Cost of a cross-platform online shopping or eCommerce app development with Flutter in 2022?
Been thinking about releasing an eCommerce app for your business and wanted to know how much a typical mobile app development (cross-platform) costs then you are in the right place. Before we dig into the costing part, if you would like to know how a typical eCommerce store process the order, refer to our post about order processing.
So, let's start...!
A fully functional eCommerce app development is divided into two sections, one is a consumer-facing mobile app (Android & iOS ), which is accessible by the customers to find suitable products. The other one is Client facing web app where the employees of the company will update product & shipping details.
Every online shopping app has unique features to suit the target audience and is built to that niche, so to have some common ground to make cost estimation we assume that your custom eCommerce app (or MVP - Minimum viable product) will be going to have at least the mentioned features.
1. Consumer-facing Mobile Apps (for Android & iOS).
We consider the following features are minimum to run an online shopping store, without the customers saying 'c**p!' whenever they open the app and are counted for the cost estimation.
- Main page - This screen is what the customer sees at first and interacts the most. The real-estate of this page is dedicated to showing trending items & also the categories which drive your business. It also comes with a search option, sliders to brag about current offers & discounts, and links to every category.
- Category pages - Every category (for eg. an online shopping store dedicated to shoes, categories will be formal shoes, sports shoes, outdoor shoes, etc.) of items has a unique page to show all the items belonging to that category (for this cost estimation we consider the maximum number of categories as 20).
- Product page - It contains all the details about the particular product user selected, which includes product name & description, images of the item with zoom-in functionality, video of the product, size & model details, star rating, and customer reviews about the goods & services offered. It also contains "favorite the item" & "add to cart" buttons.
- Search functionality - A much-used feature, which take the cue from the user typed characters and return product suggestions for the user to select. This feature is customized to suggest the products which are available on the client's eCommerce store. The search button will be available on the main & individual category pages.
- Product Filtering - Consider an example where a user looking for a shoe of size 7 in color blue and typed the search query "shoe" which generally will return 100s of items with the "shoe" in product name. As the user is looking for only shoes with size 07 & color blue, instead of surfing through all the items, he will use the filtering option which shows only the items which match the user-selected filters i.e. size 07 & color blue.
- Sort-by feature - Sorting option will arrange the items as per the user selected preferences like newest first or highest price first or lowest price first.
- Favorited items - The user could mark any item as favorites without selecting the size, color, etc. and the favorited items are saved in the user's wishlist.
- Add to cart - This feature makes the user choose as many items they want to purchase before selecting delivery. Before adding any items to the cart user will be asked to select size, model, etc. depending on the product.
- Cart - Here users could view the items they have selected to purchase, or update the quantity, or even remove the items from the cart before making a purchase. This is like a summary of items the user chose to shop for.
- Log in with Email - Customer will be asked to login/sign up with an email-id so that a unique ID will be created for that user and all the data related to the customer will be stored by referencing that unique ID. User has to verify the email only during the first purchase.
- Mobile number verification - Buyer mobile number will also be verified for the first purchase and also whenever they choose to use a different mobile number. The Mobile number will make the communication instant and also help the shipping agent to contact the buyer & get directions.
- Delivery Address - This screen shows the earlier used addresses to choose for the current delivery and also an option to input the new delivery address.
- Payments - Payment providers of business choice like Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, etc. will be integrated into the app for easy & stress-free payment collection. The amount to be charged will be decided based on the product cost and delivery charges minus any applicable discounts/offers the user claimed.
- Customer Profile - This is the dashboard for the customer to access their purchase history, wishlists, delivery addresses, order status, etc.
- Cancel/return orders - Depending on the store's cancellation or return policy requests are handled. For example, the customer will be not able to raise a return request for specific items like personal hygiene items, innerwear, items sold on sale, etc. However, they will be free to do so for general-purpose items within the maximum allowed days after item despatch.
- User reviews - Many of the users will check the Customer reviews with star ratings before making a purchase. This feature provides the option for the customer who bought the item (verified buyer) to write a review about the product including a star rating.
- Email or notifications - We develop backend functions to send email/SMS notifications to the customer when the order is accepted, ready for delivery, receipt of goods by the customer, promotional offers. This also includes taking appropriate permission from the respective mobile operating systems in case of showing alerts & notifications.
- Feedback - A system where the customer could provide feedback to the company & also raise complaints within the app that are not related to the product.
- Policies - It includes detailed guidelines & approaches about Cancellation & returns, terms & conditions, shipping policy.
2 Client-facing / Seller web app.
This web app will only be accessible to the designated staff of the company. This will be the dashboard to check/update/add all the business side of things. It includes the following features.
- Products - A dashboard to add new products, update /remove the existing ones, with details such as products which are on sale, quantity available, images of the product, descriptions about the item, and other details about the items as deemed fit.
- Order creation - This is an automatic backend function that creates a shipping label along with tax details for every completed transaction. This also automatically decreases the count of items available for the next purchases.
- Offer or Discount codes - An web app feature to create a discount code with a start & end date between which it can be redeemed. It has further options to limit the offer applicability to specific categories of business choice.
- Shipping partner - One Shipping partner of your choice will be integrated into the app so that delivery & pick-up details will be informed to the shipper automatically. Notification will be sent to the shipper when the items are ready to pick up from the warehouse. Also, details of delivery of items to the customer or return collection from the customer will be fetched from shippers backend APIs if available.
- Reports Dashboard - To view, how many orders were processed on a particular day/month along with total revenues.
Yeah, we know the list is long and the mobile app built with the above features makes one good of an eCommerce app & if we build the same with a cross-platform framework like flutter it will be a blast.
The cost we charge for the custom online shopping app or MVP developed with the explained features is...
| Price in USD | |
|---|---|
| Consumer-facing mobile app for Android & iOS with source code and custom logo. | $ 19,700/- |
| Client-facing web app with source code | $ 8,500/- |
| Total | $ 28,200/- |
Frequently asked questions.
Could you connect CMS like WordPress & Shopify to the app?
when you are already having a WordPress / Shopify website and want to fetch the product details from that CMS (content management system), we will integrate this without any additional charges.
Can the customer shop for products outside of the product description page?
Yes, the option of "add to cart" is available for individual items on the main page, category pages & search results with an option to select the quantity.
Do you provide social authentication like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.?
We could very well include social authentication in the app. But as most of the social login providers give users the option to mask their original email id's we recommend our clients to use email login only, so that we get actual contact info the customer & communication will be through.
Does the app check whether the item is deliverable to the buyer's ZIP code?
Buyer ZIP code will be obtained for the first time when the buyer tries to add the item to the cart. Once we have a zip code, the same will be stored in the database & will be reused to check the delivery of items to the user. An option to change/update the ZIP code is also provided. If required, a system for item-specific delivery location checking will also be built at additional costs.
Could the shopper have multiple delivery addresses?
Before every order, the shopper has presented the option to select any of the delivery addresses they used in the past and also an option to enter a new address. However, the option to select multiple delivery locations for a single transaction is not available.
Could we moderate the reviews before they become visible to other buyers?
The option will be provided to the staff of the company to check the star rating & review posted by buyers. Only after the staff/moderator accepted the review, it will become visible in the app.
Could I customize the shipping label?
The shipping label will be customized as per business requirements, including the addition of QR codes.
How much time will it require to build an eCommerce app?
Generally, the cross-platform app with the above specification will be completed in 02 months including release to the app store & play store. However, it may take longer depending on the custom features required.
Could I offer a discount code to the individual shopper?
Yes, of course, we could develop a system to offer discount code applicable only to the selected shopper. But the same is not included in this cost estimation.
Could I add multiple shipping partners?
Adding multiple shipping partners (Like one shipping company for big items & one for small items or one shipper for urban location & another one for rural location delivery) could be done. But the same is not included in this cost estimation.
What about B2B sales?
We could build a dedicated B2B sales platform with exclusive features to deal with other businesses.
Which backend do you use for the eCommerce app?
It is generally what fits the project better and also what our client prefers. However, most of the apps we built use Firebase for authentication, document storage, notifications, and BunnyCDN to serve images & video.
Is this estimation/app is for the single seller or multiple sellers?
The above estimation is for an online shopping app for a single seller(who sells directly to the customer), However, if you are looking for a multi-seller platform type application, kindly ask for a quotation.
According to Criteo research, shoppers who buy via the mobile app are twice as likely to return to your online store within 30 days, compared to customers who purchase via the website. As mobile phones are becoming more of a necessity than just a good-to-have luxury it makes more sense to have better apps built for that hand-held universe.
Further as told in the other posts, with a cross-platform framework like Flutter, the development cost will be approximately 2 times less than developing the app for ios & android platforms without any deterioration in quality. And if you are ready to provide a unique shopping experience to your customer & grow your brand, let us know, we are more than happy to build your dream app...
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