The Best Mobile App for Your E-Commerce Business

With hundreds of new smartphones and tablets being released every year, there is no question that mobile apps have become a must-have for modern e-commerce businesses.

According to Statista, “The number of smartphone users is forecasted to grow to 2.5 billion by 2019.” Knowing this, mobile developers and business owners are now faced with the challenge of deciding on which mobile app platform is best to use for their business.

Should they go with a native app? Or, use some middle solution and develop a cross-platform app?

If this all sounds foreign to you, don’t worry. We’ll explain what these are below. As a business owner, you should understand the differences, as each platform has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

So let’s start our native vs cross-platform mobile app development analysis.

Advantages of Native App Development

Native apps allow you to unlock a mobile device’s full potential, as they’re written for a specific platform, like Android or iOS.

It means that an app developer can utilize a wider range of app functionality, like including Bluetooth support, NFC, GPS sensor, camera, microphone, accelerometer, and gyroscope. In addition, these apps perform faster, because they have good integration with the mobile devices’ hardware.

Native apps give you more freedom in terms of screen optimization and they’ll always look good on a variety of mobile devices, with different screen sizes and aspect ratios.

Native apps allow you to access the app data without an internet connection because they’re installed on the device itself. However, if it’s an e-commerce app, it won’t work without an internet connection.

Disadvantages of Native Apps

• Cost of development: Native applications are more expensive to develop than cross-platform and web applications because you need to develop a separate application for each platform and have to support them independently.
• Incompatibility with other mobile OS or OS versions: Native iOS apps can’t be installed on Android devices and vice versa. An app that was developed for Android 7 won’t work on Android 4.

Advantages of Cross-Platform Apps

• Reusable code base for all platforms (iOS and Android).
• Cost-effective development, as the apps use the same codebase for different operating systems and is supported by one team.
• Cross-platform applications target multiple platforms at the same time and have a wider audience reach and better marketing opportunities.
• Having a single codebase among cross-platform apps allows them to look and behave the same across all platforms.

Disadvantages of Cross-Platform Apps

• Cross-platform apps are not as flexible as native apps and there is always a chance that cross-platform technologies won’t be able to provide you with the same level of flexibility you could find in native programming languages.
• The app won’t perform at the device’s maximum ability.
• Submitting your app to the app stores is a tricky process, which takes a lot of time.

How to Choose

If you want to impress your users with a lightning-fast interface, rich functionality, and overall performance, then native apps are your best option. In addition, you’ll get better app security and stability.

The price for this is that you’ll most likely need to hire two dedicated teams for each platform. Small businesses may not be able to afford to develop an application for both platforms.

Cross-platform apps, on the other hand, can be developed for both iOS and Android, wherein the whole thing is a one-team job. Plus, cross-platform apps are much easier in terms of maintenance and deployment, so you can spend more time and money on marketing and attracting new customers.

However, their biggest disadvantage is lower performance, which is especially crucial if you’re developing an application with features that require a deep hardware integration.

In any case, if you’ve been planning on turning your idea into a mobile application, but are not sure which platform to choose, you can always contact us, via our contact form today, and we’ll provide you with a complimentary estimate.