Mobile devices are expected to account for 59% of all retail eCommerce purchases by the end of 2025, reaching a total of $4.01 trillion. To help you grasp the scale: that’s six times as much as last year’s annual revenue of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer.
What does this look like in terms of people? 30% of the global digital audience shops from mobile devices – that’s 1.65 billion users, or roughly five times the entire US population.
Demand creates supply, so mobile apps are shifting from nice-to-have to must-have for retailers. Beyond the obvious – a new sales channel that increases revenue – businesses gain other advantages: better engagement and retention, higher conversion rates compared to desktop purchases, extra promotional options like in-app banners and push notifications, and more.
In this article, we’ll break down the types of mobile apps for retailers, what features they require and how they’re built, how much it costs to develop a retail app, and what factors determine the price.
The Retail App Market: A Competitive Landscape
It all starts with a Big Bang – in our case, it was the pandemic that turned eCommerce into a banger. When services and products became unavailable offline, customer behavior had to change, giving a massive boost to online sales in general and mobile app growth in particular.
Mobile apps now rule the digital economy, pushing desktop aside. More than half of all purchases already happen on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
But not all retail apps work the same way: they fall into several categories, each serving different business models and customer needs. Understanding them helps you invest in the solution that actually fits your operations.
Types of Retail Appsessential-features-of-a-retail-app
eCommerce Apps
These are traditional online shopping apps designed for direct sales from the retailer to the consumer. They provide a full digital shopping experience – from browsing and selecting products to checkout and delivery tracking.
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Such apps work well for businesses that primarily sell online or want to expand beyond physical stores like Target or Sephora do. Or take a closer-to-home example: we built an eCommerce solution from scratch for Fashion House, a clothing retailer with 30 physical stores going digital for the first time.
Fashion House
The website, the application and a dozen integrations have been made. Fully digitalized business with 30 stores and 10 million visitors per year
Omnichannel Apps
These apps unite experiences across various channels (offline stores, websites, mobile apps, social media) into a unified platform. Customers can seamlessly switch between touchpoints: browse products online, check in-store availability, reserve items, and pick them up at their nearest location. Omnichannel retail apps become the hub tying everything together.
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How does it work? You can check the Foodclick case study to better understand. It is a restaurant aggregator that connects online reservations with in-restaurant service. Customers book tables through the app, but once they scan a QR code at the venue, additional features unlock: ordering from digital menus, requesting waiters, and paying contactlessly. The app bridges online and offline seamlessly.
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Marketplace Apps
These types of apps connect multiple sellers with buyers in a united ecosystem. Marketplaces don’t own inventory but provide infrastructure for all parties: product catalogs with recommendation engines, reviews and ratings, payment processing, and more. Let’s take eBay or Amazon as an example.
Mom, I’m creating a food marketplace
They require more complex architecture to handle vendor and stocks management, commission calculations, secure transactions, and integrations with courier services. See how we approached this with the Godno marketplace for small businesses and handmade sellers.
Godno: development of a marketplace for small businesses and handmade sellers
In-store Apps
Physical stores get smarter with such applications: they help customers navigate large retail spaces, scan products on shelves for detailed information, apply digital coupons, or use self-checkout to skip the queues. With GPS, beacons, or QR codes, the app knows where you are and adapts accordingly by providing relevant shopping options.
Loyalty and Reward Apps
Building customer loyalty means rewarding repeat purchases, and loyalty programs in mobile apps help achieve this. This tool builds long-term relationships through bonuses, personalized discounts, and exclusive offers encouraging people to return. Chances are, you’ve collected stars in the Starbucks app or scanned your Tesco Clubcard QR Code at checkout.
Mobile loyalty apps have long replaced plastic cards, expanding what’s possible. For example, the solution we developed for John Dory, a major seafood retailer, lets users form family groups to save and spend bonus points together.
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Essential Features of a Retail App
Once you’ve chosen the approach that matches your business model, it’s time to think about retail app features. Most share core functionality:
Product Catalog
Your digital storefront needs to be as browsable as a physical store. Customers should find products quickly through categories, search and filters. The easier discovery is, the faster they move to purchase. Key features include:
- Categories, filters, and sorting
- Search functionality (text, voice, image)
- Detailed product pages
- Real-time inventory updates
Shopping Cart
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges in mobile commerce: on smartphones, it happens in 75.5% of cases. Making the checkout process smooth directly impacts your conversion rates and sales. Here’s what to definitely take care of:
- Easy cart management
- Guest purchase option
- One-click checkout
- Cart saving for later
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Account Management
Nobody wants to re-enter their shipping address and payment details with every purchase. Below are the features that can remove friction and make coming back to your app feel natural:
- Simple sign-in and login
- Saved preferences (addresses, payment methods)
How to make a cart and authorization in an online store
Payment Processing
Payment flexibility also determines whether customers complete purchases or abandon carts. Users expect multiple options and seamless transactions without leaving the app, so that’s why it’s necessary to add:
- Multiple payment methods (cards, digital wallets)
- Secure transactions
- Digital receipts
Order Management
After clicking “buy”, clients want to know exactly when their order will arrive, where to check the delivery status, and what to do if something goes wrong. Clear order management logic reduces support inquiries and increases satisfaction due to:
- Real-time order tracking
- Delivery preferences
- Return and refund options
- Order history
Online Ordering Platform
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Customer Engagement
The difference between a one-time buyer and a regular customer often comes down to engagement. They won’t remember your app unless you give them reason to return. Here are tools that could help you achieve this goal:
- Push notifications for orders and promotions
- Product reviews and ratings
- Customer support chat
- Loyalty rewards
The Retail App Development Process
Developing a retail app means more than just building software – it’s designing an entire digital experience that reflects the brand, supports operations, and keeps customers coming back.
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Discovery & Research
Clutch reports that about 70% of retail app development teams require a discovery stage before starting the project, and we’re no exception.
Conducting market research, analyzing competitors, and identifying the target audience are key steps to define the app’s technical requirements, focus the budget on high-demand features, and reach product-market fit. Interestingly, for half of the companies surveyed, the discovery stage costs less than $5k.
Planning & Prototyping
When discovery is done, the development process moves on to planning and prototyping. At this stage, detailed technical requirements are defined, the app architecture is mapped out, and key functional modules are outlined.
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Interactive prototypes are often created to test user flows, product browsing, cart functionality, and integrations with external services. This step is especially important for retail apps, where the user journey must be smooth and intuitive.
Starting with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach allows businesses to validate core features, collect real user feedback, and prioritize development efficiently.
When we built Sizl for a Chicago-based dark kitchen network, tight deadlines meant ruthless prioritization. The MVP included only what riders needed: order acceptance, navigation, and delivery confirmation with photo proof. Offline functionality was critical because Chicago has spotty internet coverage. Features like earnings tracking and route optimization came later, after validating core workflows.
Design
This stage turns strategy into something users can see and interact with. More than visually consistent and attractive, a good retail app should be clear and easy to use.
The UX/UI process focuses on real user behavior: how people search for products, navigate categories, decide to buy, and complete purchases. Design also accounts for mobile-specific considerations like thumb zones, screen sizes, and one-handed navigation.
Development
Development builds the actual app and its supporting infrastructure. The team codes both what users see and the backend systems that handle data, payments, and integrations.
The process runs in sprints – short cycles where specific features get built and tested. This lets the team spot issues early and adjust based on feedback. Key work includes connecting payment processors, linking inventory systems, integrating with POS for real-time data sync, and setting up shipping APIs.
Let’s take an example. Building Yapoki, a fast-growing delivery app, involved handling complex integrations across multiple restaurant locations, dark kitchen networks, and POS systems. Each integration required custom logic to ensure seamless data flow while maintaining performance under peak order volumes – over 200 orders per day across the network.
Testing
Before your app reaches customers, it goes through comprehensive quality assurance. It aims to test functionality across different devices, operating systems, and network conditions – ensuring products load correctly, payment process securely, and checkout completes without errors.
Performance testing checks the app works well even with peak traffic and huge product catalog. Security testing is no less critical for retail apps handling customer payment information and personal data. All these actions help prevent costly issues after launch, before dealing with negative feedback and sales losses.
Launch
This step involves technical preparation and deployment to app stores. The app gets submitted to the App Store and Google Play with required certificates, metadata, and compliance documentation. The review process typically takes 1-3 days, though it may require additional changes or clarifications.
Before going live, final checks include server capacity testing, payment gateway verification, and monitoring system setup. Some businesses choose phased rollout – releasing to a small percentage of users first, then gradually expanding. Remember how it was with Clubhouse? This approach helps catch critical issues under real-world conditions before full deployment.
Post-Launch Support
Launching the app isn’t the finish line – it’s the starting point for the ongoing technical maintenance. Post-launch support handles bug fixes, performance optimization, and compatibility updates as iOS and Android release new versions.
Also, real-world usage reveals issues that testing can’t always catch. Support teams monitor crash reports, address technical problems, and release patches as needed. The app also requires updates when integrated services change their APIs or when security vulnerabilities are discovered.
Cost of Developing a Retail App in 2025
Let’s talk about money. How much does it cost to develop a retail app? The price starts at $20k and has no upper limit. It all depends on the features you want to build.
We’ve covered cost breakdown in detail here. The main factors that determine your final price:
- Functionality and complexity. More features and complex logic (integrations with payment systems and inventory software, automation and analytics capabilities, etc.) mean higher costs. Each feature adds development and testing hours.
- Platform choice. Apps can be native (built for a specific operating system) or cross-platform (with one codebase for multiple OS). Each option has pros and cons, but building two separate apps for iOS and Android requires proportionally more time and resources.
- Team. The biggest cost driver is hourly rates multiplied by time and number of people involved. Rates vary by experience, tech stack, location, and more. For our team, it averages $40–45 per hour.
- Timeline. Tight deadlines mean more people working faster, which increases costs. Rush projects come at a higher price than those with realistic deadlines.
Here’s a rough guideline: retail app development typically takes 3 to 9 months and costs around $25–30k on average.
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Future Trends in Retail App Development
Most retail apps share the same core features: product catalogs, shopping carts, order tracking, the essentials. But technology keeps moving, bringing new capabilities that benefit both businesses and customers. Here are retail app trends for 2025, and likely to accelerate next year. For more on what’s hot in retail tech since the current year started, read here.
Artificial Intelligence
AI in retail apps is genuinely changing how customers shop. The most common use case is customer service: AI chatbots reduce call centers and support teams workload by handling routine questions.
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How effective is this? Salesforce reports that during last year's holiday season, AI chatbots helped increase US sales by 4% compared to the previous year. Customers embrace them too – AI chatbot usage grew by 42%.
But communication is just the beginning. AI makes shopping personalized. Instead of browsing generic product lists, customers interact with systems that understand their preferences, size, budget, and style. Algorithms analyze browsing patterns, past purchases, and seasonal behavior to suggest relevant products.
Visual search powered by AI lets customers photograph items they like and find similar products in your catalog. This works particularly well for fashion, furniture, and home decor where visual matching matters more than text descriptions.
AI also enables predictive analytics. Algorithms help retailers stock the right products, personalize promotions, and identify customers at risk of churning before they leave.
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Augmented and Virtual Reality
AR/VR in retail apps solves a specific problem: customers can’t touch products when shopping online. The technology lets them see how furniture looks in their living room, try on glasses, or preview makeup shades on their own face before buying.
You just need to upload a photo or use your camera to get a virtual try-on. This solution is not perfect yet, but good enough to reduce returns, because people avoid buying items that obviously won’t work.
The technology works better for certain product categories. Furniture, home decor, eyewear, and cosmetics benefit most – these are items where size, fit, and appearance in context matter.
Implementation requires 3D product models, which means extra work beyond standard product photography. It's an investment that makes sense when return rates or customer hesitation are costing you money.
Digital Wallets & Seamless Payment
Payment technology keeps changing. Financial app downloads exceeded 7 billion in 2024, up 8% from the previous year, according to Sensor Tower. The most popular subgenres in this category were digital wallets and P2P payment apps: they increased by 2% and 10% over the year, respectively. These numbers highlight that mobile alternatives aren’t optional anymore – they have become standard expectations.
Retail apps now support multiple payment options: traditional cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, buy-now-pay-later services like Klarna and Afterpay, and even cryptocurrency for early adopters. If it takes too long or feels confusing, customers leave without buying.
One-click checkout for returning customers, saved payment methods, and biometric authentication (Face ID, fingerprint) speed up transactions and reduce cart abandonment.
Conclusion
Building a retail app in 2025/2026 isn't about cramming in every trendy feature. It's about understanding what your customers actually need and building it well.
Start with research. Pick features that solve real problems, not ones that just sound impressive. Choose a development partner who knows retail and won't push unnecessary tech. Your app won't be perfect at launch – and that's fine. The best apps improve based on how people actually use them, not how you expected they would.
A good retail app doesn't just add a sales channel – it changes how customers interact with your brand, how often they buy, and how much they spend.
