How to Create a Mobile App for eCommerce from Scratch?

In the highly competitive world of eCommerce, having an exceptional mobile app is crucial for achieving success. With industry behemoths such as Amazon and Alibaba reigning supreme in the online retail arena, new enterprises must discover their unique advantage. But the challenge lies in creating an eCommerce mobile app that not only stands out but is also budget-friendly.

This article will take you through the journey of crafting a stylish and intuitive mobile eCommerce app. The core nopCommerce team shares their insights by delving into essential aspects like key functionalities, technology stack, design, and architecture, using their own mobile app development as a real-life example.

7 steps to create an eCommerce app for your existing website

The primary objective is to break down mobile app development into easily comprehensible steps. This guide should answer the question “how to create a mobile app for eCommerce?”, considering time and money expenses.

It aims to be helpful for developers seeking to replicate the process or gain insider perspectives on the nopCommerce development experience.

Step 1: Laying the foundation with research

Before embarking on the exciting journey of developing your mobile eCommerce app, it is essential to establish a solid foundation through competitor analysis and market research. This step will analyze successful industry strategies and potential opportunities for your app to flourish.

• Analyzing the competition: Start with identifying both direct and indirect competitors in the mobile eCommerce space. Thoroughly examine their app features, user experience, pricing strategies, marketing tactics, and customer feedback. This analysis will highlight their strengths and weaknesses, paving the way for your app to showcase its distinctive advantages.
• Researching market trends: Stay abreast of ever-changing consumer preferences, emerging technologies, and the latest essential features expected from an eCommerce app. Armed with this knowledge, you will be well-prepared to align your app with evolving user needs and expectations, positioning yourself ahead of the competition.
• Understanding your target audience: Gain a deep understanding of your users' demographics, preferences, and pain points. This information will empower you to customize your app to cater to their specific needs, delivering a personalized and delightful user experience.
• Establishing measurable goals: Consider objectives such as increasing sales, enhancing customer engagement, boosting conversion rates, or expanding your customer base. These goals will provide a tangible framework to evaluate the app's performance and achievements.
• Prioritizing user-centric features: Focus on core functionalities that add value to users and align with your unique selling proposition. Key features, including a user-friendly interface, seamless navigation, secure payment options, efficient product search capabilities, and personalized recommendations, should take precedence.
• Future-proofing your app: Plan for scalability and growth by ensuring that your app's architecture and infrastructure can handle increasing user traffic, seamlessly incorporate new features, and integrate with third-party systems like payment gateways and inventory management.

As you embark on this journey, keep in mind that adopting a user-friendly and professional approach during the development process will pave the way for a successful and captivating mobile eCommerce app. Such an app is poised to leave a lasting impression on your target audience, ensuring a rewarding and memorable user experience.

Step 2: Selecting the proper technology stack

To create an eCommerce app, one of the most crucial decisions for a developer's team is selecting the appropriate platform/framework as the foundation. While technical factors play a significant role, it is equally essential to take into account the project's distinct business requirements.

The primary consideration revolves around choosing between native app development and a cross-platform approach.

• Native application: Developing separate native apps for Android and iOS requires dedicated teams for each platform, leading to extended development time and subsequent updates. This approach is best suited for large-scale enterprises with sufficient resources to support two teams working on Swift (iOS) and Kotlin (Android) development. Despite higher costs, the end result is an application well-optimized and tailor-made for each platform.
• Cross-platform approach: Conversely, the cross-platform approach employs a single codebase that functions on both Android and iOS devices. This option is more cost-effective and time-efficient, potentially saving up to 50% of a company's resources. While cross-platform apps may experience slight delays in adopting new features compared to native apps, most eCommerce functionalities can be covered using third-party libraries and plugins. This approach enables a quicker time to market without compromising on functionality.

If you opt for the cross-platform route, several frameworks like React Native, Ionic, and Flutter are worth considering. For the nopCommerce mobile app, our team engaged in comprehensive discussions before ultimately choosing Flutter.

Here are some compelling reasons for selecting Flutter, which can help you lean towards this framework if you are still grappling with the decision:

a. Easy learning curve and technical maturity: Flutter provides a user-friendly learning curve and has reached a high level of technical maturity, enabling developers to quickly master the framework.

b. Seamless integration with code editors: Flutter seamlessly integrates with popular code editors like VSCode, widely used among .NET developers. This integration simplifies coding, debugging, viewing the widget tree, and analyzing memory leaks, greatly enhancing the development experience.

c. Instant hot reload feature: Flutter's hot reload feature allows developers to instantly view changes made to the code within the app. This significantly speeds up the development process compared to native app development, where the build process can be time-consuming.

d. Exceptional performance: Flutter boasts lightning-fast performance, delivering 60 FPS. This empowers developers to create mobile applications that rival native ones in terms of performance, even when using Swift and Kotlin.

Through a careful evaluation of business requirements, time to market, and development resources, the nopCommerce team opted for Flutter. This decision enabled us to create a flexible and fully-functional product in a shorter timeframe while enjoying the benefits of a well-rounded development environment.

Step 3: Building a stable and scalable architecture

When embarking on the journey of creating an eCommerce app from scratch, the right architecture becomes paramount. The chosen architecture not only influences the initial development process but also plays a significant role in the project's scalability, code structure, and the coordination within the team.

To ensure a maintainable and scalable codebase, we initially followed generally accepted standards as outlined in the Android documentation. However, when dealing with Flutter, we faced a challenge as the standard architecture did not fully account for its unique characteristics.

As a result, we made necessary modifications and introduced an additional level, achieving a well-organized and efficient architecture tailored to our app's specific needs.

• UI Layer: At this level, the focus lies on managing the user interface components and their interactions. It encompasses widgets and logic directly related to the app's user interface.
• Domain Layer: The domain layer is dedicated to housing the application's essential business logic, effectively isolating it from the UI layer. It comprises controllers and business logic objects responsible for handling core functionalities.
• Data Layer: Within the data layer, the primary emphasis is on data access and management. This involves repositories and data sources responsible for handling data retrieval and storage operations.

To customize the architecture for Flutter, we introduced the Riverpod library for state management and dependency injection, resulting in a modified structure as outlined below:

• UI Layer: This level remains unchanged and encompasses UI components along with their interactions with the user. It relies on widgets and UI-related logic to manage the user interface.
• Application Layer: In our revised architecture, the Application layer takes on a role similar to that of the original Domain layer in the Android architecture. It houses service classes responsible for defining methods used by controllers. This becomes especially valuable when multiple widgets manage the same logic or when logic depends on multiple repositories. However, it's important to note that the Application layer might not always be necessary. In some cases, controllers can directly request data from repositories without the intermediary Application layer. If the services merely redirect method calls from controllers to the repository, the Application layer might not be required.
• Domain Layer: In the updated architecture, this level corresponds to domain models that can be modified by services at the Application layer and filled with data from repositories at the Data layer. These models are applied to the business logic objects accessed through repositories.

By reorganizing the architecture to suit Flutter's unique requirements and integrating Riverpod, we achieved a structure that not only promotes code maintainability and scalability but also enhances team collaboration. The domain-specific modifications enabled a seamless development process while ensuring that the app remains adaptable to future expansions and enhancements.

Step 4: Designing a user-friendly interface

One of the key factors that led us to choose Flutter for the nopCommerce mobile app was its extensive widget library, providing a significant advantage. Leveraging this powerful library made the creation of a user-friendly interface exceptionally efficient. Flutter's unique rendering engine, Impeller, ensures consistent visual appeal across all devices, further enhancing the user experience.

For the design of the nopCommerce app, we based our approach on Material 3 (also known as Material You), Google's latest design system version. Material 3 introduced refreshed component renderings, captivating animations, and fresh color palettes that seamlessly integrate with Flutter.

To maintain a cohesive and consistent appearance across devices, we harnessed the potential of design tokens offered by Material 3. These tokens allowed us to store styles, fonts, and animation values, ensuring the same style values were used in both design files and code.

Our primary goal was to create an eCommerce app with a unified visual identity across various devices, delivering a seamless and immersive experience to users. Design tokens played a crucial role in achieving this objective.

To generate design tokens, we utilized the Material Theme Builder, which automatically created a theme with default colors and styles. Building upon this foundation, we crafted a custom theme tailored to the nopCommerce app's branding and specific requirements.

When determining brand colors, we had two options:

• Manual Specification: The first option involved manually specifying base colors to align with the brand's identity and desired visual aesthetics.
• Dynamic Colors: Alternatively, we experimented with dynamic colors, wherein the app selects a color scheme based on provided images, such as the company's logo. This dynamic approach added a touch of uniqueness to the app's visuals, adapting to the brand's distinct characteristics.

Embracing the concept of Material You, the implementation of design tokens empowered us to generate a comprehensive palette of styles, ensuring consistent visual coherence across the entire app. Additionally, these design tokens offered the flexibility for personalized tweaks and adjustments, allowing to maintain a unique and tailored app design.

A noteworthy advantage of design tokens lies in their inherent flexibility and versatility. This allowed the nopCommerce app to seamlessly adapt to various application modes, such as Dark mode and Light mode, without sacrificing style or compromising the user experience.

The utilization of design tokens offers several key benefits:

1. Streamlined Design and Development: Design tokens eliminate the need to delve into platform-specific design guides. By applying Material 3 to both design and development, time and effort are saved, resulting in a more efficient workflow.
2. Quick Redesign Capabilities: If there arises a need to revamp the app's design, design tokens facilitate a remarkably efficient process, allowing for swift updates and changes to be made seamlessly.
3. Easy Style Maintenance: Design tokens simplify the maintenance of styles, making it hassle-free to update and manage the app's visual elements, ensuring consistency and coherence.

With these strategies in place, the creation of a visually appealing eCommerce app on any device became a seamless and rewarding process. Our choice of Flutter and Material 3, coupled with the implementation of design tokens, ensured a visually cohesive and delightful user interface for the nopCommerce mobile app.

Step 5: Ensuring high-level security

In the nopCommerce mobile app, ensuring the security of transmitted data is of utmost importance, achieved through the implementation of Bearer tokens. These tokens are exclusively issued to authorized users and play a vital role in establishing secure communication between the client (mobile application) and the server.

Bearer tokens serve as a robust mechanism for both authentication and authorization, granting clients access to protected resources on the server side. In the event of a security concern, the server-side token can be revoked, prompting the client to go through the authorization procedure once again to obtain a new token. This stringent approach guarantees that only authenticated users have access to sensitive data, bolstering the overall security of the application.

Equally crucial is the secure storage of tokens on the client side. Since tokens do not require explicit proof of ownership from the bearer, it becomes imperative to safeguard this information effectively. To achieve this, Flutter incorporates secure local storage mechanisms.

Local storage retains user data until the application is uninstalled. The implementation of local storage varies across different mobile operating systems:

• Android Security: Android adopts the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to secure local storage. The secret key is encrypted using the RSA algorithm, and the encrypted key is stored in the KeyStore, ensuring a high level of protection for the tokens.
• iOS Security: For iOS, the KeyChain serves as a secure storage mechanism for accessing the application's cryptographic keys, providing a decent level of security for the stored tokens.

By leveraging these secure local storage technologies, our eCommerce mobile app adheres to industry best practices, maintaining the utmost confidentiality of the security tokens. This approach enhances the overall security of the app, user’s data protection and privacy.

Step 6: Automating maintenance and updates

Creating an eCommerce app that requires regular automatic updates calls for an effective solution in establishing a connection with an API. Our mobile app is thoughtfully designed to integrate with the nopCommerce ecosystem, encompassing its CMS, additional extensions, and the official Web API plugin.

For enhanced flexibility and transparency, we have included the Web API plugin within the mobile app package, making the source code readily available.

Interacting with an API can often pose challenges in implementing an access client and keeping it up to date. However, we have streamlined this process to simplify adaptation to changes in the API.

To achieve this, we ensure that our API adheres to the OpenAPI 3 specification, enabling us to store a comprehensive description of the API in JSON format. By leveraging the OpenAPI Generator, we efficiently generate a client in the required language, which, in our case, is Dart for Flutter, using the dart-dio Generator. This approach ensures smooth and efficient communication with the API, facilitating regular updates and seamless integration with the nopCommerce platform.

The API connection in Flutter is established by integrating the generated client as a package within the app. This setup grants access to all the methods supported by the API, and incorporating these methods into the repositories enables us to leverage their functionality seamlessly within the app.

When modifications occur in the API methods, such as changes in their signature or structural adjustments, rebuilding the client becomes a straightforward process. This ensures seamless updates and guarantees that the mobile app operates smoothly.

In addition to the "Web API Frontend" plugin, the "nopCommerce mobile app" plugin allows users to manage specific application settings directly from the admin panel of their nopCommerce webshop. For example, administrators can configure a slider on the main screen to showcase selected products or transfer certain settings to the mobile application. This plugin empowers users with more control and customization options.

Step 7: Testing and assessing performance

Our main objective revolved around evaluating the speed and efficiency of the advertising slider rendering with animation. To accomplish this, we utilized the GameBench automation interface tool to monitor critical metrics like memory consumption, FPS, and CPU load.

For the purpose of testing, we created an identical interface natively on an Android device using both React Native and Flutter. To ensure consistent conditions, we standardized the test duration and employed image caching libraries in each language. This setup enabled us to conduct fair and accurate comparisons between React Native and Flutter.

The performance testing results are outlined below, where lower values indicate better performance:

• FPS: Across all cases, the FPS values were nearly identical, indicating that Flutter's declared capabilities align closely with its real performance indicators.
• Memory Consumption: While Flutter required twice as much memory as native applications, it remained more efficient than React Native, which experienced greater fluctuations in memory usage.
• CPU Load: React Native showed noticeable disparities in CPU load, primarily due to the utilization of a JS Bridge between JavaScript and Native code. In contrast, Flutter demonstrated more stable CPU performance.

Although native Android apps demonstrated better battery consumption optimization, Flutter's stable performance and efficiency made it a strong runner-up in this aspect.
It is essential to acknowledge that this comparison reveals significant differences in the performance characteristics of these approaches. However, while performance is crucial, it is not the sole determinant in eCommerce mobile app development. Other factors like development speed, user experience, and overall app functionality also play pivotal roles in the final decision-making process.

Wrapping Up

If you're looking for guidance on how to create an eCommerce app for your online store, our comprehensive guide covers all the essential steps taken during the development process, offering valuable insights into creating the final product.

Alternatively, you have the option to use our ready-made nopCommerce mobile app, complete with its source code, which you can easily customize to align with your business needs.

Stay tuned for future updates as we continuously enhance our mobile app, adding even more value and functionality. Be sure to explore our detailed mobile app documentation for additional support and information. We are committed to providing the best possible experience to our users.