How to Build a Boutiqaat-Like Ecommerce App?

For any kind of online store, offering the best possible customer experience is a necessity. The key to doing this correctly is to connect with customers on all the available touchpoints and provide them with a great experience each time.

For instance, to develop an app like Boutiqaat, you must be very customer-centric. The most important touchpoint of being customer-centric is providing a seamless mobile experience; as for any e-commerce app, 70% of traffic comes from mobile sales.

An e-commerce app like Boutiqaat today has emerged as one of the leading beauty and fashion apps that has attracted a lot of recurring customers. The app has been successfully able to deliver a quality user experience to its customers, indicating how digital transformation of business is important for enhanced customer experiences.

Market Outlook of the E-Commerce Personal Care Market

Beauty and cosmetic products have always remained popular e-commerce niches in the UAE. As per recent statistics, revenue in the beauty and personal care market in the UAE is expected to amount to $1.13 billion in 2022. Almost 24% of the total revenue will be reportedly generated only through online sales by the end of 2022 in the UAE region.

What used to be an industry particularly limited to physical stores not too long ago has now taken a complete grab of the digital landscape. Given the growing penetration of the internet and widespread digital connectivity, web sale has now become a solid source of revenue for the beauty and personal care industry.

Why is Boutiqaat the Most Loved Beauty and Fashion App?

An app like Boutiqaat was envisaged by a young Kuwaiti entrepreneur in the year 2015 who was successfully able to distinguish the application as one of the leading e-commerce platforms. The app was a virtual makeup showroom with a curated mix of 25,000+ fashion and beauty products from the top 700+ local and international brands.

Boutiqaat offers personal recommendations from the most loved celebrities in the Middle East, which help users to identify the right products for themselves. As per Similarweb, Boutiqaat earns annual revenue of $100 million to $200 million and is ranked as the second-best beauty and personal care e-commerce app in the UAE region.

What started as a generic e-commerce brand in Kuwait has today grown tremendously and become one of the premium destinations for purchasing beauty and makeup products in the Middle Eastern region. The app also has 1,000+ tutorial videos on beauty tips, product reviews, makeup looks, and reviews by celebrities.

How to Develop an App like Boutiqaat?

The fashion e-commerce app development process is not a simple one. It is quite a complex and difficult task as it requires a lot of advanced planning and resources. Let’s look at the complete step-by-step process of developing an app like Boutiqaat.

Market Research and Analysis

The first step to build a Boutiqaat-like ecommerce app is market research.  This includes doing competitive research, conducting user interviews, and analyzing target audience behavior and other market patterns. Once you do thorough market research, you will be better able to determine the right set of features and platforms for your Boutiqaat clone app.

Set your Goals

The foundation for building an app like Boutiqaat depends on how you set your goals. Focus on the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound) Goal. Ask yourself the following questions that will help you in your SMART goal-setting process:

• What do you seek to achieve?
• When do you want to accomplish it?
• How will you measure the results?

Choose the Right Platform

Depending on the revenue model of your business, ensure choosing the right platform for your fashion e-commerce app. Having detailed information about the CMS, inventory, database, and cost can help you decide if you want to launch an iOS or Android app.

However, it goes very well without saying that you will definitely need to research the platform type. You can also choose cross-platform app development if you wish to launch on both platforms.

Opt for the Right Feature Set

By now, you have already done your research and have understood how to outdo your competitors, so it is now time to define the right e-commerce app feature set that can satisfy your end users. An e-commerce app similar to Boutiqaat should have features, including push notifications, social media integration, ratings and reviews, alternative payment options, easy and faster checkout, a wishlist, synchronization, and others.

Ensure that you have all these basic features implemented first before utilizing the other advanced features that can generate more user engagement in your app.

Create an Appealing UI/UX Design

Customers’ experience in an e-commerce fashion and beauty app should surpass the in-personal shopping experience. Remember, design is the only voice of your business. Thus, creating a proper UI and UX design will keep your customers glued to your app.

Go for designing appealing visuals, great color schemes, smoother transitions, and easily navigational features that can make a long-lasting impression on your users, just like 6th Street.

6th Street, an e-commerce fashion app, was experiencing a poor user experience with payment gateway issues and delays in starting the app. Our experts at Appinventiv solved this issue, overall redefining the entire online shopping experience.

Thus, if the app has a great user interface, it would allow your customers to easily browse through the products in your app and make a smoother purchase.

Build your MVP

To develop a fashion and beauty app like Boutiqaat, you will initially need to build an MVP that can raise money for your mobile app. MVP is all about building the basic structure of your app, testing its functionalities with a minimal set of features before releasing the original version.

An MVP can help your business get the concept tested with real users and raise money for funding their original app.

Conduct User Testing

Before you finally launch the app, you need to go for user testing to determine if your app is ready to reach out to users on a large scale. Allow them to interact with your app’s functionality and interface.

Analyze if your users can naturally interact with your product and see if the system is suitable and spontaneous enough for use by people who are not very accustomed to it. Check for glitches and bugs by going for QA testing.

Launch and Market your App

Once you’ve successfully done the user testing part, you are ready for the final stage of your fashion mobile app development, the app launch. But before you get your app launched on the app store or play store, you need to comply with Apple or Google’s developer guidelines.

Also, you need to get your monetization strategy aligned with their requirements. Once your app is successfully launched on the app store, you can now market your beauty and fashion app, similar to Boutiqaat, on different social media channels and make it visible to a bigger crowd.

Top Features to Consider While Developing an App like Boutiqaat

Now that you understand how to develop a fashion app like Boutiqaat, let’s move on to discuss the top fashion app features you need to implement in your app.

Customer Panel

With the customer panel or dashboard, you can include all the crucial features that can give your users a smoother experience in using your e-commerce app. Here are the features you can consider for the customer panel:

Sign Up or Social Sign In

For any great fashion and beauty e-commerce app, the signup and sign-in process must be hassle-free. Allow your users to sign in easily with their social media accounts like Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, etc.

Advance Search Functionality

This allows the users to search for the preferred products with keywords by filtering category, product type, rating, offers, and promotions. They can customize their search as per their requirement.

Multiple Payment Options

One of the critical Boutiqaat app features includes the availability of multiple payment options. Get your application integrated with multiple wallet options so that the app users can make a hassle-free payment by choosing their desired payment method.

Quick One-Step Checkout

Keep a fast checkout process that allows your users to make a quick purchase. With a complicated checkout process, users can feel dissatisfied and abandon the cart midway. Ensure that they have a hassle-free and seamless experience in checking out with the successful placing of their order.

Bonus Read- The Best Ways to Simplify Your Ecommerce App Checkout

Order Tracking

With real-time tracking and notifications, users can now track their orders right from the time they are placed till they are delivered to their doorsteps. Every milestone achieved will be notified to the users through push notifications.

Admin Panel

The admin panel offers you complete control over the right set of tools and helps you manage your online e-commerce stores easily. Here are the features you should consider for the admin panel:

Easy Product Management

Managing the product categories are now simplified in an all-in-one dashboard. As an admin, you can now add photos, descriptions, customer reviews, and prices of your products and streamline everything as per your requirement.

Manage Inventory

Keep your inventory up-to-date and clear with an easy-to-use interface. Optimize stocks, save costs and make your supply chain more efficient with inventory management.

Track Performance

Track the complete performance of your sales and order with AI-powered analytic tools. You can now generate customized reports and handle your sales and marketing operations smoothly.

Vendor Panel

Develop a multi-vendor e-commerce platform that will help the vendors manage order requests smoothly. Here are the features for  the vendor panel:

Manage Delivery Locations

Customers get agitated when they add a particular product and see that it cannot be delivered to their location, which indicates that the product is not available locally. Vendors can set their location and enable product filtering so that the customers can locate the nearby vendors.

Upload Product

With a multi-vendor marketplace solution, the vendors can now upload bulk product pictures and other product information while making changes to the available offers in real-time.

Account Report

This section allows the vendors to get complete transaction details of every order, like net payable amount, commission amount, shipping cost, and marketplace fee. This allows the vendors to manage their commission invoices and track what they are paying to sell on an e-commerce marketplace.

Delivery Boy Panel

This particular panel helps the delivery boy in handling bulk orders and get real-time information about the products, customer information, and other details. Here are the common features for a delivery boy panel:

Quick Onboarding for Delivery Agents

With an easy sign-in process, the delivery agents can get themselves quickly on-boarded to the e-commerce app and get started with their job.

Track Real-Time Orders

With an easy-to-use e-commerce dashboard, the delivery agents can get complete details of order pick-up and drop information along with the estimated time of delivery.

Real-Time Order Updates

The delivery agents can easily update the status of the customer’s orders in real-time, like when the order will be picked, when it will be out for delivery, and when it will be finally delivered.

Monitor Performance

The delivery agents can also track their performance by getting constant updates. The performance will be monitored based on the ratings and reviews by customers, the total number of orders delivered, and the on-time delivery report.

Advanced Features that can Make your Boutiqaat-Like App Stand Out

The current e-commerce market is thronging with the competition. Long-term success mainly depends on what kind of user experience you offer to your customers. Therefore, it is always great to incorporate your e-commerce app with some advanced features to make it more user-friendly and alluring. Here are the features you can consider including in your app.

Chatbot Integration

Chatbot for customer support makes any e-commerce app more interactive. It provides answers to the generic queries of your customers and interacts just like a human. A smart chatbot integration can save a lot of your investment and time in human resources.

These chatbots are set with pre-programmed keywords and get triggered when a user asks a question, the answer to which is already stored in the program. A recent survey says that 33% of people globally have found chatbots to be very useful and effective at resolving their queries.

Push Notifications

With the push notification feature, you can allow your customers to stay informed regarding their shipment status, order confirmation, discounts or offers, app updates, or any other useful information which will keep them constantly engaged with your app.

Product Recommendation

It is extremely useful for the fashion and beauty e-commerce app to offer product recommendations and professional beauty advice to its users, as they like personalized services. For instance, Boutiqaat gives personalized product recommendations from the most loved celebrities in the Middle East to its users.

At Appinventiv, we created an e-commerce app for mothers, known as Edamama that shows personalized product recommendations based on their child’s gender and age. Such customized experience helps boost engagement rates and entices the users to stay glued to the app.

Efficient CRM System

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can help you build and manage long-lasting relationships with your customers. An efficient CRM system allows you to get your marketing strategies channelized and helps you to gather, manage, and evaluate customer data most effectively.

Therefore, it is always a great option to have implemented a powerful CRM for your e-commerce fashion and beauty app.

Multilingual and Multi-Currency Support

If you have an idea of expanding your e-commerce app business beyond borders, then your app must support multiple languages and currencies. These features will give your users a more personalized touch and offer them a hassle-free and seamless shopping experience.

Behavior Tracking

With the behavior tracking feature, you can actually track the behavior of your individual users on your e-commerce app. By using this information, your app would suggest the users more relevant suggestions. Behavior tracking is also a great step toward making your app more customer-oriented.

Technology Stack for Building an App like Boutiqaat

Choosing a robust technology stack is crucial for building a fail-proof e-commerce app. To develop an app like Boutiqaat, you must strictly adhere to all the quality standards of e-commerce app development. Here are the following tools and technologies you should utilize for building a scalable ecommerce beauty app.

• Real-time app analytics: Spark, Hadoop, BigData, Apache, IBM, Cisco
• Payment gateway: Stripe
• Data management: Datastax
• Database: Cassandra, Hbase, MongoDB
• Push notifications: Firebase cloud messaging, Apple push notifications
• Cloud environment: Google and AWS
• Voice, SMS, phone verification: Nexmo, Sinch, Twilio
• In-app chat: QuickBlox Chat

How Much Does it Cost to Develop an App like Boutiqaat?

The e-commerce app development cost estimation depends on the overall complexity of your app. Several factors need to be considered to find out the approximate cost.

Integration of features like choice of platform, screens, device type, third-party integrations, and UI and UX designs should be considered before charting out the fashion app development cost. Also, the estimated time to complete the e-commerce app development is another significant factor influencing the cost.

[Also Read: How much does it cost to build an app like Namshi]

The cost also varies on how an individual company charges per hour. The cost to develop an app like Boutiqaat can go from $10,000 to $50,000 or more, depending on the complexity of the shopping app.

Bonus Read- How much does it cost to build an e-commerce app like Noon?

Conclusion

Now, when you know how to develop a shopping app like Boutiqaat, you need to choose an e-commerce app development company that can help you transform your idea into a fully functional e-commerce app.

Ensure that your app has all the powerful features that can set you apart from others. Get started by developing your Minimum Viable Product with the expert fashion app developers of Appinventiv. As a leading ecommerce development company, we have worked with many top brands, including IKEA and Adidas, helping them expand their global digital presence.

FAQs

Q. How to start with your fashion e-commerce app development process?

A. After you build your MVP and test it, bring your development team together, who will develop an app like Boutiqaat for you. The team should consist of frontend and backend developers, designers, testers, and project managers, each having a good experience in their job profiles.

Next, you need to choose the right methodology for your project, depending on its nature. You can either go for waterfall or agile methodology.

Q. What considerations do you need to make before hiring an e-commerce app development company?

A. When you are ready to initiate your e-commerce app development process, here are a few things you need to consider before hiring a partner:

• View the company’s client portfolio
• Talk to their client references
• Learn about their development process
• Get an insight into their team
• Know about their design approach

Q. What are the monetization models for an e-commerce fashion and beauty app?

A. Here is the list of monetization models or strategies for your e-commerce fashion and beauty app:

Featured Listings

In this kind of monetization model, app owners can earn revenue by displaying the associated partners as their top service providers. They can separately advertise them within the app under a sponsorship program and charge for this action.

Ads= Sales

Ad selling is a time-tested monetization strategy that you can follow to gain revenue for your app. You can also charge an amount in return for in-app advertising.

Commission

This kind of monetization model is utilized by the top brands. It works by taking a certain percentage of income from the sellers. This monetization strategy can help you gain a study flow of income in your e-commerce business.

Q. What team structure is required to build a Boutiqaat-like ecommerce app?

A. Finding the right team to build a Boutiqaat-like e-commerce app is crucial to ensure its success. Here is the team structure that can answer your query on “how to make an app like Boutiqaat”:

• UX/UI Designers
• Project Manager
• App Wireframing Expert
• Backend Developers
• Graphic Designers
• Front-end Developer
• Delivery Manager
• Database Expert
• QA Professionals
• IOS Developer
• Hybrid App Developer
• Android Developer

THE AUTHOR

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