Fashion Ecommerce Mobile App Development: Cost & Key Features

Fashion shopping is the biggest segment in the B2C market, with a global value of over $525 billion in 2019. The fashion eCommerce segment is only growing further and is expected to cross the $1,000 billion mark by the end of 2025. These statistics prove that people like to keep themselves up-to-date with the latest fashion trends, whether it is about clothing, footwear, accessories, etc. Everybody wants to look and express themselves in the best manner. For this, the reliance on fashion ecommerce app development in the fashion arena has increased significantly over the last few years. Fashion companies are investing heavily in fashion ecommerce app development, and tech companies are bringing more and more tech innovation in the Fashion shopping app development process to satisfy the rising demand for fashion e-commerce mobile app development.

Why Online Fashion Shopping is So Popular

People find it easy, convenient, and quick to order new clothes, accessories, or footwear of their choice from the comfort of their homes and then get things to their doorstep. There is no need to visit numerous physical stores and brand showrooms to find stuff of choice.

What the top fashion eCommerce apps do is bring multiple brands and clothing companies on a single platform. People can look out and browse several products of all brands and decide quickly.

Moreover, most of the eCommerce companies are operational even during the COVID-19 pandemic. People can’t buy clothing and other necessary fashionable things from local stores or showrooms because of forced lockdowns and restrictions. But fashion mobile apps are still having the back of every fashion enthusiast.

If you have a unique idea about fashion ecommerce app development, then you must know how fashion apps work, the key features required in the app, functionalities, how to develop a fashion app, as well as fashion e-commerce app development cost. Let’s discuss all these essential points in this comprehensive article.

How does an eCommerce Fashion App Work?

The working of a fashion eCommerce app is quite simple.

• The users need to install the application from the Play Store or App Store, depending on the operating system they use.
• After installation, they need to register on the app, usually with an email address, phone number, and password.
• They can browse the products by categories or search things directly using the search bar.
• While browsing, they can click and open the required product, see photos, read descriptions and specifications, and reviews of customers who have already bought it.
• They can add the product to the cart after selecting the size of the clothing, footwear, or any other item. or save it for later.
• From the cart, they can proceed to check out and place the order. Here, they will need to add their address and phone number and pay for the order with their preferred mode of payment.
• After payment, the order is placed.
• Customers can track the order status. The item is delivered to the customer within a few days or displayed time.

Reasons to Invest in fashion ecommerce app development

It is vital to know whether your investment will be profitable or not in the long run. Below are some statistics and facts that show the trends and predictions about the online fashion market:

Fashion e-commerce market value worldwide from 2023 to 2027

Source

• The worldwide e-commerce fashion market is expected to grow to a value of over 820 billion dollars by 2023. It could rise to over 1.2 trillion dollars by 2027.
• With e-commerce net sales of US$17,777 million in 2021, Jd.com is the market leader in the worldwide fashion e-commerce space. Shein.com is second with US$10,409 million. Vip.com, with US$7,698 million in sales, comes in third. Coupang.com, with net sales of US$7,090 million in 2021, is the fourth-largest fashion e-commerce site globally.
• In Europe, every customer will be spending around $921 on fashion products in a year.
• The shoe segment in the fashion eCommerce industry is one of the fastest-growing segments. It will grow from $365.5 billion in 2020 to $530.3 billion in 2027.
• Today, 6 out of 10 mobile users prefer to buy fashion items through a mobile app or website because of the ability to buy from brands of their choice.

Undoubtedly, the fashion eCommerce industry is growing at a fast pace, with numerous mobile apps available to offer fashionable products from multiple brands.

Read Also: How to Develop an e-Commerce Mobile App.

If you develop a fashion eCommerce app for your fashion brand or store, then there are several other benefits. For instance, the users will see only your products throughout the app. Any product sold brings sales to only your business. Moreover, you can gain audience feedback and improve things.

Types of eCommerce Fashion Apps

You can choose a business model for your fashion mobile app according to the type of business you want to do. There can be several types of fashion applications, such as an app developed for your clothing store or bringing together sellers and customers on a fashion marketplace, etc. Let’s understand the different types of fashion apps before we move to fashion e-commerce mobile app development.

Fashion ecommerce app development for dedicated brand

If you have a fashion store or business and want to take it online, then nothing is better than an app to design clothes for Android. You can list all your products on the app and set the price accordingly. Your customers will see only your products on the app, which means you don’t have to fight competition within the app.

You can also do it if you are a fashion brand and want to sell only your products through a dedicated mobile app.

Fashion marketplace app development

If your idea is about bringing together sellers and customers on a single platform, then you can get a fashion marketplace app. Here, the sellers can sign up and list their fashion products. On the other hand, users can browse the products and buy anything they need. For every purchase, you can charge some commission from the seller. Amazon is one fine example of a fashion marketplace app or a multi-vendor eCommerce app.

B2B fashion e-commerce store app development

The Business to Business (B2B) fashion apps are meant for communication and sales between two businesses. For instance, retailers or wholesalers can choose to order fashion products in bulk from the manufacturer right from the app.

Top Fashion E-commerce Mobile Apps Worldwide

Jd.com – net sales of US$17,777 million in 2021

JD.com is one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms, known for its vast product offerings, including fashion and apparel. Fashion e-commerce app JD.com provides a wide range of clothing, footwear, and accessories. The fashion shopping app JD.com is known for its commitment to authentic products and fast, reliable delivery services.

Shein.com – net sales of US$10,409 million in 2021

Shein is a popular fast-fashion e-commerce platform that offers trendy clothing and accessories at affordable prices. Shein.com caters to a global audience and frequently updates its product selection to reflect the latest fashion trends. Shein is known for its vast selection and competitive pricing.

Vip.com, with a revenue of US$7,698 million

Vip.com is a Chinese online fashion retailer specializing in discounted branded and designer fashion items. Fashion shopping Vip.com provides a wide range of clothing, shoes, and accessories at discounted prices, attracting value-conscious shoppers looking for quality brands at reduced rates.

Coupang.com – net sales of US$7,090 million in 2021.

Coupang is a South Korean e-commerce platform that offers a variety of products, including fashion and apparel. Coupang.com is known for its fast delivery services, including same-day and next-day delivery options in South Korea. Coupang’s fashion category includes clothing, accessories, and footwear options for its customers.

Key Features for Fashion eCommerce App Development

Customer Features include fashion e-commerce app development

• Sign-up: After downloading and installing the app, ask the user to register on the app with their email address, phone number, and password.
• Manage profile: With this feature, the user can edit and manage his profile, update his phone number, add a new address, etc.
• Categories: Your eCommerce fashion app must have several categories to showcase the products to customers in a convenient manner. For instance, you can categorize men’s and women’s clothing, footwear, accessories, etc.
• Search bar: This is an essential feature for every fashion ecommerce app. The search bar makes the user experience seamless and easy by showing the required things directly by entering the terms and clicking the search button.
• Filter products: While browsing the products, allow users to apply filters to browse and view only what they want to buy. For example, they can filter products based on their size, color, brand, price, etc.
• Offers: You can have a separate section to show ongoing and upcoming offers and discounts to users. People are more likely to purchase more when they find discounts and deals.
• Product details: After browsing, when users click on a product, it should show a number of product images from various angles, as well as its details, like fabric, shape, etc.
• Product reviews: Along with photos and information, there should be a review section where new people can see the reviews posted by users who have purchased certain products. This helps users to decide whether a product is worth it or not.

Read Also: Leverage the Power of AI for Your E-commerce Business Success

• Cart: If a user likes a specific product and wants to buy it, the first step is to add it to the cart. There can be multiple products in the cart. Once the user is done adding products, he can see all the products with their quantity and pricing in the cart.
• Wishlist: This is a crucial feature that usually drives more sales. While browsing the products, people can’t buy all the things at the moment. But they would like to save some of the interesting products for later. This can be done with a wishlist feature.

• Apply promo code: If the customers have a promo code for a certain item, they should be able to apply it at the time of checkout to redeem the benefits.
• Payment methods: While checking out, there should be multiple methods of payment for the users. It allows them to order the item and pay with their preferred mode of payment, like debit/credit card, UPI, e-banking, mobile e-wallet apps, or cash on delivery.
• Order tracking: After placing an order, allow users to track the status of their product in real time. This helps in keeping users confident about when to expect the product to be delivered.
• Reward points: For every purchase, you can offer some reward points to the customers. These reward points can be used to purchase more items on the platform. This feature is great for making people buy more to earn more reward points.
• Return/exchange: If the ordered clothing item doesn’t fit or does not meet the expectations of the customer, they should be able to return it or request an exchange. The return and exchange feature boosts the confidence of the users and drives them to buy the products.

How to Develop an eCommerce Mobile App

• Rate & Review: Once the order has been delivered, the customer should be able to rate the product and write a review about it. They can share their experience with the product, whether positive or negative.
• Order history: Customers can see all the products they have ordered, along with the date of purchase, price, and other details.
• Support: Customers may face several kinds of issues, such as delays in the order delivery, payment failure, return or exchange, etc. You should provide support to the customers using live chat, email, or call. This makes customers feel that you care for them.
• Personalized suggestions: This is the feature behind the success of many eCommerce apps today. Based on the interest of the user and their search & buying history, the app shows them relevant products that might interest the user. This increases sales significantly.
• Notifications: A notification feature should be there to send users alerts about your latest offers, deals, sale, discounts, etc. It will help you to drive more sales. You can also send notifications for app updates, delivery of the order, etc.

Merchant Features fashion ecommerce app development.

• Registration: New merchants and store owners can sign up for the app and start selling their products on the platform.
• Profile: They can create their profile, make changes when required, and add relevant information about themselves.
• Add & manage products: This feature lets them list their fashion items with related information, pricing, and details.
• Manage orders: When customers order a product, the store owner or merchant receives the notification and fulfills the order as expected.
• Reports: Allow them to see the reports and metrics about the sale of products, payment, returns, etc.
• Push notifications: Merchants receive alerts about new orders and products that are requested for return or exchange.
• Promote products: You can enable product promotions for merchants to help them show their items in top search results for relevant searches and categories. This can bring more sales for those products.

Admin Features for fashion ecommerce app development

• Dashboard: A centralized dashboard for the admin to access almost every aspect of the app quickly.
• Customer management: Admin can check and manage the customer profiles, check their order history, reviews, payments, etc., whenever required.
• Merchant management: It allows the admin to keep track of new merchants on the platform, the products listed by them, returns, users’ reviews on their products, payment history, etc.
• Promotions: When merchants request their product promotion, the admin can review the request and approve it if all the guidelines are met.
• Manage categories: Admin can add or edit categories in the app and manage the same for any product available for sale.
• Payment management: The fashion eCommerce app will keep some commission from the products sold by the merchants to the user. Admin can manage these commissions, payments made by customers, and all the other payments.
• Support: Admin can check the tickets submitted by the users, respond to them, and monitor the conversations between the chatbot and customer, as well as support staff and customers.
• Manage other channels: Other channels meant for marketing, distribution, content management system, etc., can also be managed by the admin.

Advanced Features for fashion ecommerce app development

• Social sign-up: To make the registration and login process quicker and easier for users, the social sign-up option is convenient. Along with registration with an email address, phone number, and password, you should also allow them to proceed with a Google Account, or a Facebook account, etc.
• Chatbot support: Support plays a crucial role in the success of an app. There are many common questions of the users that you can quickly answer by integrating a chatbot. For advanced queries that need human support, the queries can be passed accordingly.
• Smart search: Also called instant search, this feature is used by all the successful fashion eCommerce apps. What it does is provide automated suggestions when users start typing in the search bar. It improves user experience and helps people to find required products in less time.
• Loyalty programs: You can offer some gifts, exclusive discounts, vouchers, or access exclusive collections to the users who frequently buy from you. The loyalty programs are excellent for increasing customer retention, lifetime customer value, and driving more customers.
• Real-time analytics: The admin should be able to see all the analytics in real-time, whether it is related to the number of orders, new registrations, active users, customers adding items to a wishlist, revenue, etc.
• Multilingual: You can enable support for multiple languages in the app to drive regional users and make things easy to understand for them.

How to Create a Fashion E-commerce App?

The development process for all the apps may not be similar. But usually, successful app owners follow this process for fashion e-commerce app development.

Research the Fashion e-commerce market.

Before stepping into the market, you need to research and analyze various aspects. Understand the expectations of customers with such apps, the kind of products they are looking for, top competitors out there, their positives and negatives, etc.

It is important to research everything related to Fashion shopping app development that performs well. When you know the expectations of your target audience, you can integrate functionalities in your app accordingly. Moreover, the competitor research will help you to learn and explore ways on what you can do to compete with them.

Finalize Fashion shopping app features.

After the market research, you will get an idea about what features you need to integrate into the app to make it convenient for your customers. You should also keep an eye on some advanced and modern features that your competitors lack but can add significant value to users. For instance, AR (augmented reality) technology can help users to see the 3D rendering of your products. Most of the apps don’t have this feature yet. So, you must focus on adding some advanced features to your app along with the essential ones while fashion e-commerce store app development.

Read Also: How to Make a Similar App Like Amazon eCommerce Marketplace with Impeccable Features.

Decide the operating system for your Fashion ecommerce app development

During market research, you should also determine which mobile operating system is most used by your target audience. Is it Android, iOS, or a nearly equal amount of both? Based on the research, you should decide on the platform to develop your fashion eCommerce app.

Find an ecommerce app development company.

This is a crucial step in the fashion eCommerce mobile app development. This is because there are numerous Fashion shopping app development companies out there, but not all of them have expertise in developing a fashion e-commerce app. Therefore, you need to choose a fashion e-commerce app development wisely. The team of developers there should have experience in developing such apps, and the Fashion shopping app development company must be able to take care of the UI/UX design and app testing part as well.

UX/UI is another aspect of fashion e-commerce store app development. The UI/UX design plays a critical role in keeping the users engaged in the app, driving them to buy more products and operate everything in a convenient manner.

App testing & management

the next step is fashion eCommerce app testing. The fashion e-commerce store app development will forward the app to experienced testers who will find and fix the critical flaws and bugs that remained during production. This step is important before deploying and launching the app because bugs can negatively impact the user experience.

After launching the app on the Google Play Store, App Store, or both, you need a team to manage it. You will need to release updates and add new products, catalogs, features, etc.

What Techstack Required for Fashion ecommerce app development

The fashion app tech stack depends on types of functionalities and project size; however, the basic tech stack to develop an MVP fashion shopping app is below:

Programming Languages:

Swift or Objective-C for iOS development.
Java or Kotlin for Android development.
JavaScript for web technologies.

Development Frameworks:

React Native or Flutter for cross-platform development.
Angular, React, or Vue.js for web components.

Backend Development:

Server: Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Django, or Java Spring.
Database: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, or Firebase for real-time data.

Cloud Services:

Hosting: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure.
Content Delivery: Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare.

Payment Gateway Integration: Stripe, PayPal, or other payment processing APIs.

Push Notifications: Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for Android, Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) for iOS.

Third-Party APIs: Social media login (e.g., Facebook, Google), location services, and authentication APIs

What Team Needed for Fashion Ecommerce App Development

To develop a fashion shopping app, you typically need a multidisciplinary team that includes.

• Project Manager: Oversees the entire development process, manages timelines, and ensures project goals are met.
• UI/UX Designer: Creates the app’s user interface and ensures a user-friendly and visually appealing design.
• Mobile App Developers: Experienced fashion e-commerce app developers for the chosen platforms (iOS and Android) to code the app.
• Backend Developers: Build and maintain the server databases and handle data storage and retrieval.
• Quality Assurance (QA) Testers: Test the app for bugs, usability, and performance to ensure it works smoothly.
• Database Administrators: Manage the app’s databases and data architecture.

How Much Does it Cost to Develop an eCommerce Fashion App?

The cost of developing an eCommerce fashion mobile app depends on several factors. These factors include the features you want to integrate into the app, chosen platforms (Android, iOS, or both), region and expertise of the app development company, UI/UX design, and app complexity.

Another important factor determining the total cost of Fashion shopping app development is the size of the business. Small businesses have fewer products and traffic; medium-sized companies have a bit more extensive product portfolio. Whereas enterprise-grade eCommerce apps usually have a massive number of products and heavy traffic.

So, on average, the cost of eCommerce fashion app development will be somewhere between $15,000 to $40,000.

Wrapping Up:

The Fashion e-commerce market is undoubtedly one of the fastest and most rapidly growing markets in the world. With access to the internet and smartphones and options to buy from favorite brands and return/exchange, everybody likes fashion shopping online. If you have a business idea for Fashion shopping app development, then bring it into action. For success, you need to do proper market research, get a robust app, and do the marketing strongly.

For any questions related to fashion eCommerce mobile app development, you can connect with our experts or share using the comments below.

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