Before you jump into creating your own ecommerce mobile app, first of all you need to do your own research of your options and requirements as well as make important decisions. These preparation steps are really important to take as changing plans meanwhile or realising that you do not fit all the requirements can lead to serious delayment in the projects or even cause it to fall apart. This can mean serious fund losses which I am pretty sure everyone wants to avoid.
So what decisions and researches do you need to make before starting the development process?
The first, sensitive parts of an app are the registration and login. Customers prefer to take a look at the content of the app and the merchandise before having to give out personal information like name or home address. So the first decision to make is whether you would like the users to register before gaining access to your content or not. As for the developers to apply the login/registration into the beginning is easier but it might not be the best solution from the marketing’s point of view. The second most popular phase in which you can apply the registration is the checkout. However if you walk that path, you have to make sure you plan the whole process from step to step to avoid over complex or dodgy solutions which would let your customers down.
Another delicate part of an ecommerce app is the payment. There are quite a few payment solutions on the market nowadays and the most popular ones are Stripe and Braintree. Before deciding we advise you to read their terms & conditions as well as their reviews on the internet to make sure you choose the option which fits you the most.
Stripe is a secure solution for internet and app payment and good not only for payment but subscription and other financial services. Pricing of Stripe is 1.4% + 20p for European cards and 2.9% + 20p for non-European cards. From the developers point of view, we found the implementation of Stripe is a bit tough and it need an extra screen for payment besides the Basket screen. Stripe requires registration and login before payment options can be chosen, as they automatically check the customer's status or register them into their system. In our experience, the system not always works perfectly including lagging and connection failures occasionally. Another great disadvantage of the system is that you can’t implement a Paypal payment which is a very popular payment option on the internet. Stripe also accepts Apple Pay and Android Pay but the second one is only beta product yet.
Braintree is a payment provider which provide both PayPal and card payment options. You can also change in the settings which payment options you would like to allow in your app. The pricing of Braintree is 1.9% + 20p for every card except American Express which is 2.4% + 20p. In case of PayPal it is the same percent as your current PayPal pricing. When implementing Braintree, we add a check out button to the bottom of your basket which will lead to Braintree’s payment system. Customers can choose their preferred payment options from there and proceed to payment. During our work with developing and testing ecommerce apps which used Braintree’s system, we never experienced any problems with connection or with making a payment. Braintree also accepts Venmo, Apple Pay and Android Pay without a problem so your options are really wide ranged. Please note that if you would like to accept PayPal payments, you must possess a PayPal Business account which only takes a couple of minutes to open.
As a conclusion we advise Braintree payment system even if it has a bit higher rate than Stripe as the payment and option possibilities are a lot wider and the system is more reliable. Nevertheless, it is the best if you take a look around and decide which payment provider is the closest to your heart.
