Ecommerce App Development Checklist for Middle Eastern Founders

Planning to launch an ecommerce business for a population that is culturally diverse, financially strong and highly tech savvy with solid acceptance for mobile experiences? If yes, mobile ecommerce app development is the best bet to support your online business vision in the long run. An ecommerce app will help you with lead generation, marketing, inventory management and reporting, order fulfillment and deliveries and 24/7 sales – and that too on autopilot, so you can stay laser-focused on what you do best – product sourcing, development and business management. If you too are an aspiring entrepreneur already sold on the idea of developing and launching a business-level ecommerce app, this checklist will help you navigate

• Ecommerce app development planning
• UI/UX design of your store
• Hiring an ecommerce mobile app development company in UAE
• Monitoring the KPIs of frontend, backend and API integration
• Testing the app before launch

Let’s start!

Step 1: Ecommerce App Planning and Discovery

1. Decide a niche, source a product line and pick a target audience you’ll serve.
2. Plan your ecommerce app’s features, for example, splash screen, online payment, listing pages, product categories, customer support, order tracking and delivery status.
3. Decide the monetization strategy and money-making methods for your app – and for a single-vendor ecommerce platform, the main model is sales commissions.
4. Decide the technology stack for your app – typically it is Laravel and PHP for backend, Java for frontend.
5. Allocate budget for your app development, marketing and maintenance process, and decide a timeline when you’d like to launch. 

Step 2: Hiring an Ecommerce Development Team

While hiring in-house is also an option, it is an expensive one. Assuming that you’d outsource the app development project to an experienced mobile app development companies in Dubai, here is the hiring checklist.

Make a hiring decision based on portfolio and niche experience, team expertise and full-cycle coverage, cost of development and timeline for launch.

1. Check the portfolio and discuss timeline for development and launch.
2. Discuss the ownership of source code and design elements of the ecommerce app.
3. Review the non-disclosure agreement and discuss white-labeling issues.
4. Talk about how the company will handle changes in scope of work.
5. Develop a product development roadmap with milestones and KPIs for development. 

Step 3: Ecommerce App Design

Once you have planned the product, pricing and platform for your ecommerce business, it’s time to build its user interface. For the first part where you’ll create rough sketches as design starter, you can use white-boarding tools like Figma and Sketch.

For the later part, when you’ll need high-fidelity screen mockups, your development team will assign the design KPIs the creative team – and most likely you’ll be in 1:1 communication during the design phase.

1. List down the features of the app. Then create wireframe with blocks in the screen mockups.
2. Start building the user interface with logo, buttons, navigation features, sidebars, notification panel etc.
3. Make the prototype interactive and clickable
4. Design the product listing page with high-quality image, description box, pricing, add to cart and wishlist button, rating and reviews placeholder and product comparison.
5. Design the checkout page with article summary, total checkout amount, payment method selection, and delivery method option.
6. Add interactive elements including product zoom, swipe gestures, animated transitions and microinteractions. 

Step 4: Ecommerce App Development

After completing the prototype, monitor the hand-off from design to development. Distribute the development KPIs into sprints.

1. Monitor development of app’s frontend. Match feature after feature with the prototype.
2. Review and audit app’s loading speed, performance and user experience.
3. Monitor development of app’s backend. Review the app’s security and data privacy measures.
4. Integrate external services and APIs like maps for delivery status and payment options like Visa, PayPal and Stripe.
5. Enable user authentication mechanisms including email and password, social login and biometric.
6. Enable push notifications and provide options to customize the frequency of notifications.
7. Integrate analytics tools to track post-launch user behavior, app performance and monetization. 

Step 5: Ecommerce App Testing

After development execution, your ecommerce app is ready for usability testing.and that you can get done by this web development services in dubai provider having great experience in this domain also battle-test it here for user experience, and communicate with developers timely to ensure there are no glitches, bugs and app crashes post-launch.

1. Start with device and browser testing and check the compatibility on versions and operating systems of laptops and smartphones.
2. Check the user experience by evaluating feature after feature, CTA buttons, working of menu and push notifications.
3. Verify that all app features and functionalities work as intended without any errors, bugs, or crashes across different devices and operating systems.
4. Test the app for load time, response time, and resource utilization under varying network conditions.
5. Conduct security audits and penetration testing to identify and address vulnerabilities.
6. Check end-to-end encryption to ensure data privacy.
7. Gather feedback from a control group of 100 users from the target audience segment. Look at patterns in feedback and fix if necessary. 

Step 6: Ecommerce App Launch

After check-marketing the KPIs in testing, an app is typically ready to be hosted on Google Play and App Store.

1. Create a landing page and social media handles to announce the launching data for your app.
2. Upload the product listings – images, description, availability and attributes.
3. Go through Google’s community guidelines before submission.
4. Go through Apple’s community guidelines before submission.
5. Make sure the app is age-appropriate.
6. Create a listing description based on common search terms for your app.
7. Design an icon and take visually appealing screenshots.
8. Disclose if the app will show ads. 

Step 7: Post-Launch Maintenance and Marketing

1. Update about the app launch on website and social media.
2. Add download buttons and links to the landing page.
3. Create a calendar with at least 15 posts for social media talking about features and benefits of the app.
4. Look at the analytics as well as response on app listing for ratings and reviews.

Conclusion

While you are done with launch by this step, know that success in the ecommerce business requires to do marketing, maintenance and development on a cyclical basis. Collect data, improve where you can, optimize the experience, market and repeat!