The Rise of Mobile Shopping Apps
Applications or apps are something everyone knows about nowadays. It is no more an alien term to anyone. We all know what apps are and use them regularly every day. We are totally dependent on apps for almost everything. If we want to book a cab, we have an app, we want to go for holidays, we have traveling apps, we want to learn something, we have educational apps, we have apps like Malayalam keyboard app for android that helps us type in our language, we want to be entertained, we have entertainment apps! You name it we have it!
One such apps that have become one of the most successful businesses in the last decade are online shopping apps.
The rise of shopping apps
We all love to buy so many things every day. In fact, to some people, shopping is like therapy. It always brings joy and happiness. Buying something new is such a pleasant feeling and then when we bring it home, ahh yet another scent of happiness.
We all are a bit choosy though but get nervous or shy about it. This was tackled beautifully by shopping malls but imposed another issue of the lack of accessibility to people living in rural areas or people who are simply not interested in spending hours traveling and then tiring themselves out in the shopping malls. This was tacked by online shopping apps. Apps show us all the products online and we can check anything out without any hesitation or guilt or embarrassment. We get the freedom to choose what we want and get options for everything.
Salient features of Online shopping apps:
- Add to cart
One of the best features to offer is to have an electronic cart. This helps the user in choosing multiple items to buy and they are usually able to see the total bill as well. This provides ease for deciding which things are necessary and what things we can buy later because the budget is tight. We all also love to just add things that we do want to buy eventually but not right now. This helps a lot in deciding things and finding the items we really wanted to buy without going through the hassle of finding it again by searching and scrolling for hours.
One more benefit is that we can check the availability of the product in the required size etc. we are also notified if there are any discounts on the products we wanted and had put in the cart.
- Wishlist
Now comes the Wishlist. It is like how we put few products aside to later decide which one and how many of them. This is probably the best features ever provided in the online shopping apps. We all love adding things that we liked while scrolling and then we maybe even show them to our loved ones to take their opinion on it. Wishlist is almost always full of products we want but are waiting for discounts or maybe just saved for later.
- Search
This the key feature of any app as we can only tell the app what we want through it. Search features nowadays also have features like:
- Audio search: most apps nowadays do have this feature. It is very reliable for people who are not too comfortable typing or maybe just like voice typing much better.
- Regional keyboard typing: this feature is usually supported on most apps and all we need to do is download Marathi keyboard app or similar apps.
- Image search: Very few apps offer this feature. Some online shopping apps like Myntra do have it and hopefully many other apps will adapt this, and our online shopping experience becomes even better.
- Filter: filters are used to filter out things that we do not want. We can have categories based on gender, products, type, pattern, colour, price range and what not. We can all have as many filters as we desire and will be shown things that precisely fit into that category.
- Sort: we can sort things according to our will. We can sort things based on price range, new arrival, popularity, or customer reviews. This feature is again one of the best and most reliable features and is also available in most shopping apps.
- Offers: we get tons of offers online that are sometimes even better than what we get on offline market. Apps like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra etc even have some specified annual sales that are largely marketed and provides heavy discounts and hence very popular among the online shoppers.
- Categories: shopping by categories is one of the most used features of online apps. The categories also help in creating a sense of interest in the users and people often find themselves scrolling through things they did not know about or never really tried. This not only increases the engagement but also leads to people buying things they did not initially plan on buying. It works like the beautiful displays of the offline shops and shopping malls.
- Tracking order: we can track our order online and is a very important feature and is available for almost all online shopping apps.
- Multiple payment options: this is something that is even better than the offline markets. We get tons of options from cash to card payments and in some cases, EMIs on things that are usually not available for products offline.
- Share: we can share the products we want to buy or had bought with our friends and family and these links gives them all the details they want and hence is a good feature.
- Show similar: this is the feature that is also used for personalised adds. We do get adds of products we see online and is also useful for suggested products. We get to see similar products and it also helps us find similar products if we do not have a product, we wanted available.