Hybrid vs. Native E-commerce apps.
If you asked me to find the best metaphor to describe a customer’s mobile journey, it would definitely be an elastic rope because it’s not the same length for everyone. Many have taken the path of opening a mobile app to browse a couple of listings and then quickly reached a point of conversion. Instead thousands are distracted by their cat — that little absorber of attention. Millions receive notifications about their friend’s birthdays and immediately start texting congratulations. Just like a tightrope walker, every minute a customer is at risk of falling on his way to conversion. Of course, we can not predict what exactly will happen with a customer at a specific moment when using an app. And of course, we can not make an order and purchase on behalf of the customer. However, we can put tools in their hands that significantly increases the chance of successful conversions.
Mobile purchasing stats
More than 75% of Europeans use their mobile device to make purchases online. 47% do that two or more times a month. And these numbers are constantly growing year after year. In 2018 nobody asks if there is a need for mobile apps. The question is: what type of mobile app (hybrid or native) is best for which particular business in what particular moment? Having an expertise in mobile app development for one of the fastest growing e-commerce startups in Germany — Lesara.com, Temy.co wants to share this experience with others.
We met with Lesara in 2016 when it had already been in the market for 3 years. Lesara showed crazy exponential growth with 1.5 million active customers across Europe. At that time, Lesara had an active hybrid app but a decision to shift to a native app was made. There were 3 main reasons why the successful e-commerce project felt the need to do so.
If you are small choose hybrid, but keep in mind one day you will grow.
Being a hybrid app was an ideal solution at the beginning. A common practice is to choose a hybrid route if there is a need to just test out a business model or your budget is strictly limited. Because of the single code base it is cheaper and faster to develop compared to a native app. But after only one year as a hybrid app it ceased to suit all business requirements Lesara encountered. Above all, it was not able to cope with such growth. Lesara started expanding to new markets: the Netherlands, France, Austria, Switzerland etc. This required adding new languages to the app. It wouldn’t have been a problem, if it wasn’t an e-commerce app. Not only was this a problem, but hundreds of thousands of goods and their descriptions had to be translated to different languages and exported manually into the code.
That process is hard to manage because there isn’t an admin panel for apps, unlike websites. Developers have to communicate directly with translators and editors to make sure the translations are localized. It leads to roadblocks when we are talking about a large scale process. However, there are some services for native apps which can help to automate these steps . For example, Poeditor.net, helps to administrate multilingual apps. Using this helps to achieve efficient collaboration amongst large teams. As soon as new requirements for an app emerge, it takes around 3 to 6 months to rebuild or add new functionalities into a hybrid app. Native apps are much more flexible.
The modern customer counts to three.
The statistics above are terrible and even if it doesn’t impress, here is a bitter truth. Around 78% of customers only try out a mobile app once or twice after it doesn’t work properly for the first time. Only 15% would try more than twice. Almost 40% are ready to pack their bags and run off to a competitor after having a bad mobile experience with your app. No one will waste their time with bad user experience. As with e-commerce, UX and UI are one of the major factors which provide a conversion. How many things can distract the customer and knock them off the path during their journey: (here we have to list them). From the opening of an app to checkout has to be simple, clear, and attractive. Only native apps, thanks to specific UI standards for each platform, have natural user flow and fast performance that reliably supports customers on their road to checkout. Here is how Waldo Wanderhaeghen (UX product manager in Lesara) summarizes:
“Before we started this project we had an active hybrid app. But we experienced quite a bit of problems with it — certain features we wanted to implement (personalization, gamification, making the app just simply more exciting for users) were not possible with the hybrid app. Native solutions, once developed, offer more flexibility. There are also other features such as force, gestures, and animation that cannot be implemented in a hybrid app. And last but not least — the UX and UI leaves a feeling in a native app that’s just simply superior compared to a hybrid app. When you look at how icons are designed it’s better to use an individual approach for every platform”.
Being native means being on the edge.
Who of us after hours of swiping and scrolling through listings in an app hasn’t gotten a headache over what colour of sofa would match better with the floral white walls in a living room? Every woman who chooses cosmetics in an online shop wants to see how different makeup looks on her face. To see how special items match up with a special customer’s case is not an issue if we are talking about AR (Augmented Reality). Just point your mobile camera at the living room and voila — the sofa from an online shop emerges in front your floral white wall. Just take a selfie and paint your lips with every shade! Stats above show how the implementation of AR in e-commerce can greatly increase audience loyalty and sales as a result.
Everybody knows that the e-commerce market is highly competitive. To survive you need to have your finger on the pulse and be up-to-date all the time. Just let your guard down for a moment and competitors armed with fresh killer features like AR will knock you off the pedestal. Every couple of months IOS and Android receive new updates, aimed to improve the smartphone performance and add some useful features to the OS. Having direct access to hardware and built exactly for a particular platform , a Native app is ready to start using these new features. But not in the case of Hybrid apps: it still takes time for developers to update existing libraries with new OS updates. This can take up to 2 to 6 months while your competitors are already on top of things.
Conclusion
After the decision to develop native apps for Lesara was made it took 6 months to finish. In January 2017 Lesara IOS and Android apps were launched and during the first couple of months they showed absolutely incredible results compared to their hybrid counterpart. Their mobile conversion rate increased by 71%, the amount of sales via mobile increased by 2 times and their app rating went from 3.5 to 4.5 stars.
So, in terms of e-commerce (retail) a Hybrid app is doomed to lag behind any Native app. By developing a Hybrid app you prepare yourself for the now, but a Native app is for the future.
