Why eCommerce Websites Outmatch Mobile Apps in Retail

Whether you own an existing retail business or planning a start-up, but when you decide to jump into this dazzling eCommerce industry, you’ll probably get confused between choosing eCommerce website or mobile app.

This graph posted by Rakuten Intelligence clearly shows the exponential growth of eCommerce market amid Covid-19 pandemic.

With the use of mobile phones increasing rapidly, this eCommerce website vs mobile app debate has emerged and many business owners often find it difficult to culminate and get stumbled while making a firm choice.

This imperative decision is particularly taken after analyzing various parameters and collective data-driven approaches. Besides, there are pros & cons on each side, we’re going to explain why eCommerce website clearly outperforms the Mobile App due to these 5 important reasons:-

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Your customers can find you in enormous ways if you have done SEO of your eCommerce website in the right way and it is ranking on some popular targeted keywords. More website traffic means increased brand awareness and eventually leading to high conversions.

On other hand, SEO cannot be performed on eCommerce mobile apps. The only way to increase your reach is to convince your audience to download your application.

It should be noted that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint! It takes a lot of your time and efforts to get decent positions in Google SERPs. But it is worth every penny because the results are very much delightful.

2) Search and Social Media Ads

You must have thought about the advertising and marketing of your products and there’s no better solution for eCommerce industry than Google and Facebook Ads.

You can use Google Adwords, Display ads, Remarketing campaigns and even Video ads (Youtube) to spike your sales curve. You can also leverage the social media platforms like Facebook to give your eCommerce sales a boost. There are many decent free Facebook Ad creators which can make this process swift for you. And these all propitious channels are website-friendly.

3) Content Management Systems (CMS)

There are enough content management systems in market that can cater to your eCommerce business. They can be purchased on a subscription-basis and offer thousands of plugins and themes to ensure a thriving highly-functional eCommerce platform.

Some of the most prestigious eCommerce platforms in 2021:-

i) Shopify

ii) Magento

iii) WooCommerce

iv) BigCommerce

v) OpenCart

Furthermore, there are many good CRMs available in the market which can be integrated with the above popular content management systems to smoothen your workflow. For example, a tool named Salesmate integrates amazingly with Shopify allowing you to organize all the things at one place.

4) Development Cost and Timeline

It is no secret that developing eCommerce mobile app can burn your pockets deep. And to make it worse, a feature-rich application will take enormous development time to get ready.

But as the premise is very much true, the multiple eCommerce CMS available in the market can offer you cheaper and quicker solution comparatively with their ready-made templates to give you a boost-start.

Even if your mobile app is launched, you'll still require developer's expertise for regular updates in order to maintain it properly. While in case of websites, the user-friendly web control panels facilitate you to manage the website with much more ease.

So, if you’re looking for a reasonable solution and want to take things forward immediately, developing an eCommerce mobile app will certainly not be an optimal choice.

5) Ease in Purchase

Apart from Google Ads, Social Media marketing is another prime channel to market your products and grab a big junk of revenue. There are plenty of other platforms but Facebook, Twitter and Instagram proved to be the best for eCommerce products.

So, you can redirect users from these social media platforms to your own eCommerce site and they can make a purchase within a few clicks. Thus, making it very easy and convenient for them.

But in case of mobile app, they obviously have to wait till downloading the app before making any purchase. And it is really a huge pitfall which often acts as an obstacle in the buying process.

Final Words:-

We listed out the top advantages of a website instead of a mobile app to give you a head-start in your eCommerce journey. But the importance of mobile applications cannot be neglected at any cost to stick to your loyal customers 24x7.

Also, the latest technological advancements opened multiple doors to develop their eCommerce Mobile Application with different frameworks & technologies such as Native, Hybrid and Cross-Platform.

Look at some of the most popular eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba, Flipkart, eBay, they use omni-channel approach and focus on both the strategies along with Google ads and Social media marketing.

If you’ve enough time and money to invest, we highly recommend you to develop both i.e eCommerce Website and Mobile Application.

Also published at: https://raaquibp.medium.com/why-ecommerce-website-outmatches-mobile-app-for-any-retail-business-aabef2cd006b