Custom Ecommerce App Development

When a brand needs an app and not just a mobile website, in Tepia's experience

Directory lists of ecommerce app developers do not answer the first question a retailer should ask: do we need an app at all? Tepia’s answer is that a mobile website serves first purchases and an app serves repeat purchases. If your customers buy once a year, improve the website. If they buy monthly, or you want them to, an app gives you a home screen icon, push notifications and a faster checkout that the browser cannot match.

Tepia builds ecommerce apps for retailers, grocers, consumer brands with subscription products, and B2B distributors whose customers reorder the same items. The Mother’s Nutritional Center app, MNC Go, is a grocery ordering app Tepia built to streamline orders for a grocery chain, and its core loop (reorder fast, know what is in stock, get notified) is the loop every ecommerce app needs.

If your question is about the store itself rather than the app, see custom online store development.

Headless commerce: native app, Shopify backend

Tepia rarely recommends rebuilding a commerce backend. Shopify (or Square for retailers with stores, or a custom API for businesses with unusual catalogs) already handles products, inventory, orders, taxes and payments. Tepia builds the app as a native front end that talks to that backend through its APIs, which is what headless commerce means in practice.

Headless keeps your merchandising team working in the tools they know while the app gets native performance, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and features the Shopify mobile app builders cannot offer. The Shopify vs custom online store page explains when to leave Shopify entirely.

Retention features Tepia builds into ecommerce apps

Tepia describes its work as apps engineered for retention, and in ecommerce the feature list is concrete.

• Loyalty. Points or tiers tied to purchases in app, on the website and in store, with a wallet screen, redemption at checkout and rules your marketing team manages. Tepia can build this natively or integrate a loyalty platform you already use.
• Tepia builds a preference center so customers choose what they receive, which keeps opt in rates high.
• Fast reorder. Order history with one tap reorder, subscriptions for consumables, and saved carts that sync across devices.
• Personalized merchandising. Home screen modules driven by purchase history and browsing, ranging from simple rules to recommendation models using OpenAI or Anthropic APIs and a vector database for product similarity.
• Checkout without friction. Apple Pay and Google Pay, saved addresses, address validation, guest checkout, and a cart that survives app restarts.
• Store features for omnichannel retailers. Pickup in store, in store mode with a barcode scanner for product information, and receipts from in store purchases in the app.

Every feature is instrumented with analytics events from day one, because the point of the app is to move a small number of metrics.

The metrics Tepia designs around

An ecommerce app is justified by a handful of numbers, and Tepia agrees on them with you in discovery so the design has a target. The usual set: app conversion rate versus mobile web, repeat purchase rate among app users, average order frequency, push opt in rate, loyalty enrollment rate, and 30 and 90 day retention of installs.

Industry analysts and platform vendors consistently report that apps convert at a multiple of mobile web and that app customers buy more often, though the exact figures vary by category and source. Tepia keeps the claim modest and measures your own numbers instead. Tepia clients report roughly 20% revenue increase after adding mobile, and for retailers it arrives through frequency rather than new customers.

After launch, Tepia’s app evolution service reviews these numbers with you on a regular cadence and proposes the next features based on what the data shows, rather than on a roadmap written before anyone used the app.

How Tepia approaches custom ecommerce app development

Tepia’s six phase process applies to ecommerce apps, with discovery focused on the backend, the catalog and the retention plan.

1. Discovery (typically 1 to 3 months). Tepia audits your Shopify, Square or commerce backend and its APIs, interviews your merchandising, marketing and customer service teams and a sample of repeat customers, and reviews third party integrations such as loyalty, email, reviews and ERP. Deliverables: Investigation Summary, Interview Summary and User Stories with a prioritized feature list and target metrics.
2. Design. Design questionnaire, moodboards and a style guide that matches your brand, then detailed wireframes for home, product, cart, checkout and the loyalty wallet, followed by sample designs.
3. Development and Testing (typically 2 to 6 months). Alpha and Beta schedules with functional, user acceptance and nonfunctional test plans, including checkout testing across payment methods and a TestFlight and Play Beta with real customers.
4. Training. Sessions for marketing and merchandising on the push, loyalty and content tools, using user story scenarios such as a product launch campaign.
5. Launch (about 1 month). App Store and Google Play submission handled by Tepia, migration of loyalty balances if moving from another program, and support reps on launch week.

The process is documented at tepia.co/process, and finished products including MNC Go are at our work.

Frequently asked questions