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Is React Native a good choice for developing consumer or business mobile app?

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Well ! As the ways of developing an app are changing these days, it provides useful and user-centric apps to businesses and organizations for improving their business presence through a mobile app. These all changes are possible due to the presence of various cutting-edge tools, platforms, and frameworks. These all things have brought ease and convenience for developers and designers to create incredibly potential mobile apps. The React Native is one of the new entrances in the mobile app development platform. It is a cross-platform app framework created by Facebook. It allows developers to use JavaScript in order to create mobile apps for both Android and iOS that look, feel, and are native.

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about – learn once, write anywhere. So in few words, we can define ReactNative as:

  • It is a framework for mobile development
  • Responsible for building native mobile application
  • Provides basic set of components for mobile platforms
  • Uses ReactJs to build mobile app components

Benefits of React Native

There are many advantages for using React Native Framework but most effective are listed below

  • Code Reusability: Allow you to write some basic UI code that can be shared together with all the logic. Having the capacity to share the code is in good interest for many reasons like- better usage of human resources, less code to maintain, less possibility of bugs and much more.
  • Effective Developer Experience: With React Native it is not necessary to re-compile the entire rebuilt application every time you make a change, simply choose Cmd+R and refresh, like refreshing the browser to reflect the changes saving a lot of re-compilation time.
  • Declarative API: It allows you to consider only the current UI state without keeping track of the older ones.
  • Easy Reloading: It removes the need for recompilation of the application each time a change has been made. All that is required to see changes implemented in the code, is to refresh the app in the simulator, emulator, or device.
  • Cross Platform: It means that you need to write the code once and use it on multiple platforms like iOS, Android etc.
  • Open Source: It is open source and so, there is a big community of developers helping to implement more features, fix bugs, and help people.

Benefits of Native App

Native apps are smartphone applications written specifically for a particular device. iPhone apps are written in Obj-C or Swift while Android apps are written in Java.

  • Faster: Since native apps work with the device’s built-in features, they are easier to work with and also perform faster on the device.
  • Quality: While other methods can achieve greatness, native applications have the opportunity to be set apart. Greater chance your app will not get rejected due to poor user experience because the native app uses their native hardware’s feature to run the app.
  • Aspect Ratio: Apps developed for tablets can’t be used for phones and vice versa. Not just the aspect ratios are different, but dpi also vary from one device to another. All these differences can completely change how should an app look and work. Using Obj-C or Java gives you more control on the size, resolution and even orientation.
  • Native Look and Feel: We love being at home. Your application feels like it belongs to your device. Native apps feel and look like default apps, and users quickly get used to specific icons and button. Mobile apps that try to produce that old look again often appear worse because of unnatural valley effect.

Native or React Native?

Every framework has their pros and cons like – As React Native is new, it is not very perfect yet and it still has some bugs. There are still some features that are available in the native frameworks that have not been exposed to React Native.So, sometimes, developers can be stuck when diving deeper. On the other hand, Native is time-consuming and more costly due to high maintenance of multiple code bases. It may require more developers with experience in each framework to maintain.

In order to decide if you want to develop a native app or React Native app, you need to consider the following points:

  • your existing coding skills,
  • the purpose of your app,
  • the longevity of the project.
  • How important speed and performance would be, to you
  • If you would like your app to include any device-specific features
  • Your budget, vs. the estimated cost of developing your app

Conclusion

Though, React Native is following the write once and run anywhere, it would be proved to be a successful solution if you are building an app for any social group, eCommerce business etc. but, not any graphic specific app like- game because it can make your app slow and less responsive.

So, if you are new in the mobile development, I would recommend you to start with android native instead of React Native if you want to particularly develop android apps. As it will help you to understand the background knowledge of the Android which is required for any android app development otherwise you can be stuck in some problems which are related to the underlying platform. Especially, when your app targets many android API versions. I hope this article helped you in deciding which platform will suit you most for your app development. 🙂

If you are looking for React native developer with great experience please contact us at iPragmatech. We provide end to end Software Development based on the latest technologies back by unique quality management systems to provide complete client satisfaction. Clear communication, dedicated support, prompt response and on-time delivery of solutions within the budget are the main USP of our company.

If you are interested in designing a mobile app, please get in touch with us.

Here are our Contact Details:

References

React Native

Facebook React

Further Reading

AWS Mobile SDK – The quickest way to build a AWS mobile app

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The AWS Mobile SDK makes it easy for the app to directly access AWS services such as Amazon Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, Mobile Analytics, Machine Learning, Auto Scaling, etc. It supports iOS, Android, Xamarin, React Native, and Unity apps. In this article, we are mainly going to discuss steps to build AWS mobile app for Android using AWS Mobile SDK. The AWS Mobile SDK for Android is an open-source software development kit distributed under the Apache Open Source license. Amazon Web Services(AWS) is a Cloud services platform which provides a simple way to access servers, storage, databases and a broad set of application services over the Internet. It also owns and maintains the network-connected hardware required for these application services, while you provision and use what you need via a web application.

Steps to use AWS Mobile SDK in your Android mobile app

Step 1: Include the SDK in your AWS mobile app

There are two options to include the AWS mobile SDK in your project:

Option 1: Importing .jar file in the project from the link- Mobile SDK. Now you can drag .jar files for the individual services your project will use into the apps/libs folder. They’ll be included on the build path automatically. Then, sync your project with the Gradle file.

Option 2: Importing gradle file into your Gradle.

    dependencies {
        compile 'com.amazonaws:aws-android-sdk-core:2.2.+'
        compile 'com.amazonaws:aws-android-sdk-s3:2.2.+'
        compile 'com.amazonaws:aws-android-sdk-ddb:2.2.+'
    }

You can compile as much file your project needs. Then now sync your gradle.

Step 2: Set permission in your Manifest file of project

Add the following permission to your AndroidManifest.xml

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

Step 3: Get your AWS Credentials

Now the next step is to create an account in your AWS console. After creating an account in AWS Console you will get your authentication credentials. You can use it to access your AWS data in your app. For example, to access your EC2 like below:

   AmazonEC2Client ec2Client = new AmazonEC2Client(getCredentials());
   DescribeInstancesResult eC2value = ec2Client.describeInstances();
   DescribeRegionsResult eCRegion = ec2Client.describeRegions();

Here getCredential() method returns the credentials provided by you to authenticate yourself. If the credentials will be authenticated you will get EC2 data otherwise it will throw an exception. In the same way, you can retrieve the other AWS resources like S3, DynamoDB, RDS etc.

You can also obtain AWS Credentials using Amazon Cognito Identity as your credential provider. Using a credentials provider allows your app to access AWS services without having to embed your private credentials in your application. This also allows you to set permissions to control which AWS services your users have access to.

To use Amazon Cognito, you must create an identity pool. An identity pool is a store of user identity data specific to your account. Every identity pool has configurable IAM roles that allow you to specify which AWS services your application’s users can access.

Conclusion

There are various advantages and benefits of AWS like- Trade capital expense for variables expense, benefit from massive economies of sales, increase in speed and agility etc. So after looking these all benefits having a mobile app to access the AWS resources can be proved to be very helpful and important. To use the AWS Mobile SDK in your AWS mobile app is quite easy. I hope this article would help to start your project to use AWs data in your app :-).

References

AWS : It features various types of resources to help us learn about the services and features AWS has to offer and get started with building our solutions faster.

AWS Mobile SDK: It includes libraries, code samples, and documentation for different mobiles platforms so we can build apps that deliver great experiences across devices and platforms.

Further Reading

How to fix html5 file input issue in cordova android app?

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Have you got an issue while using Cordova html5 file input i.e not able to access the camera or gallery on your android mobile app or click on the file input is unresponsive? If the answer is yes, then congrats you are not alone we faced this issue too 😉 . Recently we were working on one of our client’s project and they wanted to launch their responsive website on Android and IOS platform. As their site is mobile responsive so we decided to use Apache Cordova platform to launch the mobile app for it.

As a dream, all things were perfectly on iOS platform till we hit the wall for Android platform. The issue was related to opening the Camera or Library option to upload the picture for user’s profile. It seems a very trial issue and we thought we could resolve it in few hours but we got to know how complex it is when tried to solve it 🙁 .

Issue Description

On the website, we used html5 file input i.e <input type=”file”> to open the link to choose the photo from the phone gallery or Camera. Normally at this point, a dialogue would open allowing the user to select an image from the gallery or take a picture on iOS app but clicking on the “Choose Photo” button does nothing on the android app. We were clueless as there were no errors on log cat or chrome’s console.

What was the exact issue?

This is an external issue in the Google Chromium web view. Also, InAppBrowser default plugin this functionality doesn’t exist. More information about this is available here:

Tried multiple ways to resolve the issue

First, we thought that issue would we easy, may be some permission is missing because it was working fine on IOS. So we changed the permission for all but the result was same as before i.e no action. Then we explored more find the following options to solve the issue:

  • We used CrossWalk one of the popular solutions suggested by many developers. Basically, it is replaced the android webview with Crosswalk, but we got no answer 🙁 .
  • We also tried Cocoon. It provides all the tool and services to create and configure our project. We build our app over there and run it on our mobile. It provides a various Webview engine to use, powered by Cordova such as Canvas+ a webview especially for a game, Webview a simple engine to run our app and the Webview+ which is a webview engine designed their own. So we ran the app on the Webview and again the result was same without any change. Next, we used Webview+ to run the app and surprisingly it works. As Webview+ was their own plugin for webview engine so we tried to implement their WebView+ plugin, but we were not able to do same because it has been discontinued and there is such solution for the latest version.

So, above is all about the issue and its possible solution provided.

Possible Solutions

There is no verified and complete solution available. Below are some suggested solutions for the issue:

  • We can use the camera plugin provided by InAppBrowser, but in that case, we have to do some changes on server side. We will need to add cordova plugin on the server side.
  • Change the code of InAppBrowser class in your project. In this class, you need to do some implementation as suggested in the link.

Actually, above change in code will help you to access the file on mobile greater than 4.4 version of Android. It isn’t really a Cordova InAppBrowser bug, it’s an android 4.4 webview bug. The problem is cordova is based on the webview, so the bug extends to cordova. The Android 4.4 won’t include a browser and the device vendor will have to create their own browser using a webview, that means any browser apart from chrome will have <input type=”file”> working.

It affects chrome and any other app that tries to get an URL from the result of an Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT ). The problem here is the file picker isn’t even called because overwriting openFileChooser private function isn’t working on android 4.4 the file picker is opened on chrome and chromium, but not on the webview. The Cordova html5 input type file button does generate an onClick event. So anyone can write js to respond to that event. But the value property of the type=”file” input object in the DOM is read-only in js, so it isn’t possible to set it from js. That is for security reasons.

So if it is not possible to set the input value via js, and openFileChooser() in CordovaChromeClient no longer gets called so we never get a handle to the ValueCallback. This means there is no way for Cordova html5 input type file to be used to store the result from a picker.

Conclusion

Apparently, html5 file input i.e <input type=file> is even causing trouble for android phone because InAppBrowser doesn’t support the functionality . There’s no quick fix we can use, so will need to hack it up if we want to make it work. Likely it will be fixed in a future update.

If you liked this post and want to know more or need any help, please contact us at : [email protected] and WhatsApp no : +91-880 046 6470  or visit us at: ipragmatech.com

References

CrossWalk :  The Crosswalk Project is an HTML application runtime, built on open source foundations, which extends the web platform with new capabilities.

Cocoon:  The Cocoon framework provides all the tool and services to create and configure a native HTML5 app and games with a simple workflow and all the power of Cordova.

Github : This link will help you to make changes in your code with explanation.

 

For further reading :

Tips to build magento2 mobile app using ionic framework

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These days, the ways of developing an app have changed, as a result, it provides useful and user-centric apps to businesses and organizations for improving their business presence through a mobile app. These all changes are possible due to the presence of various cutting-edge tools, platforms, and frameworks. These all things have brought ease and convenience for developers and designers to create incredibly potential mobile apps.
The Ionic framework is one of the new entrances in the mobile app development platform. It has a front-end SDK built on AngularJS which is a top popular JavaScript library. Using this popular library Ionic application provides developers and companies a benefit of single development code across multiple mobile platforms. It has many other benefits like:

  1. It provides very beautiful UI. It has many default JS and CSS components which are clean, simple and functional.
  2. It focuses on native apps by running inside PhoneGap or Cordova to deploy an app natively.
  3. It has a most powerful CLI which helps developers to create, built, test and deploy apps onto any platform with just one command.

A few days back we get a chance to develop an app with the ionic framework and the most interesting part was to use Magento2 REST API to retrieve data from the server. Developing an app with the ionic framework and Magento2 Rest API was new to us but yes, it was an amazing thing to learn. We developed the app and it was a great experience to integrate the two amazing platforms in a mobile app. This article will help to learn how to build a Magento2 mobile app using the ionic framework.

Here are some important points to be noticed before starting the development on the front-end.

Magento2 Rest API Configurations: Test accessibility of the mobile API

This is the step which is followed by both the sides i.e. client side as well as server side. On the server side, we need to give permission for webservices and it is done by enabling Web API Security. For more information for server-side implementation please refer the link .

On the client side, you can make a direct call to some of the default Magento API like- product list, product details, product category etc. but for a customer-specific call like- customer authentication, cart, wishlist, checkout etc. needs to be called by passing authentication token in the header. To learn more about authentication token refer the blog.

Magento2 Server-side Configurations(CORS handling):  Setting of Headers in the .htaccess file.

This the most important step while making the call from javascript to Magento rest API.

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) is a W3C spec that allows cross-domain communication from the browser. By building on top of the XMLHttpRequest object, CORS allows developers to work with the same idioms as same-domain requests. For CORS you need to add following headers at your server side .htaccess file:

      Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://YourDomain.com
      Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET, OPTIONS, HEAD...and more
      Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Headers:DNT,X-CustomHeader,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type

Now, here is the detail explanation for developing a Magento2 mobile app using ionic framework

Steps to build Magento2 mobile app using ionic framework

1. Build Iconic project.

Now get ready to start your ionic app. Below are the steps to build an ionic app:

  1. The Ionic framework uses node.js as its utility, so to start first install the node.js utility: 
     $ npm install -g ionic
  2.  Then, install the latest Cordova and Ionic command-line tools 
    npm install -g cordova ionic
  3. Start a project by: 
    ionic start <your app name> blank

Here starter blank means a project with no UI. It will create a blank project. Some of the other named templates starters

  • tabs (Default)
  • side menu
  • maps
  • salesforce
  • complex-list

The above command will create an ionic project with various files including www folder. This folder is the actual folder where your app further implementation resides. The index.html is your app file which runs your app and contains all the js and CSS file declaration.

For more details about ionic framework read its doc.

Now, rest things are to be done for front-end. Below a sample is described to show how to build a Magento2 mobile app using the ionic framework. In this sample, we will have the following functionality:

  1. User signup
  2. User Login
  3. Product Listing from Magento2 website.

Step 2. Create your UI

Create an .html file for Login e.g. login.html in your template folder. Define your view in this layout as your requirement. For more details about defining a layout, you can refer here. TEMPLATES is where your view files go. Your project does have a main index.html file in the WWW directory, but your app likely contains many template views that are added dynamically. Unlike your CSS and JS files, TEMPLATE files do not need to be mentioned in your index.html file.

Step 3. Update the app.js file for app’s states

Now define your app screens state in the app.js file. e.g:

     .config(function($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider, $ionicConfigProvider,$provide) {
         $ionicConfigProvider.navBar.alignTitle('center');
         $stateProvider

        .state('login', {
             url: "/login",
             templateUrl: "templates/login.html",
             controller:"LoginCtrl"
        });

Step 4. Define a controller for the state:

controllers.js contains your Angular controllers for the states that require them. Define the logic here to control the state of your app. For example- In our sample, we defined LoginCtrl which defines the method which is to be called when user clicks on submit button.

.controller('LoginCtrl', function($scope, $state) {
   $scope.login = function(data) {
    // do what you want to do
   }
};

Step 5. Define a service file:

services.js is not always included in the starters, but it contains the custom Angular services your app may use, such as the one that calls out to a 3rd party API to get the information your app uses. So, it the real file from where we call the API for authentication and product listing. For example:

.service('AuthService', function($q, $http) { // call your API here to get informations for the app uses. }

Step 6. update your index.html file

Now, this is the final step to play with your ionic files. Update your index.html file with all the js and CSS file you created in your app. For example:

      <!-- your app's js -->
      <script src="js/app.js"></script>
      <script src="js/controllers.js"></script>
      <script src="js/services.js"></script>
      </head>

Sample Code

To get a complete code click here.

Conclusion

Above we described the steps to develop a Magento2 mobile app using ionic framework. The process is not only easy and interesting  but also make the  user interface attractive. The Ionic framework entrance in the market has proved to be very helpful for both the developer as well as for the customer because it is focused mainly on the look and feel, and UI interaction of your app. Above is the small sample to demonstrate the basic steps to build a Magento2 mobile app using ionic framework. For more information, you can contact us through our website. Enjoy Coding… 🙂

References

Ionic framework : Ionic is a powerful HTML5 SDK that helps you build native-feeling mobile apps using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Magento2 REST API : Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform. Its REST API is used for building an e-commerce mobile apps.

Further Reading

 

Quick guide to search, sort and filter products in prestashop mobile app

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PrestaShop is based on open source platform for e-commerce which provides smooth shopping cart system with control over the look and functionality of the store. It is growing in the e-commerce market day by day. More traders are using this platform for their e-store. It provides various feature for an e-commerce store , you can check its features in our previous blog. With the increase in the e-commerce stores, mobile-commerce has also become popular these days. Mobile visits account for one-third of e-commerce sites traffic. To have an e-commerce mobile app for electronic commerce store is like putting a  retail outlet in the customer’s pocket . PrestaShop provides SEO, items management, and other tools which enforce traders to have the mobile app for superb shopping experience for customers.  In this blog, I am going to discuss some important features i.e searching , sorting and filtering implementation in the Prestashop mobile app.

Let me first start with the basics. PrestaShop system API is constructed by principle CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). All methods are to be called through the /api/ gateway. Most methods can be accessed in a REST manner, with the 5 main HTTP request methods: HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.

How to Search products in PrestaShop mobile app using REST API

search can only be accessed using GET and HEAD in PrestaShop API . Following the syntax for retrieving searched data or product :

      /api/method/?filter[parameter name to search]=[parameter value to search]

for example- let search a product by its name , then its request call will be like :

 /api/products/?display=full&filter[name]=[Blouse]

This call will return the product full details with the name “Blouse”. In the above syntax “parameter name to search” can be anything that products method has in its schema. You can search as many numbers of values at a time i.e :

 /api/products/?display=full&filter[name]=[Blouse, Shirt, Top]  .

 /api/customers/?display=full&filter[firstname]=[John]&filter[lastname]=[Parol] .

How to Sort products in PrestaShop mobile app using REST API

Following the syntax for retrieving searched data or product :

      /api/method/?sort=[sort by field with the suffix _ASC _DESC or in the order]

for example- let sort products by its name , then its request call will be like :

/api/products/?display=full&sort=[name_ASC]

This call will return the product in ascending order of ‘name’ with all details.

      /api/products/?display=full&sort=[price_DESC]

How to Filter products in PrestaShop mobile app using REST API

Following the syntax for filtering data or products :

      /api/method/?filter[field]=[value1|value2]

Above syntax  filter “field” with value between ‘value1 ” and “value2”

      /api/method/?filter[field]=[value1,value2...]

Above syntax  filter  field for values specified between brackets    

      /api/method/?filter[field]=[value]%

Above syntax  filter “columns” for values containing “value”

for example- let filter products by its ids then its request call will be like :
/api/products/?display=full&filter[id]=[1,10]  – This will list the products with id 1 to 10.

/api/products/?display=full&filter[id]=[1|5]  – This will list all the products between 1 to 5

/api/products/?display=full&filter[name]=[appl]%  – This will list all the products name starting with “Appl”.

NOTE: In the above all calls “display=full” means it will display all product details. You can display your product according to your choice. For example – “display=[birthday]” will display only the birthday.

Conclusion

As the implementation of PrestaShop framework is increasing day by day for the e-commerce stores , demand for mobile-commerce is also increasing with the same speed and popularity. So developing an e-commerce mobile app is becoming common and for any e-commerce store searching, sorting and filtering are very common and powerful property. Keeping these all things  in mind I wrote this article to help the new developer for PrestaShop. I hope this will help you… :-). Below is our sample app based on Prestashop REST API, you can refer it as an example which has shown the use of sort, search and filter APIs.

prestashopeePrestashopee
The PrestaShopee mobile app developed using native platforms that gels well with all mobile devices.It has used PrestaShop’s APIs for data. Further performance wise your app will be steadfast and hence customers are assured of a quick shopping experience.

References

Prestashop is a free open-source which provides the solution for e-commerce. For more information, you can visit the following link PrestaShop.

PrestaShop provides documentation for the list of all basic APIs that  are needed for the e-store.To get more details about the documentation you can visit this link PrestaShop Webservice

A complete guide to build a native e-commerce mobile app.

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Mobile technologies are emerging as a growth engine for small and medium enterprises (SME). Many studies have proved that SMEs who adopt mobile technologies to stay connected with customers and streamline operations are growing revenue 2X faster and developing 8X more jobs than follower and laggard SMEs. It means that Mobile e-commerce is exploding. Our generation is now comfortable not only with the mobile but paying online as well. Today’s faster technology and smoother interfaces have eliminated the e-commerce friction. There are many eye-opening proofs that show consumers now spend more time with online retail on mobile devices than desktop and laptop PCs. So developing an native eCommerce mobile app is an smart choice.

No matter how new technologies change our lifestyle, people are and will go to shop. Developing and designing mobile apps for e-commerce businesses has its own tricks. Below are all the building blocks needed to plan and develop your mobile e-commerce technology. Starting with the concepts, market insights, payment technology, analytics, and more.

UI Component

Mobile applications on smartphones and tablets and on mobile devices, in general, have increased the dependence of the user on icons and graphic elements for effective communication via the interface. Well-designed icons and graphics allow the user to recognise without the need of additional instructions the functions available on the mobile device in question. So the first thing that you need in your e-commerce app is the UI. If you have your designer good enough or you can take help from any design expert. Below are some of the popular links for different UI design library.

cocoaCocoa Control
It is one of the most famous open-source of UI component for iOS. It provides uncountable UI component to make any app attractive and user friendly.

android-arsnelAndroid Arsenal
It provides a collection of libraries, tools and projects for Android developers. It is an android developer portal with tools, libraries, and apps and provides an uncountable UI designs component for android.

Webservice for the accessing data in your native eCommerce mobile app

As you are developing a native eCommerce mobile app, it means you are going to access data from any web server. So, after designing the UI the second important step is to have Webservices or the application services that allow the creation of applications which access the features or data of an operating system, application, or other service. This helps to fetch data from server and fill it in your application. This can of any framework depending on your choice. The popular frameworks for eccommerce are:

magentoMagento
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. Magento is the most flexible full-featured e-commerce software available to all types of businesses. Magento is fully scalable to grow and change as your business does. Whether you need basic e-commerce features for your online store or advanced options to accommodate growth, Magento has a solution for your business.

WooCommerce
Woo-commerce is based on open source platform. Woo-commerce is a strong, extendable plugin that helps you sell anything efficiently. Woo-commerce integrates seamlessly with WordPress. It provides a good secure apis for any e-commerce store.

PrestaShop
Prestashop is based on open source platform. Prestashop is a strong, extendable plugin that helps you sell anything efficiently. It is very popular plateform for secure e-store.

Integration of Payment gateway in your native eCommerce mobile app

A payment gateway is an interface or outlet to your payment system. A digital gateway can be the screens and buttons of an online shopping cart that accepts input payment information. An analog gateway is a physical credit card reader. A payment gateway is important because it provides a secure path from the customer to your payment system. It does this by encrypting the data and handling the connection to the payment processor. Without a gateway, your credit card numbers and banking information would be at risk. Or you would need to build your own security systems. Following are the some popular payment sdks available, which help you to integrate the payment system in your app easily.

PayPal
PayPal is the faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world’s largest Internet payment companies.

Google Wallet
It is the fast, easy, and free way to send money to friends and family. Google Wallet is a peer-to-peer payments service developed by Google that allows people to send and receive money from a mobile device or desktop computer at no cost to either sender or receiver.

Apple Pay
Apple Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by AppleInc. that lets users make payments using the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, iPhone SE, and later, Apple Watch-compatible devices (iPhone 5 and later models), iPad Air 2, iPad Pro and iPad Mini 3 and later.

Analytics for Mobile App eCommerce

The web has obsessed over sales funnels and it’s just as important to track and optimize on mobile. Your app will have some sort of checkout flow, and it’s important to understand how users are navigating your app. Those already using Google Analytics on the web will likely want to choose Google Mobile Analytics. Then you can see a full profile of your business from one dashboard. Flurry and MixPanel are two other very good and well-adopted solutions.

Google Mobile Analytics
Use Google Analytics for Mobile Apps to measure and optimize user acquisition and engagement with mobile apps. It measures the impact your app has on your business. App measurement in Google Analytics helps you measure your app’s full value and the impact it has on your business.

Flurry Analytics
It allows to track the apps’ performance anytime, anyplace, anywhere.It allows you to view data for multiple apps at one time to gain a holistic view of performance for any company.

Parse Analytics
It provides insight into user interactions around push notifications. It gives a look at all API Requests passing through Parse. It tracks arbitrary events with an arbitrary set of dimensions.

Conlusion

Above described points are the essential elements for developing or building a good native eCommerce mobile app. There are many mobile apps for eCommerce are available in the market, you can take help from them and build an idea for your own app’s functionality and features . If you need more assistance and idea about setting up your mobile app, feel free to contact us.

cloviaClovia
One of the leading and fastest growing lingerie & nightwear shopping brands in India, Clovia is committed to being a woman’s one stop destination for all her lingerie needs. Being an exclusive lingerie and nightwear store, Clovia offers a wide variety of bras, briefs/panties and nightwear which are not only high on style quotient but are also comfortable.

myntraMyntra Online Shopping App
Swipe, select and shop! It’s fashion on the go with the all-new Myntra mobile app. Take the world of online shopping with you everywhere you go and get all your favorite fashion merchandise by top brands.Browse through 2,30,000+ product styles from 1600+ brands instantly on the Myntra shopping app

magento-logo
MagentoShop- A Shopping App
Looking for a native Magento mobile app builder (iOS/Android) for your Magento based online marketplace? Try the 30-day free trial of our Magento mobile app, go mobile commerce in a few hours and increase your sales exponentially. No Setup Fee, Pay as you go pack at just $69/month.

wooshopee_logoWooShopee – Woocommerce App
Looking for a native Woocomerce mobile app builder (iOS/Android) for your Woocommerce based online marketplace? Try the 30-day free trial of our Magento mobile app, go mobile commerce in a few hours and increase your sales exponentially. No Setup Fee, Pay as you go pack at just $69/month.

A quick guide to develop a PrestaShop mobile app.

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We provide solutions to the client by building apps according to their requirements. We developed many apps on many different frameworks like SocialEngine, Magento, Woocommerce etc. Recently we got a new project from one of our clients. Their requirement was to develop an e-commerce app for their e-store which was on PrestaShop platform. Prestashop is a free open-source e-commerce solution. So the point was we have to build PrestaShop mobile app for their store using web-services.

As PrestaShop REST API was new for us and we knew that we would get problems during our implementation, but it would start at the first step was not expected 🙁 . We started the implementation and the first problem that we faced was how to build Prestashop mobile app. We can also say it as how to access Prestashop Webservice. Every time we hit the API , it gave “401 Unauthorized” and message “The server says welcome to Prestashop Webservice, please enter the authentication key as login. No password required”.
We did a lot of research, googled it, also found some solutions like – use the API key (The API key serves as the main identifier for the web service account you are creating) at the start of the URL

       http://[email protected]/

but every approach was fruitless. We tried every possible method to send the API Key with URL so that it can authorise the web service but nothing happened. The main confusing point was when we were hitting the URL directly on the browser by putting API Key at the start of URL it was working. Then after working several hours we found the solution. Before describing the solution I would like to list some essential points need to work on while accessing Prestashop Webservice :

Points to revisit before you start to build PrestaShop mobile app.

  1. Authentication key : This the most important key. Using this API key, the selected users will be able to access the web service. This key is provided by the server side. It is needed to send with the API.
  2. Permission for Resources : This is very important, as it enables the resources you want to make available to your user. These permissions are enabled from the server side.

To build Prestashop mobile app first you have to access its Webservice, so, you need to provide your authentication key or API key when request. No password is required only API key is enough for accessing the API. Now here, the problem is how to pass this API key with your request because if you will not provide this key it will not allow you to access Prestashop Webservice. The solution is while accessing the API from the mobile you need to pass this key in the header as BASIC AUTH.

When we add API Key with URL, Browsers are intelligent enough to understand it as username but the mobile web-services are not. So we need to pass it by building BASIC AUTH. We pass API Key as username and leave password blank as shown in below example:

     Request request = chain.request();
     String credential = Credentials.basic(Constants.API_KEY, "");
     request = request.newBuilder().header("Authorization", credential).build();

Conclusion

The above-explained solution can help many developers to start PrestaShop mobile app with its web-services. Giant eCommerce companies are now focusing on improving end-user experience on mobile devices. They are providing a strong technology infrastructure via cutting-edge mobile applications. Prestashop is one of the popular eCommerce open-source platforms and it has taken an important place in the eCommerce market for developing e-store. Using Prestashop API for e-store can be proved to be an intelligent option.You can also browse other apps already developed with Prestashop Webservices for example- PrestaShopee ,Prestashop mobile. If you need any help and assistance regarding app, website etc. development feel free to contact us.

References

Prestashop is a free open-source which provides the solution for e-commerce. For more information, you can visit the following link PrestaShop.

PrestaShop provides documentation for the list of all basic APIs that  are needed for the e-store.To get more details about the documentation you can visit this link PrestaShop Webservice

 

Top 9 reasons why you should choose Prestashop store ?

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eCommerce is the boosting of trading in products or services using the internet. There are many eCommerce platforms like PrestaShop,WooCommerce, OpenCart, JigoShop and many more available. These platforms provide all kind of solution for clients. Though there are many platforms but Prestashop is most growing and vastly used by online stores. In this article, we explain 9 things about Prestashop store that your retailer wants to know.

Prestashop based on open source platform which provides smooth shopping cart system with control over the look and functionality of the store. It is a strong, extendable plugin that helps you to sell anything efficiently. It provides SEO, items management, and other tools which enforce trader to have the mobile app for superb shopping experience for customers.  Here is the list of features which explain the benefits of Prestashop and reasons why you need Prestashop store.

Key reasons to choose Prestashop store :

1. Open source – It is an open source platform. It means that the software is free to be used, modified, and distributed. This affects many things, from the ability for you to use PrestaShop freely on your next client project, to support given by the PrestaShop community as it is open, scalable, and constantly being improved. Open source enables developers, designers, and everyday people to tweak It. It builds functionality on top of this platform.

2. Search Engine Optimization – SEO of PrestaShop is search engine friendly. It creates dedicated URL for each product. It provides Google sitemap, Auto generated the sitemap, Automatic robot.txt files, Automatic .htaccess files and W3C Compliant.

3. Web Services API – With v1.6, It includes a REST API that allows store data to be accessed in either JSON or XML format. It allows developers to easily create, modify, and grow a store that meets their specifications.

4. Digital Marketing – It provides Newsletter subscriptions, Automated follow-up emails, Recently viewed products, Social media page links and many other features that come under digital marketing.

5.Checkout,Payment, and Shipping – This platform provides the functionality of one-page checkout with an additional feature of guest checkout or checkout with Gift messages / wrapping. Integrates with any payment provider through modules and Payment gateway filtered by currency Shipping fees by weight or price with Unlimited carriers and destinations to fine-tune your shipping options.

6. Security – Security is, of course, a big concern when it comes to running an online store, and this platform is serious about making their software as secure as possible. It supports SSL web hosting, password and cookie encryption, PCI compliance, Track employee activity, Set security permissions for each employee.

7. Analytic and Reporting – This platform is integrated with Google Analytics. It gives Real-time analytics dashboard, Google charts visualizations, Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce, Track visitor activity.

8. Customer Management – Create orders from the Back Office, Create customer accounts from the Back Office, Modify shopping carts after orders placed, Send welcome emails upon registration, Customer contact history. These features make PrestaShop pretty good in the management of customer.

9. Translations / Localisation – This is the best feature in this platform.  It is Available in 41 languages and Allow customer to choose the language. Its Geolocation – settings are based on your customer’s location. Address format set as customer’s country.

Conclusion

In above article, we explained benefits of using Prestashop store your retailer should know. It is third after Magento and woocommerce covering eCommerce market. Those looking for a robust and powerful eCommerce solution need  to not look beyond Prestashop. From start-up businesses to large-scale enterprises, Prestashop can cater to all for the most stringent of their eCommerce needs. There are ready to go solution for mobile also like

and many more available in the market which launches Prestashop based mobile store in quick time.

References

Prestashop – Prestashop community

Prestashop Mobile Application – A smart solution provider to client

How to increase your store’s sales using Magento mobile app ?

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In the age we are in, a mobile app is not optional, it is absolutely essential. In fact, a lot of your target visitors shop online using their mobile phones rather than sitting and stressing themselves out in front of a desktop computer. If you don’t have the Magento Mobile app, you are losing a larger share of your prospects to smart competitors that are doing so.

Mobile now accounts for 60% of eCommerce traffic. Knowing fully well that the first hurdle—having a mobile-friendly website—is absolutely essential, we can discuss, in details, the reason why you need a Magento mobile app.

The reason why you need a Magento mobile app ?

1. Rapidly Increment in mobile phone users :

With the advent of different mobile phone brands coupled with the improvement in technology, the number of mobile phone users, using their mobile phone for eCommerce shopping, are over 60%, with almost 10% increase from the year 2014. Another important reason is the convenience of mobile phone usage in accessing eCommerce stores. Day-in-day-out, people prefer using their handheld smartphones rather than sitting in front of their desktop computers. Targeting these 60% customers with an easy-to-use Magento mobile app is a big assurance to increasing sales.

2. Brings better experience to customers :

What a time saver is the Magento mobile app! Customers now enjoy the best experience. For example, the mobile app provides you an easy and faster process of accessing your eCommerce store with just a few clicks on the app. Just imagine: starting your desktop computer, typing the URL to access the store, going to different new pop-up pages, attending to customer queries, and other stuff; Isn’t that time-consuming?

But the good news is, with a mobile app, your customers can save a lot of time by tapping on the app, easy to scan through your store, choose desired products and quickly proceed to the checkout page. The main benefit is that you are not only saving your precious time, you save the time of your esteem customers too. How? Since your customized Magento would be made available to your customers in Android and iPhone versions, they can easy to access your store anytime, anywhere.

3. Push notifications :

How do you increase sales when customers are not abreast of current additions, discounts and other mouth-watering offers you have in your store? Your online store can experience a massive increase in sales, via the Magento mobile app, by sending push notifications to your esteem customers. Whether you are offering a discount program or introducing a new product, the push notifications from the Magento mobile app can help you to increase sales. The moment the notification drops on your customers’ phones, they are tempted to buy the new product, or enjoy the discount offered, which leads to increase in sales for you. It has been confirmed, according to research, that the click rate of push notifications is between 45% and 75%- a high rate.

Push notifications from the Magento mobile app also increase customer retention and engagement. Mobile app with such a powerful feature like “push notification” will improve your sale by 50%

4. Payment gateway :

With the Magento mobile app, you are offered several payment gateways, both the ones that come with Magento, and other payment options you consider suitable for you and your customers. With that, you are never going to miss out on any sale due to payment issues.

Conclusion :

Technology has afforded many individuals the opportunity of owning a mobile phone. As this trend increases, the way people shop online- the means of accessing eCommerce stores- has also increased. To this change, you need the Magento mobile app to reduce your stress and increase your sales by at least 50%. 

Want to see what mobile app development can do for your e-commerce business or startup? There are various native e-commerce mobile apps available in the market for example MagentoShop, SimiCart etc.

Magento-product-image-min
MagentoShop
Looking for a native Magento mobile app builder (iOS/Android) for your Magento based online marketplace? Try the 30-day free trial of our Magento mobile app, go mobile commerce in a few hours and increase your sales exponentially. No Setup Fee, Pay as you go pack at just $69/month.
simicart
SimiCart
Looking for a native Magento mobile app builder (iOS/Android) for your Magento based online marketplace? Try the 30-day free trial of our Magento mobile app, go mobile commerce in a few hours and increase your sales exponentially. No Setup Fee, Pay as you go pack at just $69/month.

7 Reasons to choose Magento eCommerce platform for your Online Store

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The journey to launching your product on the internet and in essence to the World Wide Web has never been beautiful and easy. Magento 2, the new Magento eCommerce platform has your answers on the fingertips. It is time to move your traditional stores from physical world to the virtual world. If you are a retailer and you have been dreaming of getting online, your dream has come true with Magneto eCommerce platform.

All you have to do to try out our free trial setting and you are on your way to launching your products and stores online. The free trial gives you an opportunity to sample our Magento eCommerce platform and make an informed decision. Apart from setting up your store using affordable means, Magneto eCommerce platform helps you to migrate your core uniqueness in terms of your logo and color schemes online. Therefore, you clients would not get confused when they search your retail store online. It is a matter of getting into action, there are no upfront charges on our platform.

Benefits of Magento eCommerce platform

1. Open Source

Magento is a free eCommerce platform. It uses open source technologies and programming languages. The benefits of the open source are

  • Reliability
  • Stability
  • Auditability
  • Cost
  • Flexibility and Freedom
  • Support and Accountability

Magento facilitates above with high flexibility for developers.

2. Large Support Community

Magento community rapidly grows day by  day. Huge no of professional developers are working on Magento. They are always ready to support for any technical and programming help. Here is the few Magento solution hub.

  • Stack Exchange : This platform an interface to communicate with huge no of Magento developers. You can browse for the solution or ask anything related to Magento programming, technical issue, hosting etc.
  • Magento Community : This is an official forum for Magento. Basically, this provides a complete solution of Magento.

3. Extension and Themes

Magento Connect and Magento Marketplace is superstore of Theme and Extension for Magento 1.9.x and Magento 2 respectively. If you want to enhance the functionality of your eCommerce store you no need to start from scratch there are huge no of extension available in Magento Marketplace. There are extensions for anything from SEO and blogging to image handling and affiliate marketing. All of the extension have ratings and reviews, enabling you to decide whether to install or purchase one.

4. Multiple stores

One of the great features is Magento can run multiple storefronts from a single backend system. If you are running multiple stores for multiple brands but want to maintain one harmonized backend system then Magento should be the best eCommerce platform for you.

5. Support

The IT developers of Magento are ready to serve their support to the users. Along with an informational blog, Magento has a knowledge base, forums for chatting with other users and all the contact information you need for calling or emailing the company. It provides technical and business help as well.

6. Ready to Host

As being a large community there are lots of Magento Hosting provider. There are a lot of option to choose to host your Magento store on the basis of optimization, price, performance, scalability according to the size of your store. There are ready to use hosted Magento store, just add your theme and product and launch your site as soon as you want. Some of the are:
Ipragmatech : Scalable Magento2 stack AMI is ready to run, prebuilt environment setting for scalability, performance and high availability for your online store.
Bitmani : Launch Magento with one click from the Bitnami Cloud Launchpad for Amazon Web Services.

7. Ready to use Mobile APP

We all aware of the Mobile commerce, how it effect your eCommerce business. In this digital era, you can’t afford the cost of missing the mobile app of your store. There is huge no of Magento developers and Magento based mobile application development company who provides the ready-made solution just plug the app into your Magento store and lunch for your customer. Some of the are:

Ipragmatech : Magento mobile app for your Magento based online marketplace. Try 30days free Magento android app.
Simicart : Magento mobile solution for your Magento store.

Conclusion

If you want to stay in this competitive eCommerce business environment, choose Magento eCommerce platform for your eCommerce store. Magento platform has numerous features and functionalities that can make your Magento site as the most loved and preferred eCommerce site among your customers .Once you have tested the Magento eCommerce platform and experienced the sweetness of technological advancement. Imagine selling your goods using a mobile app at the comfort your living room. Magneto platform exists to simplify your life. Try it today and see the difference.