds value and perfection to your core business plugins. It is how we simplify your app-building experience and enhance your app's UX.

E-commerce app example 

eCommerce Mobile App - Clothing Store

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You're not an app designer. But you have the freedom to put your imagination to work. Create the best user interface (UI) that's unique to your brand. The platform takes care of technical stuff for you. 
 Build Your eCommerce Mobile App 
 No Credit Card Required 

eCommerce Mobile App - Online Orders 

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It's not just the UI you can design like a custom-development, even functionalities. You drag and drop the feature to add to your app, then use it with the default settings or change every detail to your business needs. 
 Build Your App - Take Online Orders 
 No Credit Card Required 

I am a business owner without an eCommerce mobile app for my business. 

For over a decade, I have been running my clothing boutique store without a mobile app, but with just a basic static website that does nothing other than displaying a few images and spell out my brand with few texts. 
What I realized is that it is only the sales that decreased throughout the years, while the salaries, bills, utilities, rent, ad spend, etc., all increased - obviously. The reason?
I have not been able to cope up with the competition. To put it more precisely, I don't have customer data that I can convert into insights; obviously, I know nothing about customer demands. Buying habits changed but not the way how I have been doing the business. 
Perhaps, I knew,  wanted an eCommerce app, but not before the pandemic and a few lockdowns that I realize that an eCommerce app also is about survival for my business or any business for that matter. 

My competitors with an eCommerce app or web store

I have bigger competitors on the same street and around. And my business started to taste bitter when I started to see previously unseen competitors started to crop up on the internet. 
They offer at much cheaper prices, large varieties to offer their customers, and above all, they can reach out to their customers and potential customers directly, which I couldn't do much - virtually. 
They even offer loyalty programs, which my little business can’t even dream of. 
So I started to feel my business is being buried in the competition day in and day out as the consumer behavioral shift is unfolding. And COVID-19 is pouring fuel onto it.
It is when I realize that I need a new channel that can promote my business directly to the customers and the potential customers wherever they are. And keep them engaged and loyal. 
So all I want is a positive effect on the bottom line to see my business improves - to boost sales. I wanted to sell online using an eCommerce app! The next big challenge is where I should start from? 
eCommerce business: Some of eCommerce app features of Zappter include:

  • Multi-store eCommerce app, single signup to handle all your chain of stores with centralized administration.
  • Sell your items individually and as packages with multiple items included.
  • Content manager: Have complete control over every little detail of the items you sell such as pricing, SKU, images, sell-button, and item description.
  • Upsell, cross-sell, recommend linked-items.
  • Customer ratings and comments.
  • Create your loyalty programs and enable users to collect/spend points.
  • Unlimited push notification: You should have a reasonable strategy when it comes to push notifications, but the platform offers you the key to control they way you want it.
  • Control selling days and hours at app level and override at single item levels.
  • Allow customers to mark their favorite items so they can quickly add them to their cart on repeated visits
  • Categories, sub-categorize your listing and even add chosen categories to app's upperbar and bottombar.
  • Add surcharges, shipping charges and taxes to your selling items.
  • Customize your shopping cart and its behavior to choose your type of business and enhance your user experience. 
  • You can also define sell-rules that make any buyer eligible to buy such as delivery perimeters, validate user data and many more options.
  • SMS marketing: Like the power of push notifications, SMS marketing has the power to send your message right into customer hands. Another advantage is, even if the customer has put off pushes from your brand, you still have a chance to reach out to the customers.
  • The list goes on...
Your eCommerce app for bookings is intuitive and full-scale with Zappter. The Reservations plugin has several simple & complex booking features that you can turn on or off to adapt your app to work with your business requirements.

With this plugin, you can turn your app into a hotel booking engine, spa, salon, car rental, or any business model that involves simple to complex booking operations.

Readymade eCommerce app

As it sounds, a readymade eCommerce app might be scary. First, my business requirements won't fit into a premade solution. Most of the time, these readymade solutions serve the purpose of the mobile app maker than a business. These are the solutions that Apple hates and rejects being published on their App Store, though so far no issues with an Android app. To oversimplify app creation, the vendor platforms create cloned copies of generic templates. So, it's going to look exactly as someone else's app design with your data. I will stay away from these platforms.

eCommerce platform with mobile app

These are well-established eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce and Shopify. It's a sort of 'plug and play solution for brick-and-mortar businesses who want to expand their business into an online presence using a websites builder. These platforms are neat, advanced in what they do - online sales. 

However, they have heavy monthly costs involved with very limited customizability. While how much you can adapt to your branding needs is a question, they are not CMS (content management systems). So you're limited if you want to add some rich content like videos, audios, carousels to make your online presence a bit colorful. Not a solution that I am looking for.

eCommerce mobile app framework

These are app development platforms for developers who do the coding to build apps. So, they're not for non-techie business owners without coding knowledge.

eCommerce mobile app builder

When it comes to developing my eCommerce mobile application, it might be the right choice as long as I can customize the app design the way I want to. And it can address all the simple to complex business requirements of my shopping app. But I still need to choose between mobile app and website. 

It leaves me or any retail businesses with several more confusions: eCommerce website, free eCommerce app, paid app, and more; which one to choose and where to start from before I can start selling? 

Do I really need to sell online? Yes. So I can sell through an ecommerce mobile app and website (mainly desktop). Question arises as to prioritize on smartphones or desktop.

Mobile app vs website; which one helps me reach my targets faster? 

I know that I need to start a rigorous marketing strategy to catch what I have been missing. So, I would prioritize looking at developing my eCommerce app for these reasons: 
  • for increasing my engagement with target customers, I need a customized app to reach out to them to promote my business and what it has to offer them unobtrusively. Send them unlimited push notifications on discounts, sales, new products, and relevant news
  • Researches suggest that today’s consumers prefer using their mobile devices to buy products & services. M-Commerce (e-commerce done through using mobile devices) has poised to burst into the mainstream due to changing consumer behavior
  • And not forget the spending power of tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z'ers who prefer shopping with their smartphones, mobile eCommerce. So I need to take this group of potential customers seriously to convert more customers for any business expansion.
Now decided, my next move is to check how I am going to develop an app for my business? 
Online shopping used to be popular among younger generations in modern and advanced countries around the world. Not anymore, because of the increased use of smartphones, the shift in purchase power from the US/EU to China & Southeast Asia, and now the pandemic, the shopping online has become ubiquitous.

So, an average consumer’s online shopping interests and behavior are evolving at a rapid pace. Today more people across different countries prefer buying products & services using their smartphones. It creates dire need for having apps for your eCommerce.

Plus, eCommerce had already been on the rise in many industries when WHO declared COVID-19 as the global pandemic in March 2020. The announcement followed by lockdowns & distancing upsurged the online purchases even more, and eCommerce flourish with a large number of first-timers (both on the consumer and provider sides) joining the trend — it continues without any sign of slowing down.

Leading provider, Shopify is a good example, it helped many small businesses to set up eCommerce websites for their online store to spur the demand and survive the brands until reopen the doors.
As we witness, the Coronavirus impacted the retail sector badly and profoundly. The closure of brick-and-mortar stores shifted the sales from retail to e-retail. As a result, it created opportunities for eCommerce solutions, eCommerce websites, and eCommerce apps. 

But a large portion of eCommerce success wouldn’t have been achieved without mobile devices taking part in these transactions

Types of Mobile Apps by Technology

Hang on before I get my feet wet. It's worth discussing types of mobile app technologies:
 
  •  Native apps: These types of apps are 'native' because an app is developed for one particular mobile operating system, such as Apple's iOS or Google's Android. They're intuitive, fast, and native UI looks good. However, I can't afford to hire a development agency to develop my app because it can cost me more than $10k upfront just for one platform. On top of that, it can take months to complete. Above all, I need to repeat the process for each platform, iOS & Android - which is a BIG 'no way' for me. And, I am not planning to develop next UBER app or a COD game app. 
  • Hybrid apps: Instead, these hybrid apps, you only need to develop once and they can work on multiple platforms with one codebase. Naturally, my option is this because I am going to use an eCommerce mobile app builder to develop my app (and, I explain below sections why I choose the app builders). These builders develop your apps for both of the most popular platforms, Apple iOS, and Google Android. Also offers a web application (or web app)

How to create an eCommerce mobile app for desktop, iOS and Android? 

 
 
I have one of three different choices to go with my eCommerce store: 
1. Hire a development agency to develop my app. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and I need to allocate someone with technical knowledge to collaborate with the developer team.
Once deployed, I need to keep going back to them for modifications and upgrades — so a tech-savvy employee dedicated to attending to these needs is inevitable. 
I don’t think it’s something that I can afford at this moment, especially when every second counts, and is crucial. The more time it takes for my app to hit the market, the deeper my business is going to be buried in the competition. Then, resources and the costs? I don’t think I am ready for it right now. Most importantly, is there a thing among my needs that an online builder can’t handle these days? Read on to find that out. 
2. Use an app generation service to create an app. Simplest, easiest, and cheapest solution. It’s because I just need to sign up with one of these service providers and they’re going to set my app with an identical-looking working template of many others who have used the same service. 
But wait, it’s not an ideal solution that any business owner wants to choose if he truly loves to develop his business with an app; why? In 2017, Apple released an App Store guideline that would reject specifically targeting this sort of cloned app templates. 
I wouldn’t want to risk getting rejected on one of two major app stores when my target is to distribute my app amongst the largest user base possible — No thanks to these app generation services. 
3. Sign up with a professional builder for e-commerce to create an app for my business. Here are the winning points for me as a small business owner choosing this method: 
I don’t have to block a huge investment or take months of work to launch my mobile app. The end result, the quality is on par with a custom-developed app, or in some cases, I would say even better since the app builder companies are vying with each other to produce quality products that undergo heavy testings before releasing of each component and functionality. 
And, unlike with previously spoken app generators, these app builders have the capability to build your business app based on existing templates to simplify your task, yet provide the right tools to heavily customize an app to look and feel unique, ultimately creating your profitable sales channel.
Now that I know what I need to do, my next serious task is to evaluate some of the best app builder products on the market to start building. But, before that, here is the set of criteria, based on which I would select the best app builder partner for my business app-building. 

App Builder Criteria 

  • I am not tech-savvy or a developer. I expect my chosen app builder to guide me throughout the process of building my app. Even though many platforms advertise to build apps in minutes, to be practical, I have no issues in taking a few days to build my app perfectly even if I am using an eCommerce mobile app maker
  • As I expect my app to do a lot of outreach and engagement, I know the most important thing for me to have my business presence on major app stores like Google Play and App Store. So I expect the app builder to smoothen this aspect by guiding my way for an optimized app store submission
  • Similarly, I am going to be a heavy push notification strategist to take my marketing efforts to the next levels. So I would often be creating promotions, then send instant pushes on my promotions, schedule pushes, and most importantly, target audiences based on several metrics. As I am going to be heavily dependent on push notifications, I need to make sure that I don’t overdo to the extent that my users switch off notifications from my business. I am sure, with the right strategy along with carefully targeting the right audience for the right messages will not only keep avoid becoming spam but also increase user engagement, so I will target based on location, age group, gender, and buyer preferences
  • And, I need to integrate with major social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Insta, and YouTube. When users share their brand experience through social media, my business gains, probably the most powerful marketing and brand push there since no marketing tactics can beat word of mouth.
And I want to offer my users some of the best shopping experiences. I would focus on several areas here, and they are:
  • I want to organize my listings in a way that my customers should be easily able to recognize products. And, provide some listings of frequently used items easily accessible from anywhere within the app. Say, well-organized listings with images, and quick access to frequently purchased items from the header bar or bottom bar of the app. And, there is an ‘item search’ option available from the main screen to assist those users who are in hurry to find their items.
  • Add support for addons, such as ingredients and modifiers to be added along with the main items my users select to buy. And, I should have the control to price or not price these items along with the main items.
  • When checking out, I need to support my customers with several payment methods so that I can reduce cart abandonment in case a customer doesn’t have one particular.
  • I want to have control over where we deliver by ZIP codes or any perimeter that my business can afford to deliver.
  • When I do deliver or accept an order, I should be able to set controls or learn more about a buyer and intentions — as this server for security as well as collecting buyer preferences to better serve in the future.
  • Currently, I need to support VAT postings along with the purchases, but in the future, I am also planning to add posting Tips.
  • There is also one important requirement that I can’t overlook as a seller; it is to properly calculate the shipping cost of an item and charge that amount back to the buyer so I don’t have to pull my hair when trying to trace my losses.
  • Last but not least, a comprehensive refund option where I should be able to select full refund or retained refund to keep some service charges incurred to return the rest to the buyer.

Build an app that takes care of my overall eCommerce operation

  • Then comes, the most important part of my operation that should be handled accurately; processing customer orders and communications. Importantly, I will need my team of designated individuals to handle the day-to-day tasks while I need to see complete transparency of the entire operation and jump in to take over whenever and wherever needs arise.
  • Finally, I want to use the data to understand the complete picture of how my customers and users perceive the app and utilize the insights to improve the business for the betterment of my users as well as my revenues.
Well, these are my basic or little more than the basics that I expect from any app builder as I am sure any app builder with these capabilities would be not just your partner but the best companion that anyone can reply on doing business with.