Why Your BigCommerce Store Needs a Mobile App

BigCommerce merchants already compete hard on product, experience, and retention. But as mobile has become the default way customers browse and buy. And one channel consistently outperforms everything else for conversion, purchase frequency, and lifetime value: your own mobile app.

A BigCommerce storefront can be fast, optimized, and well-designed,  but it still lives inside the browser, competing with distractions, session loss, and limited re-engagement options. 

A mobile app changes that. 

It creates a direct, persistent, higher-intent shopping channel that helps you retain more customers and grow LTV faster.

Below are the clearest reasons why your BigCommerce store needs a mobile app. 

1. Mobile Web Leaks Revenue; Apps Don’t

Mobile shoppers are quick. They bounce easily, get distracted, and switch contexts throughout the day. Even the best-optimized mobile site competes with tab switching, lost sessions, and checkout friction.

Your app breaks that pattern immediately.

From our Ecommerce Mobile App Benchmark Report:

• App users converted at 7.8%, compared to 3.3% on mobile web
• They viewed 4.7x more products
• They drove 2.2x more revenue per user

And BigCommerce’s own numbers show the same shift. During Cyber Week, 35% of all BigCommerce orders came from mobile devices, with mobile order volume up 7% year over year.

Your customers are already buying on mobile; apps simply help you capture more of that demand with deeper sessions and higher intent.

With an app, shoppers get:

• One-tap entry
• Saved login and payment details
• No browser interruptions
• A direct path back to your store

These behaviors compound into longer sessions, higher AOV, and stronger repeat buying. For many BigCommerce brands, this alone justifies launching an app.

2. Apps Unlock Push Notifications; Your Highest-ROI Retention Channel

Every BigCommerce brand deals with rising acquisition costs and noisy communication channels:

• Email is crowded
• SMS is expensive
• Paid ads get less efficient every quarter

Push notifications give you a free, unlimited, high-intent channel that goes straight to your customers’ home screens.

In our benchmark data:

• Abandoned cart pushes converted at 10–22%
• Campaign pushes converted at 6%+
• Push-driven return sessions increased 3–5x

Push notification for your BigCommerce store alone often covers the entire ROI of launching an app. It’s one of the rare channels that gets more powerful as your list grows, without increasing costs.

3. Apps Dramatically Increase Purchase Frequency

Repeat purchases are where BigCommerce brands win: beauty, supplements, apparel, home goods, lifestyle products, and subscription-driven categories all rely on ongoing engagement.

Your app helps deliver that by:

• Living on the customer’s home screen
• Building habitual usage
• Making browsing frictionless
• Pulling customers back without ads
  
  

Across verticals, app users return 3–5x more often than mobile web users. And because your app removes friction across login, browsing, and checkout, it consistently moves customers toward more frequent buying behavior.

This is one of the strongest LTV levers available to BigCommerce merchants.

Get deeper data on how apps beat mobile web for conversion and retention; download the Ecommerce Mobile App Benchmark Report.

4. Apps Give Your Brand a Controlled, Premium Shopping Environment

BigCommerce storefronts are strong, but browsers still limit what you can control inside the customer’s session. A mobile app gives you a clean, focused, branded space that feels closer to a native retail experience.

This matters most for brands that:

• rely on high-impact merchandising
• manage loyalty or subscriptions
• run large, complex catalogs
• care about discovery and repeat browsing

In the benchmark report, app users viewed nearly 5x more products, which directly supports catalog-rich stores. For beauty, apparel, and lifestyle brands, this deeper browsing behavior has a meaningful impact on retention and AOV.

5. Your Competitors Already Have Apps, and Customers Expect Them

Across most BigCommerce categories, the top-performing brands already use apps as part of their retention strategy. Customers have adopted the behavior, and the expectation is clear: if they've bought from you more than once, many assume there’s an app waiting for them.

Recent buyer data reinforces this shift.

According to the SCAYLE U.S. Shopper Survey, 

• 63% of shoppers prefer brands with a mobile app, and 
• 60% expect personalized offers inside it. 

Customers now see apps as a normal part of the buying experience, especially in categories with strong loyalty or repeat purchasing.

If you don’t offer an app:

• Customers stay on lower-converting mobile web
• You lose a high-intent push channel
• Competitors with apps earn more repeat purchases
• Loyalty engagement declines

For high-growth BigCommerce brands, not offering an app has become a competitive disadvantage.

6. BigCommerce Stores Scale Best When They Own Their Channels

Scaling on BigCommerce is about controlling more of your customer relationships. Apps help you do that by giving you:

• A durable owned channel (push)
• A permanent presence on your customer’s device
• Direct re-engagement that doesn’t rely on CPMs or algorithms
• Richer behavioral and lifecycle data

As acquisition costs rise and attribution gets harder, owning a high-intent, zero-cost channel becomes a major advantage. An app gives BigCommerce brands a long-term, sustainable way to grow retention and LTV.

7. Apps Strengthen Your Omnichannel Footprint

Many BigCommerce merchants sell across multiple touchpoints: 

• Online storefronts, 
• Marketplaces, 
• Retail locations, 
• Fulfillment channels, 
• Loyalty programs, and 
• Customer support.

A mobile app brings these together into a single, consistent customer experience.

A customer can:

• Browse and buy
• Track orders
• Access loyalty rewards
• Manage subscriptions
• Receive updates

All these without jumping between channels.

This aligns perfectly with how omnichannel BigCommerce merchants operate. An app becomes the “home base” for the customer experience, strengthening retention across every touchpoint.

8. Apps Provide Faster Reordering and Account Management

A significant portion of BigCommerce stores also serve B2B buyers, and these customers expect consumer-grade convenience.

A mobile app makes daily purchasing smoother with:

• Fast catalog access
• Two-tap reordering
• Past order lookups
• Saved carts and lists
• Mobile-friendly approvals
• Invoice and payment access

Reports show that companies investing in streamlined digital workflows outperform peers in customer satisfaction and operational speed.

If you’re a B2B or B2B2C merchant on BigCommerce, an app makes buying easier for your customers who are often working on-the-go.

Conclusion: The Fastest Way to Launch an App for BigCommerce

Apps consistently outperform mobile web across conversion, session depth, purchase frequency, and long-term value. BigCommerce merchants feel this lift even more because of their repeat-purchase models, product discovery needs, and strong mobile traffic.

MobiLoud gives BigCommerce brands the simplest, fastest way to launch a high-quality mobile app:

• No rebuild
• Full connection to your existing BigCommerce storefront
• Launch in ~4 weeks
• Unlimited push notifications
• All maintenance included

See your BigCommerce store as a real mobile app with a free preview.