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7 Advantages of Launching an E-Commerce Website and App Combination

Online stores have become the definition of shopping convenience. Most companies have found e-commerce stores helpful in reaching a wider customer base and increasing sales.

Key takeaways

  • Launching both an e-commerce site and an app suite provides a broader customer reach, serving 78% of app users and 22% of website users.
  • This combination increases customer engagement through personalized experiences, push notifications and desktop-friendly product browsing.
  • Higher conversion rates are achieved by combining trust metrics on websites with in-app chat support.
  • Better customer service is provided by frequently asked questions on the website and easy returns and exchanges in the app.
  • Brand loyalty is enhanced through consistent branding, loyalty programs and personalized offers across both platforms.
  • This combination leads to increased sales and revenues through wider reach and cross-promotion opportunities.
  • Building a website and app together can be more cost-effective than building them separately.

According to Tidio, 27% of people prefer online shopping to offline shopping, or 2.14 billion. Such statistics have inspired companies to turn to creating online stores to sell products. However, some companies create an e-commerce website or an e-commerce app, which can be a big mistake because we think that both are important. Let’s explore the advantages of launching or having a combination of an e-commerce website and an app.

1. Wider customer reach

According to Techosquare, 78% of customers prefer shopping on an e-commerce app rather than an e-commerce website, and the remaining 22% are comfortable using websites. Seeing that the number of online shoppers avoiding any of them can keep your business away from the attention of millions of customers.

Both e-commerce websites and mobile applications have their advantages. Where mobile apps provide incredible accessibility and convenience on smartphones and tablets, websites can look great on desktop computers. E-commerce websites can also be made mobile-friendly with responsive e-commerce website templates.

By focusing on both your website and mobile app, you can give your customers an impressive online shopping experience, regardless of their preferred device. This can also help you increase your sales, which we’ll discuss later.

2. Increased customer engagement

E-commerce mobile apps excel in providing a personalized user experience with features like push notifications, location-based offers, etc., while e-commerce websites can excel in the same regard with recommendations based on a user’s browser history, purchase history, and preferences. Additionally, e-commerce sites are believed to be better suited for viewing and rating listed products on desktop computers. Lack of any of these can negatively impact customer engagement, which could also impact your business.

By providing a personalized shopping experience, you can provide customers with an immersive and engaging way to explore your products. This can impress customers with an amazing shopping experience, which will result in increased customer satisfaction.

3. Higher conversion rates

The biggest advantage of e-commerce websites is that they can be operated on both smartphones and desktop computers. You can display trust metrics such as customer reviews, safety badges, and returns policies to build trust and credibility, something you can’t do in an e-commerce app. However, it may be perfect for providing in-app chat support. Neither trust metrics nor chat support can be compromised. With features like these, businesses can help customers make trusted decisions when making a purchase, helping them increase conversion rates.

4. Better customer service

With features like customer support and FAQs, businesses can help customers through an e-commerce website. The in-app support system can provide customers with easy returns or exchanges, supported by easy access to live status and relevant push notifications. With features like these and, of course, a combination of your e-commerce app and website, you can improve your customer service and ensure that customers find your services reliable, especially when they want to make an online purchase on your platform.

5. Greater brand loyalty

If you have both an e-commerce app and a website, you can easily focus on aspects such as consistent branding. By maintaining consistent branding through logo, color scheme and messaging, companies can easily create a unique identity for their online store among customers.

With e-commerce sites, you can offer tiered loyalty programs to motivate customers based on their spending (personalized discounts), recommend personalized offers, integrate email marketing campaigns, and integrate social media platforms.

On the other hand, in e-commerce applications, you can add elements such as badges, points, and leaderboards to increase excitement. You can also use push notifications to notify customers about your loyalty program benefits and latest offers. E-commerce apps are also considered ideal for offering referral bonuses.

With a combination of personalized discounts, offers, effective and non-intrusive email marketing, loyalty program benefits, notifications about the latest offers and referral bonuses, you can attract customers who will be loyal to your brand and will prioritize your platform when making a purchase. This can help you retain your customers better and smoother.

6. Increased sales and revenues

Wider customer reach, higher engagement, higher conversions, improved services and greater brand loyalty will help you increase your brand’s sales and revenues. Moreover, by combining an e-commerce website and an app, you can easily cater to the 78% of online shoppers who prefer online shopping apps, while the remaining 22% don’t mind e-commerce websites.

From a marketing perspective, both a website and an app can be used to promote each other, which is called cross-promotion. With this marketing strategy, you can encourage visitors or customers to explore both platforms, which can also be helpful in increasing brand awareness and driving traffic to both platforms.

7. Economical solution

For companies, everything ends when we discuss costs. At first, companies may have budget problems, so they may choose to build any of them. However, businesses can look for bundled deals that may offer some discounts on building an e-commerce app and website.

Businesses can also look for ready-made solutions, such as e-commerce website templates with apps that come with a ready-to-launch online store. If you end up building only an e-commerce site, you may need to build an app in the future and vice versa, which can be costly in the long run. Basically, creating an e-commerce application and a web solution can be profitable if companies can do both in one go.

How to create a combination of an app and an e-commerce storefront?

Build them from scratch

You can choose to build an e-commerce website and application from scratch, but this may be too expensive and time-consuming as it goes through many layers before completion. A few days spent on design, development, and testing can slow down your time to market, and you could end up spending thousands of dollars.

Pros

  • High accuracy
  • A non-standard solution

Defects

  • Dear
  • Time-consuming
  • Slower time to market

Get cost-effective online store template and MallBit app solution

You can also get E-commerce website template and MallBit app solution to speed up time to market. It is also a cost-effective solution as it costs several hundred dollars. This e-commerce store template is developed on the user side and the application is fully developed, which reduces your efforts and speeds up your online store launch.

Pros

  • Economical
  • Ready to use
  • Faster time to market
  • No-coding solution
  • Customizable

Generally, e-commerce store templates and app scripts only lag behind in terms of customization, but this is not the case with MallBit as it offers a fully customizable solution that allows businesses to make changes to the app and website as per the brand requirements

Application

First of all, combining an e-commerce website and an app helps you reach a wider audience. Plus, building them both together can be a cost-effective solution. Solutions like MallBit e-commerce website template and clone script provide a cost-effective, ready-to-use and code-free solution for building an online store that can be a cheaper alternative to custom e-commerce applications and website development, considering the advantages of combining e-commerce applications -commerce and website discussed above. However, to achieve recognizable success, you need to understand the market. Offering competitive prices and providing reliable services is the key to the success of e-commerce stores.