Every youngster, teenager, and adult uses a mobile device! Are you reading this blog on your mobile phone? The chances that you are reading this on your smartphone are extremely high. Mcommerce applications are a comprehensive solution for creating a stunning online store that provides an amazing shopping experience to online shoppers. Oberlo estimates that mobile commerce will reach $2.91 trillion in 2020, a 25.4% increase over 2019.
The mobile commerce market is expected to increase by a further 22.3%, reaching $3.56 trillion by 2021. According to the same study, there are currently 5.1 billion smartphone users worldwide, and the number is steadily increasing as mobile shopping apps become popular. Not only are smartphone users increasing, but the time spent on mobiles is also extensively increasing.
The ecommerce business has grown at an unparalleled rate in recent years thanks to mobile commerce. According to Statista, the average daily time spent on mobile phones to access the internet is 143 minutes in 2020, and it is expected to rise to 155 minutes by 2021. Whether you are an online store owner, a marketer, or a consumer, the reality that worldwide commerce is increasingly shifting to smartphones will come as no surprise.
Since you’ve come to read our blog, we’re guessing you understand the significance of mobile commerce in today’s world. Do you intend to develop one or more mobile applications for your business? You are on the right page. Today, we’ll take you through the greatest mobile commerce systems from around the world. We are confident that after reading this blog, you will begin working on your dream mobile app.
The Best Platforms for Mobile Commerce
As previously said, mobile commerce statistics show that if your ecommerce store is not optimized for mobile devices, you will lose 50% of your potential clients during the initial stages of selling online. Unfortunately, the bulk of shopping carts were developed specifically for desktop use. If you choose a platform with zero or minimal response, you will lose both new sales and customers. To provide a consistent customer experience while outperforming your competitors, your online store must be available to all potential customers, regardless of the devices they use.
You might also consider offering a mobile application in addition to your responsive website to increase sales and revenue. By using one of the following mobile commerce platforms, you can increase your sales just by being available to your visitors and clients when they need you. As the focus of website optimization has switched to mobile commerce, make sure the one you choose has these capabilities.
According to our research, the following six platforms are the best for mobile commerce:
1. SAP Hybris
Started in 1997, SAP Hybris to create well-engineered ecommerce solutions to people wishing to sell goods and services online. This is an ecommerce platform that aims at converting important data into a compatible view which the customers seek. There are a number of digital transformation features such as customer data management, context-driven marketing, and consolidated process for establishing an omnichannel ecommerce business.
Irrespective of the location of the customers, this platform lets businesses target them efficiently. Other qualitative features of this platform that may help you decide include powerful integration of API, advanced mobile commerce setup, data management, and optimization tools.
2. Oracle Commerce Platform
Oracle Commerce Platform is one of the leading, top-ranked, commerce solutions that rule some of the world’s best brands. It delivers a persistent and personalized customer experience across various channels. Oracle offers combat-tested and scalable support for your business in order to deliver an omnichannel experience.
This platform offers a complete commerce software platform that shall let you deliver a personalized customer experience by covering all customer touchpoints including mobile devices, web, physical stores, social media, and other points of contact. It allows online sellers to manage omnichannel marketing, content, promotions, and navigation while delivering a personalized experience. Online businesses can use this platform to launch sites quickly, market business, or create individual campaigns.
3. PrestaShop
It is an open-source ecommerce solution offering over 500 features, responsive frontend as well as backend, and various built-in offers. One of the key advantages of using this platform is that it is available for free download and use. This platform lets online sellers create a fully customizable, updated store in a few minutes without any charges or fees.
The templates provided in this platform are integrated with a mobile-optimized shopping cart that lets your customers purchase your products from any choice of devices. PrestaShop is offering seamless mobile checkouts and the sellers can easily manage their store on the go and stay connected to their businesses from anywhere, at any point in time.
4. Magento
Magento is considered a world leader in the field of digital commerce cloud innovation. It is an explosion of opportunities for technical experts selling goods and services online. Magento is open-source software with an additional add-on feature. You need to choose a responsive template in Magento and start creating your space in the mcommerce world. It allows the customers to edit the codes, wherever necessary and provide other custom features for generating traffic, boosting conversion rates, and providing faster loading time.
The Magento PWA (Progressive Web Apps) together puts in front the best features guaranteeing highly responsive store and app creation reducing the hurdles of downloading an app. Magento is further working with PWA to provide mobile-friendly experience with much faster checkout procedures, increased engagement, etc.
5. Kony Mobility
It is one of the fastest-growing, cloud-based mobility solutions, that is leading among the cross-platform mobile app development platforms. It supports the complete development of mobile software applications with the best framework, flexibility, and process. It supports SLDC (Software Development Lifecycle) app aiding businesses in designing, creating, setting up, and managing mobile apps across multiple channels. The key benefit of this platform is the speed it offers. It lets businesses to compete with their likes by delivering apps quickly on various devices.
This platform can be used to market faster while reducing the total cost of operations. The Kony Visualizer helps businesses in prototyping and creating mobile apps and building a single user interface for customers across platforms. The Kony MobileFabric offers a robust and complete mobile solution letting the customer to rapidly create a mobile application within a short period. The Kony AppVantage provides pre-built templates that are suitable for all business requirements.
6. Builderfly App Builder
Builderfly is a complete ecommerce solution with two major features of building an online store as well as a mobile app within a single subscription plan. Unlike other platforms, it is the only platform that offers both the extensive features with minimal investment. Builderfly offers an AI-powered native iOS and Android mobile app for easy accessibility to the storefront and increased customer-reach. It offers a free mobile application with the three paid subscription plans viz. Standard, Advance, and Pro.
The mobile application is fully customizable and can be designed separately as per the requirements. Moreover, with the power of Artificial Intelligence, the mobile app can automatically sync with the storefront unless opted out. With the auto-syncing facility, you need not re-enter the store data in the app store. All the features including separate font styles, color pallets, and much more are available with the free native mobile app.
The AI-powered mobile apps can be published hassle-free on Android and iOS within just a few steps. Many other outstanding features include the option to edit codes, customize every text, image, logo, headers, and footers, and the list keeps going. The platform does not charge an additional fee or transaction fee for the app building software – it is free!
Best Ecommerce Platforms to Start Your Online Business
Businesses that use the correct tools for the job can immediately begin selling their items online, accept payments, track inventory, and handle delivery all from the same platform. But there’s a minor issue here!
There are currently a large selection of eCommerce platforms accessible, each with different peculiarities, making it difficult for someone to choose the one that best meets their needs, especially without sacrificing a lot of time.
Read Also: The Impact of Mobile Commerce on Customer Experience
For this reason, we’ve chosen the best eCommerce solutions to develop your eCommerce website based on a defined set of criteria, which you can find below.
1. Sitecore OrderCloud
Sitecore OrderCloud is a headless, API-first eCommerce platform helping brands deliver unique customer experiences, manage their commerce business more effectively, and future-proof their eCommerce strategy. This flexible and innovative solution can manage users, products, and orders across any variety of customers and buyer types, thus fitting even the simplest to the most complex use cases, from regional D2C to global B2B2X marketplaces.
Thanks to its cloud-native infrastructure, it can scale during heavy traffic spikes so your customers continue to experience fast loading times and quick results while shopping. Your customers can focus on what’s important (i.e., making purchases) and have memorable experiences that establish a strong relationship with your brand. With Sitecore OrderCloud, you’re able to oversee start-to-finish stock, your site, your merchants, and more, making your processes more effective.
Among others, OrderCloud incorporates intelligent content generation and enrichment, while you can also create 1:1 loyalty and promotions at scale. Last but not least, you get powerful real-time intelligence to personalize the customer experience and drive more revenue.
2. Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms today that has seen tremendous growth over the last 15 years. Setting up the platform is as easy as it gets and the onboarding wizard guides you through all the steps.
What makes Shopify so appealing to so many users is that it provides you with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder that doesn’t require any sort of technical knowledge as long as you know how to move a mouse! So, it’s a great option for small businesses wanting to get their online store up and running quickly.
In addition to the website builder, you’ll find 8 free themes and a huge range of premium pre-made ones that are exceptionally designed, with prices starting from $150. Most of these themes are fully customizable, making it effortless to make changes where you see fit.
Another great aspect of Shopify is store management. You can analyze customer profiles, set up a dropshipping store, manage refunds and set up fulfillment solutions like Amazon. Moreover, you get 1-click order fulfillment.
But what about inventory management? You get advanced inventory tracking, and product variations like multiple sizes and colors, while you can upload multiple images. Furthermore, Shopify has the largest app store, so everything you may ever need is there. From social media to marketing tools and sales reporting.
Regarding payments, Shopify can truly handle all of your business. Particularly helpful is the Shopify POS allowing brick-and-mortar stores to accept payments in-store through the mobile app.
All in all, Shopify is an eCommerce software that can please both beginners and seasoned professionals. It’s a great choice for beginners looking to start a serious online business at minimum cost while using a platform that’s easy to navigate.
3. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another robust eCommerce platform, ideal for large brands or businesses with high-volume inventories. What’s more, it’s among the best Shopify alternatives out there.
BigCommerce offers a powerful website builder that will allow you to customize even the tiniest detail of your online shop to make it fit your vision. The platform provides you with 12 free themes and various paid ones starting from $150 up to $400. While they are great, admittedly, their cost is high. Despite the platform being aimed at people with limited web design skills, it allows you to tweak the HTML and CSS in case you’re tech-savvy.
It offers a fully-fledged eCommerce CMS solution that allows you to seamlessly add and edit products or even create a blog to accompany your store. With BigCommerce, you can easily purchase and register your domain name through the platform. This is sure nice and useful. Another notable eCommerce feature offered is the ability to sync your inventory with marketplaces like Facebook, Amazon, and eBay.
To accept payments, BigCommerce integrates with online payment processors such as PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon. Alternatively, store owners can set up their eCommerce websites to receive payments via bank transfer or check.
Overall, BigCommerce lets you make fully detailed listings on the back end, while on the front end, customers enjoy increased control to find exactly what they are looking for. This makes the platform a great solution for large enterprises expecting to have fast-track growth without any compromises on performance.
4. Wix
Wix is a modern, user-friendly eCommerce website builder that gives you the ability to create a complete website with eCommerce capabilities. It is a good option for smaller businesses and new entrepreneurs looking for a robust website builder that doesn’t “lack” eCommerce functionality.
Specifically, Wix has some very powerful tools such as order tracking, abandoned cart recovery, dropshipping, print-on-demand, and automated sales tax. This eCommerce site builder equips you with more than 800 designer-made templates to build your website, many of which are free. As an alternative, you can let Wix’s ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) make your site for you after answering a couple of questions.
You should know, however, that while you can build your website with the free plan, you’ll need a paid subscription to use its eCommerce-oriented features. Another not-so-great thing about the tool is the absence of low stock alerts, which could cause unnecessary trouble down the line.
What’s interesting about Wix is the long but detailed onboarding process. Some people may find it tiresome. However, we believe it’s better to give you more assistance than you need than be lacking in that respect.
As expected, this eCommerce website creator has a nice third-party app and extensions marketplace. There, you can find shipping coordinators, accounting services, useful social commerce integrations, and many more.
Overall, Wix is an eCommerce platform that gives business owners complete freedom to create, design and manage their online presence without much hassle and without any skills.
Final Thoughts
One of the primary reasons firms are turning to mobile commerce is to keep up with the market’s speed. However, when developing mobile apps, you must think critically and act appropriately. Above all, choosing the correct platform is critical to the success of online sales.
