According to Statista, mobile phones have already become the main devices for retail website traffic. Tablets are another driver for the mCommerce revolution. Yes, the revolution is coming indeed! By 2025, mobile sales in the US are expected to reach $728.28 billion.
Those numbers are truly thought-provoking. If you already own a Magento website but don’t have a Magento mobile app, we strongly recommend putting it on your to-do list. In this article, we’ll give you all the information to make it easier:
- Why should you create a mobile app for Magento?
- What’s a native Magento mobile application?
- Should you create a separate Magento app for iOS and Android?
- What’s a PWA solution and how can it help your business?
- What are the benefits of the GoMage PWA Storefront?
So, without further ado, let’s dive into it.
Why Expand into mCommerce in 2022
So, why exactly do you need a mobile app for Magento? Get prepared; even more numbers are coming your way.
- Consumers are relying on their mobile phones now more than ever: around 77% of US consumers use their phones to compare prices while shopping in stores; 67% do window shopping on their mobile phones.
- Mobile sales are a major driver of holiday sales: for instance, on Cyber Monday 2018, 51% of website traffic came from smartphones; on that day, mobile sales generated $2 billion in the US alone.
- Mobile sales are convenient: 76% of consumers say mobile shopping saves them time. Besides, most consumers (67%) have at least one retailer app on their phones.
- The two largest generations mostly use phones to shop: Gen Z (65%) and Millennials (82%).
To sum up, without a mobile presence, you risk experiencing a decline in your sales and depriving your customers of a convenient way to shop. Apart from that, with a Magento eCommerce app, reaching out to two generations holding massive spending power, Gen Z and Millenials, is easier.
Best Ways to Create Magento App for Magento
Now that we established that the Magento mobile app is an absolute necessity in the 21st century, let’s figure out the ways to create it. Two main of them are:
- Creation of a native mobile app
- Creation of a PWA
Let’s take a closer look at them and decide which one of these will cost you less but benefit your business more.
Native Magento eCommerce App Development
Native app is a mobile software built for a particular device or platform. For instance, a Magento iOS app and a Magento Android app are both native apps. They can be used on devices that run either on iOS, or on Android, like phones or tablets. An iOS app for Magento is usually written from scratch in Objective-C or Swift, while native Android apps are created in Java or Kotlin.
Let’s see how those native applications perform in the following 5 categories: development cost and time, connection dependability, performance, customer experience, and discoverability.
Development cost and time
If you decide to go with a native app, bear in mind that you will have to build not one mobile app for Magento but two; one for iOS users and one for Android users. Those are the two separate code bases, which influences a price greatly.
The starting price for building any eCommerce app is $50,000. Creating another iOS or Android app for Magento will cost you twice as much. When it comes to timing, on average, you’ll need 6 months to build just one native Magento mobile app. That’s quite a lot.
Connection dependability
In general, native apps do have the potential to work without the Internet. However, that’s not usually the case for eCommerce mobile apps, especially for the most important feature – product catalog. Your customers won’t be able to browse it if they are offline.
Performance
The speed of your app is as important as the speed of your website. In eCommerce, you have to hook your customer from the first second! But if they are waiting for too long, the desired purchase may never happen…
But no worries here! Any type of a native mobile app for Magento is usually pretty fast. Built specifically for some platforms and compiled using the platform’s core programming language, native Magento mobile apps are very efficient. In addition, since any Magento iOS app or Magento Android app is stored on a particular device, software leverages the device’s processing speed.
Customer experience
Making a mobile app for Magento is a great choice to boost customer loyalty. Native apps, in particular, offer great hardware accessibility. They are also good at interfacing with the device’s native features and information. You can reach out to your customers with push notifications or build communities thanks to the seamless integration with social platforms. With native mobile apps for Magento, people can always get personalized experience without logging in every time they come back.
Discoverability
As you probably understood by now, native apps can be downloaded through the app stores only. So, your users would have to go to the store, find your app, and download it manually. In addition, all the app updates must also be installed the same way.
So, now that you know what native apps are and how they work, let’s move on to the PWA development and break down its pros and cons.
Magento PWA Development
PWA, or a Progressive Web Application, combines the best of an app and a traditional website. Simply put, this technology allows you to turn the website on Magento to mobile app. PWAs are built with web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but resemble the functionality of a native mobile app.
Wait a minute! How is it possible and what does this wonder app look like? Well, the trick is that PWAs launch through your browser on any device. Does the PWA technology meet all the criteria we’ve outlined earlier? Let’s see!
Development cost and time
With PWA, you can get both a website and an app under one technology. PWA has a common code base across all platforms. Moreover, it can be released at any time, since it doesn’t need approval from any app store. If you already have a Magento website, you can get a PWA running in just a few months.
All of this cuts the cost of web development and helps to market your app faster.
Connection dependability
PWAs can work properly offline. Thus, you won’t lose your customers even when their connection suddenly gets cut in the subway, for instance. The reason is cache.Yes, PWAs cache information and that’s why they can operate even in the offline mode. Thanks to that, you can provide your users with a more consistent experience without dropping them back to the home page in case their connection shuts down.
Performance
For the same reason, PWAs can be pretty fast. Since they cache a lot of information, your customers won’t wait long until the page becomes interactive. A nice bonus is that by cutting the waiting time, PWAs also reduce the bounce rate.
Customer experience
PWAs also offer some powerful engaging tools like push-notification, integrations with social platforms and utilization of most hardware features, such as cameras or microphones. As for the appearance, PWAs usually look like a normal native app, but customers can access them right from a browser. That’s why they feel intuitive and provide a seamless experience. Besides, with PWAs, users won’t need to manually install any updates and get a rich experience on mobile and web. All of the customers will be automatically updated to the same version.
Discoverability
Since PWAs work like websites, they can be indexed by search engines! It makes them more discoverable on the Internet. When customers decide, they can add them to their home screens in just a click.
Liked what you read about PWA development? Talk to GoMage about creating one for your business!
Now that you know about two types of Magento mobile development, let’s see which one is best suitable for your business.
Magento Mobile App vs Magento PWA Development: Which is Better
A lot to process, huh? No worries, we’re here to help you with a PWA vs native mobile app decision. Let’s compare those two ways of building a Magento mobile application!
- PWA will definitely save you more money on Magento mobile development. As we’ve mentioned, it has a common code base for all of the platforms. But if you land on a native solution, you will need a Magento iOS app and a Magento Android app. The process of creating these Magento eCommerce apps will most likely be long and costly.
- Unlike a native app, PWA can work offline. It’s good at caching website content, remember? But as for the speed, your native app and your PWA are equally fast.
- When it comes to customer experience, both of those options provide a decent personalisation and offer some great engaging features. However, native Magento eCommerce apps can be downloaded from just one app store and are very dependent on those stores. PWAs, on the other hand, work independently and don’t need manual updating. Still, you can upload them to app stores just like native apps.
Creating a native Magento eCommerce app is not a bad option; however, it’s not as efficient as building a PWA. You can launch a PWA faster, it won’t cost you that much and will engage your customers even while they are offline!
Not to mention the fact that with PWA, you will get both a mobile and a desktop app. There’s no need to hire two developer teams and make one Magento app for iPhone and another one for Android. You will get a great Magento mobile app applicable that will work on any device regardless of the operating system.
Development of a Magento App: How GOPWA Can Help
If you’re still hesitating if you should go for a PWA option, we have a great tool which may convince you to! To make the process of Magento mobile app development as seamless as possible, GoMage created a solution called GoMage PWA Storefront! It will help build a Magento eCommerce app while saving time and money. But how exactly does it work?
With GoMage PWA Storefront, your website will still run on the Magento backend, meaning all your data will be safe. However, you’ll get a frontend which is completely independent of Magento! It will give you endless possibilities in terms of marketing, Magento eCommerce design, and user experience. Let’s take a closer look at some of them!
- Easy installation
You can install GoMage PWA Storefront just using the PWA Installer module. After that, it will automatically pop up in the Magento admin panel.
- Built-in features for enhanced user experience
GoMage PWA Storefront is equipped with fast checkout, PayPal checkout, product search and advanced filters.
- Integrated Google Analytics
Unlike other Magento themes, GOPWA offers integration with Google Analytics. It’s great for marketing purposes and measuring your store’s performance.
- Out-of-the-box integrations
GoMage PWA Storefront comes packed with a number of powerful integrations, such as TrustPilot, Algolia Search, Magefan Blog, Zendesk Chat, Klevu Search, MailerLite, and many others.
- Style customization
GoMage PWA Storefront is highly customizable, so you won’t have any problems changing the layout of pages, tweaking styles, and making your webstore unique.
GoMage PWA Storefront is based on Magento PWA Studio and compatible with all Magento and Magento PWA Studio updates. Magento PWA Studio updates released together with Magento releases. So, it’s always equipped with all the newest Adobe features!
Magento Mobile App: Summing Up
Whether you decide to create a native Magento mobile application or a PWA depends on many individual factors, like your business goals and your budget. However, if you want something that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, and will run smoothly on every device, go with a PWA. We promise you won’t regret it!
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