What is the ROI for Ecommerce Mobile Apps?

Wondering if building your own mobile app is worth it?

In 2025, with the rising cost to acquire new customers, brands need to prioritize building their own sales channels and assets, rather than relying on rented channels like social media.

And with the steady growth of mobile shopping, apps are the perfect fit.

But the value of having your own mobile app is not just theory – there are plenty of data-backed reasons to launch an app.

Countless retail & DTC brands have seen the ROI potential of ecommerce mobile apps first-hand. We’re going to break down this ROI for you and give you an idea of what’s possible when you launch your own app.

Who Should Build a Mobile App?

Apps can be a game changer for many brands. But for some, it doesn’t make as much sense.

So what kind of brands should be building apps?

In simple terms, any brands with high LTV and repeat purchase potential.

Think – does it make sense for your audience to come back and buy with regularity? Or is your brand in an industry where people typically only buy once?

Mobile apps may not provide as much benefit for high-price, low-frequency industries like furniture or electronics.

Conversely, in some industries, mobile apps are a no-brainer:

• Apparel
• Beauty
• Health & Wellness
• Food & Beverages
• Home & Garden
• Pet Supplies

These industries typically have high repeat purchase potential, with consumable products and/or a high number or variety of SKUs.

Brands with a small number of products, at high prices, are unlikely to get the same benefits from an app (though there are always exceptions).

Four Direct Benefits of Ecommerce Mobile Apps (Where Your ROI Comes From)

Mobile apps help you drive more regular engagement from your existing customers – especially your loyal, high-frequency shoppers.

In doing so, you can increase several key metrics by launching your own mobile app.

To show you the potential of ecommerce apps, here are some real-world examples (some sourced from public case studies from popular Shopify app builders, some from our own internal data and case studies).

Higher engagement in-app

App users spend more than mobile website users.

Part of this is because app users are inherently your most engaged customers – which is why they downloaded your mobile app in the first place.

But it’s also due to the superior user experience of an app, even if the core design is not actually that different from your website.

See these results for an idea of the higher engagement in mobile apps:

• Sleefs: 40% higher conversion rate, 30% higher average order value in their app. (view case study)
• Rainbow Shops: 2x higher conversion rate, 10% higher AOV vs their mobile website. (view case study)
• Hobbiesville: 3x higher CVR in their app vs their website. 10% of all their customers are on their app, contributing 40% of their total revenue.
• Brumate: 43% higher CVR in the app vs the website, 56% higher sales per session.
• Beis: 67% higher CVR in the app vs their mobile website, 19% higher AOV.
• Anatomie: 3x increase in CVR in the app, 1.2x AOV vs their mobile website.
• Kyna: 2x CVR, 45% increase in user signups in their app vs their website.
• Snitch: 2.5x CVR, 1.3x AOV in their app vs website.
• The Oodie: 135% higher CVR, 37% higher AOV, 193% higher GMV in the app vs website.
• Obvi: 2x higher CVR on their app vs the mobile website.
• Kaged: 4.5x higher CVR, 19% higher AOV on app vs the website.
• Art of Tea: 3.4x higher CVR, 4.6x higher order value per session than their mobile website.
• Primitive Skate: 1.9x increase in CVR vs their app vs the mobile website.
• Bailey’s Blossoms: 4x higher CVR in their app (9.73% app conversion rate, compared to 2.48% on the mobile website, 2.60% for their website overall). 105% increase in AOV.
• Recode Studios: 7% total CVR in their app (only 1% on their mobile website).
• elo: 9.9% CVR in their app (4x higher than their website).
• CharlesTed: 12.08% CVR in their app (10x their mobile website and 7x compared to desktop).
• Vosges: 227% higher CVR, 30% higher AOV in their app, compared to their mobile website.
• HOP WTR: 139% higher CVR, 40% higher AOV in their app vs website.

Summary: Many brands achieve a 10% to 120% increase in average order value and 40% to 1,000% higher conversion rate in their mobile apps.

Increased retention and LTV

Mobile apps boost loyalty, retention and customer lifetime value.

By offering an app, you make it easy for your top customers to return and shop over and over again.

You also have real estate on your customer’s mobile device, plus push notifications, to keep your brand top-of-mind and drive more repeat visits.

See the following examples of LTV from brands with mobile apps:

• BoozeBud: app users have 5x customer lifetime value, 4x average revenue per user. (view case study)
• Sleefs: 3x more visits per app user.
• Rainbow Shops: 7x higher LTV on their mobile app vs the mobile website.
• Relink: 4x LTV, 7x ARPU from app users.
• Anatomie: 5x LTV on their app, compared to the mobile website.
• HOP WTR: 1.2x LTV on their app vs the website.

Summary: There are examples of brands generating anywhere from 120% to 700% LTV from mobile app shoppers, as a result of more total visits and more repeat purchases.

Incremental revenue at lower CAC

Mobile apps offer an owned channel to drive low-cost sales.

Sales made through the app are essentially free – and mobile push notification, in particular, are a highly-effective, low-cost promotional channel.

Driving more sales through your app can not only provide incremental revenue, but at a lower overall cost, for higher profit margins.

See these stats related to apps and push notifications as a sales channel:

• Sleefs: Over 50k push notification subscribers built through their app.
• Snitch: 60% of their DTC business happens through the mobile app.
• The Oodie: 50.6% push notification opt-in rate.
• Obvi: 40k+ app downloads, 21.8% of their total revenue comes from the app.
• Recode Studios: 16.9% conversion rate from their abandoned cart notification sequence.
• Kaged: 15k+ app downloads, 97.5% in-app user retention.
• Patta: 8x revenue spike within two hours of a push notification campaign.
• Bailey’s Blossoms: 160,000+ app installs in 6 months, over $2m driven through the app.
• elo: 35% of their annual sales coming through the app.
• CharlesTed: 83.5% opt-in rate for push notifications, from nearly 4,200 app installs (~3,500 push subscribers) generated in the first month.
• Volcom: 127.2% higher purchase rate from push notifications than paid ads, 124.8% higher purchase rate than email, 20.7% higher purchase rate than SMS.
• BoozeBud: 10% of their total revenue driven through their app.

Summary: Many brands see 10% or more of total revenue coming from their mobile app. Push notifications can be 1.2-2x as effective as other channels, at a lower cost.

How Many Customers Will Download and Use Your Mobile App?

In general, you can expect 2-5% of your customers to download your app.

Download rate varies by industry – which is again why industries with a low repeat purchase rate will be less likely to benefit from an app.

Categories like Food & Drink, Beauty and Apparel, where repeat purchases are more common, have higher average download rates.

It also depends on the percentage of your customers who shop on mobile, as well as the effort you put into promoting your mobile app.

How Much Does a Mobile App Cost?

Cost is half the equation when calculating the ROI of your ecommerce app. 

So how much does it take to launch your own app?

Today, you can create your own app for roughly $1,000-$2,000 upfront, and $500-$1,000 per month after, with a no-code solution like MobiLoud that leverages what you’ve already built on your website.

(We’ve come a long way from having to spend $100k+ (plus ongoing maintenance costs) to build a custom native app)

Click here to learn more about building your own app (without spending six figures).

Summing Up: Calculating the ROI of Your Mobile App

We now have a rough idea of the:

• Key metrics attainable by launching a mobile app.
• Percentage of your customers that will download the app.
• Cost to build your app.

With that, we can estimate the ROI for your mobile app.

(Keep in mind that none of these estimates are guarantees – these are based on aggregated data from real-world examples, but actual results may vary)

Let’s look at a Fashion brand as an example. This brand has the following website metrics:

• 100,000 monthly visits
• 2% conversion rate
• $100 average order value

Brands in this category see the following averages from their apps:

• 33% higher conversion rate
• 16 increase in average order value
• 3x increase in monthly visits from app users
• 4.5% of website visitors downloading the app

That comes out to the following app metrics:

• 4,500 active app users
• 2.66% conversion rate in the app
• $110 average order value in the app
• $41,656 monthly revenue from app users

We can estimate that this brand generates $32,656 per month in incremental revenue (additional revenue, above what they would make through their website) from their mobile app.

On the other side of the equation, they pay $2,000 upfront for their app, and $550 per month thereafter.

Over time, you anticipate revenue will scale, while your costs will stay more or less the same.

You can use our App Revenue Calculator to get an accurate estimate of your app’s revenue, using your industry and website metrics as a guide.

Next Steps

As you’ve seen above, it’s not hard to see how mobile apps can deliver an amazing ROI for ecommerce brands.

The next step is to begin the process of building your own app.

MobiLoud helps you do it with minimal effort, and at a low cost, for the best chance of achieving a positive ROI within just a few months (or less).

You’ll keep everything from your website, and spend zero time rebuilding. The whole process is managed for you, giving you a working app in less than a month.

There’s no lift for your team, no new work to add to your day-to-day. 

We maintain the technical side of your apps, while the content in the apps sync with your website, so you can make changes at any time just by updating your site.

Some of the brands we’ve helped have seen as much as 53x ROI from their apps!

Book a consultation to discuss the process and how we can help you build an app that’s almost guaranteed to turn a profit.