How to Build a Mobile App for Your Shopify Store

Platforms like Shopify have made it easy to launch and grow an ecommerce store without building the underlying commerce infrastructure yourself.

The same now applies to launching a mobile app.

You don’t necessarily need to rebuild your product catalog, customer accounts, checkout and order system from the ground up, to get a mobile app. It’s easier than it’s ever been, even for lean brands with small IT teams, to build and launch a branded app for their store.

There are a few ways to get an app, depending on what you want it to be, and how much work you want to put into it. Keep reading and we’ll walk you through everything.

Why Does Your Shopify Store Need a Mobile App?

A very small percentage of ecommerce brands (Shopify brands included) have their own app.

One study of nearly 5,000 successful consumer ecommerce brands found that just 13% have their own mobile app. If you draw it out to a wider range of brands, that percentage will only get lower.

Many of these brands that don’t have an app should have an app.

Why?

An app gives you a direct line to your customers. It lives on their home screen, as a constant reminder of your brand’s existence.

It makes it significantly easier for customers to come back. Instead of having to remember your URL and type it in and wait for the browser to load, they open your store with one tap from their phone.

An app also gives you native push notifications, which are like a zero-cost version of SMS, and one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers.

The value and potential return of an app is too much to ignore (especially when, as you’ll learn, the investment required isn’t as much as you might think).

Data shows that apps can deliver a revenue lift of nearly 24% for brands in certain categories; with fashion and beauty brands the strongest players.

If you’re a fashion brand doing $5M in annual revenue, an app could deliver a return of over a million dollars extra revenue per year.

That’s a channel that’s too good to ignore.

Three Ways to Build a Mobile App for Shopify

So you want an app. You’re convinced now that it’s worthwhile. The next step: how to build it.

The simplified version: build a native UI that connects with your Shopify backend.

In practice, there are three ways to get there.

1. Use a Shopify Mobile App Builder

The simplest route is to use one of the many mobile app builders built for Shopify stores.

These are no-code tools, usually template-based, which let you piece together a custom UI with a drag-and-drop builder, linked to your Shopify Admin.

Your products, collections, prices and inventory sync between Shopify and your app. Orders still flow through Shopify, and the app builder handles much of the technical work involved in producing and updating your iOS and Android apps.

This makes it possible to launch an app without hiring your own development team. You choose a theme, adjust the design to match your brand, configure the features you need and let the provider guide your app through submission to Apple and Google.

A template-based app comes with limitations; and if you have custom elements on your site (niche integrations, custom-built features, unique design), these may not carry over to your app.

But it’s a straightforward option that works for most straightforward stores.

2. Build an App on Top of Your Existing Shopify Store

The second route is to use your existing mobile site as the core foundation of your app instead of rebuilding your storefront in another platform.

An app builder like MobiLoud offers something different to the typical app builders you find in the Shopify App Store.

Instead of rebuilding your store inside of an app template, you build a native layer on top of your existing site.

That means everything from your site automatically carries over to your app. All your design, custom features, integrations and more, all of it works in your app, automatically.

On top of that, the platform adds native code and design, like native navigation UI, a mobile tab menu, and push notifications.

It’s a real, full-featured mobile app, powered by your website.

This is the best way for more complex, higher-end brands to launch a mobile app - Shopify Plus brands, for instance, for whom standard app builders usually struggle to do the job.

3. Build a Custom Mobile App Using Shopify’s APIs

The third option is to build a new mobile frontend and connect it to Shopify through its APIs.

Shopify’s Storefront API gives your development team access to products, collections, search, carts, customer information and other commerce data. Checkout Kit allows you to present Shopify checkout inside an iOS, Android or React Native app.

You hire developers, or an agency, to build the screens and interactions customers use, while Shopify continues handling the underlying commerce operations.

This gives you complete control over your app. You can design every screen around mobile users, build features that don’t exist on your website and create an experience that isn’t limited by the components or integration library of an app builder.

It’s significantly more expensive, not just to build, but to maintain as well. You’re looking at a six-figure launch cost, and potentially as much as that again in yearly maintenance costs.

But you do get a high-level end product. The question is just whether the extra quality is worth the extra cost.

How the Three Approaches Compare

The Right Approach For Your Shopify Mobile App

So which is the best way to go, when building your mobile app?

There is not a single best approach; all three can get you a great app. Sometimes the right way is a simple app builder, sometimes the right way is a deeply complex custom build.

The midpoint, as is usually the case, tends to be the most efficient. MobiLoud’s approach - building a mobile app from your existing site - lets you get a custom app that has full feature and design parity with your website. It’s a little more expensive than a standard app builder, but massively cost-efficient for the return your app could bring.

The Golden Rule

Whichever way you build your app, follow this rule.

The app doesn’t need to be significantly better than your website. But it should not be worse.

You need to give customers a reason to use it. It needs to add value. It can’t do that if it doesn't do as much as your website does.

If that’s because you’re using a template-based app builder that can’t carry over custom elements from your site, or you’re trying to build a custom app from the ground up and it ends up being too expensive and time-consuming to build everything you really want in your app.

Either way, this is not a good start for your app.

Don’t think of your app as a standalone product. Think of it as another arm of your brand, which should be consistent with your website, and anywhere else you sell products.

Build an App That Measures Up to Your Store

Shopify gives you a solid backend for a mobile app. The more important decision is what you build in front of it.

You can create a new storefront with a visual app builder, extend the store you already run, or develop an entirely new mobile experience through Shopify’s APIs.

The right route should give customers a better reason to use your app, without creating unnecessary work for your team. If your app strips away the features, design and experience that make your website effective, launching quickly won’t count for much.

Build something that measures up to your store. Then use the native advantages of an app to make it easier for your best customers to come back.