WooCommerce is one of the most popular WordPress plugins ever, as it allows you to run an online store with WordPress. This is great because you can use the complete WordPress ecosystem with all its flexibility and a ton of great plugins. But what happens if you want to take the next step and offer your customers a native application for Android or iOS to access your online store? WooCommerce can’t do this out of the box, but our friends at appmarker.xyz have developed an easy-to-use solution to this problem. You can create and publish your application within a few hours without having any knowledge in mobile app development. All your products from the WooCommerce webshop are synchronized with the mobile app, and all orders are collected in your WooCommerce – no matter if they come from your webshop or from customers using your mobile app.
In this article we would like to explain why a mobile application is so important for your e-commerce business and how you can easily create your own application with appmarker.xyz.
Why a native app is a must-have for your e-commerce business?
You might think that you have created an online shop where people can buy your products 24 hours a day. Compared to the competition, who still sell locally, you are clearly one step ahead. But let me tell you that there are a lot of people out there who think about you the same way you think about companies that only sell locally. Because they are already one step ahead of you with their own native mobile application. But what does a native application change compared to an online store on the web?
Let’s take a look at the numbers. In 2020 we have about 7.8 billion people in the world. Around 3.8 billion of these people have a smartphone. This means that almost every second person in the world has access to the Internet with a smartphone. Well, people also have access to the internet via computers, but if you look at the numbers again, you will see that mobile devices have already overtaken more than 50% of internet traffic – only on websites, but the traffic in native applications is even higher. Depending on where in the world you run your business, these figures are already much higher for mobile users, because a smartphone is simply more affordable than a computer or laptop.
Here we don’t have a context yet whether e-commerce on mobile devices is successful, but a look at some figures shows us again, the market is huge. It is estimated that mobile e-commerce will generate global sales of USD 2.9 trillion in 2020. That’s about 70% of total e-commerce revenue.
When you think about it, that’s logical. The smartphone is almost always with you, and what could be easier than opening the Amazon or Aliexpress app and shopping with a few clicks to get the goods delivered? Would you do the same, or would you like to search for an online shop on the internet, load the shop in your web browser, enter your delivery address and payment again and again and see the summary of the order in an email? No, it’s just more intuitive to use an app for this on mobile devices. And that’s exactly the point why you’ll miss out on a lot of sales if your WooCommerce shop doesn’t offer an app for your regular customers.
How can you build a mobile application for your WooCommerce store?
Mobile applications are a world of their own compared to online shops, where you would have to learn a lot if you tried it yourself. Especially from a technical point of view it is not easy to successfully develop and publish mobile applications. You have to support both Android and iOS, and for both operating systems there are a lot of devices available. You have to make sure that everything runs on all devices, because a broken app is even worse than no app for your reputation.
Fortunately, there are already experts on the market who have done this tricky job for you. For owners of WooCommerce shops we can recommend creating your own native app with appmaker.xyz. You have really understood how WooCommerce and native mobile applications work perfectly together. Creating an app with their product works like creating a website with a modern page builder like Gutenberg. It’s easy and you don’t need any software development skills to get started.
Getting started with appmaker.xyz
In order to start your mobile app, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial from appmarker.xyz that includes all the features of the software. All you have to do is enter the domain of your WooCommerce online shop and appmarker.xyz will automatically scan your shop if it runs with a compatible version of WooCommerce. Then you need to install and activate the Appmaker WordPress plugin, which handles all communication between your WordPress installation and your native application. It takes no more than three minutes after connecting your WordPress to appmarker.xyz and you will receive an email that your application is ready to use.
At least technically, because now you can start creating the layout of your application. Just add blocks via drag & drop in the appmarker.xyz web application, just like you know it from Gutenberg, to create your perfect application that presents the most relevant products to your customers.
In addition to creating sub-pages of your application, you can also configure to send push notifications to your customers. These messages appear as notifications on your customers’ smartphones, even if the app is not open. This is one of the most important marketing tools for mobile apps, as you can proactively notify the user for example when a sale starts and thus increase the number of sold items in that sale. Appmarker.xyz uses Firebase to allow you to send your push notifications, and here you need to add some technical parameters to make it work. But the tutorial how to do it with appmarker.xyz has a lot of screenshots that explain how to do it without any technical knowledge, so you can do it with ease.
I could mention a lot more great features here, but I recommend you to try it yourself. Not only because it’s free, but also because the company behind this modular app system is actively developing a lot of new features, and there are most likely many more by the time you read this article.
Verdict: Native mobile app for WooCommerce made easy
Appmarker.xyz is an excellent tool to launch your native mobile application for Android and iOS if you run a WooCommerce online shop. You can try to increase the attention of your regular customers by giving them a better opportunity to buy your products on their smartphones. Give it a try!
Pssst: One more hint. If you already use our Real Media Library plugin to organize thousands of uploads in your WooCommerce store, you’ll be happy to hear that appmarker.xyz is already working on integrating of the folder tree into their app builder. Soon you will be able to use your organized media library for your native mobile app.