How the Amazon App is Built: A Hybrid of Native and Web Technologies

The Amazon Shopping app is one of the most popular shopping apps worldwide, and its ability to offer a seamless user experience across both Android and iOS is key to its success.

But many people wonder: How is the app built?

The answer lies in a hybrid approach.

Amazon combines native app components with WebViews (a method of displaying web content inside an app).

This approach allows Amazon to leverage the strengths of both native and web technologies, and it results in a flexible, efficient, and user-friendly shopping experience.

MobiLoud, similar to Amazon's approach, helps websites become mobile apps by using web technologies inside a native app shell.

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into how the Amazon app is built, specifically focusing on how it utilizes hybrid development to maximize efficiency, without sacrificing on the customer experience.

We’ll also link it back to our platform, MobiLoud, and show how we can help you take a similar approach to the world leader in eCommerce for building your brand’s own app.

MobiLoud helps brands turn their website into fully-functional mobile apps, for a fraction of the cost, time and overhead of building custom native apps. To get a closer look at how we can help you launch amazing mobile apps, book a demo now.

Native Components in the Amazon App

Let’s take a look at a few parts of the Amazon Shopping app that are native (meaning built specifically for the app):

Nav Bar

The navigation bar is a native element. It helps users move between key areas of the app, like home, categories, and their account. This is designed to be quick and responsive, making it easier to navigate large sections of the app without delays.

Native Menus

The menus are also native, ensuring smooth interaction when users browse options like settings or product categories. Native menus load instantly, avoiding any delays that web-based menus might introduce.

Search Controller

The search controller is another critical native feature. Since searching is one of the most frequent actions in the app, Amazon uses native code to make it fast and responsive. Users get suggestions as they type, and search results load quickly, improving the overall experience.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are native too. They rely on the app’s direct integration with the phone’s system. Native code is used here to ensure notifications are timely and relevant, such as updates on orders, special deals, or recommended products.

Camera Integration

Finally, Amazon uses native access to the phone’s camera. This feature is key for scanning barcodes or QR codes, allowing users to quickly find products or track deliveries.

These native components work together to ensure the app feels fast, responsive, and integrated with the device, similar to how MobiLoud builds native wrappers for websites to provide a seamless app experience.

MobiLoud’s Approach

For eCommerce brands, MobiLoud creates mobile apps that directly improve customer engagement and sales. 

By delivering a more convenient shopping experience, mobile apps increase session frequency and repeat purchases. Push notifications remind users about offers, cart abandonment, and order updates, bringing them back to shop.

Features like faster load times, one-tap checkout, and optimized mobile navigation reduce friction and boost conversions. Customers are more likely to complete purchases when the experience is smooth, leading to higher retention and long-term loyalty.

WebView Usage in the Amazon App

Amazon relies on WebViews to load dynamic content like product pages, reviews, and promotions. 

These sections are not built into the app itself but are pulled directly from Amazon's web servers in real-time. This ensures that content like pricing and availability is always accurate.

Using WebViews allows Amazon to update content without having to update the app itself. It also reduces development time by using the same content across both iOS and Android.

Though WebViews can be slower than native components, they enable consistency and flexibility in handling large amounts of dynamic data.

With MobiLoud, eCommerce brands can benefit from the same strategy. The app integrates the website’s content seamlessly, ensuring real-time updates without the need to rebuild anything. 

This approach is ideal for brands looking to reduce friction and manage everything from one platform.

Performance Considerations

Amazon’s hybrid approach, combining native elements with WebViews, helps balance flexibility and speed. 

Native components handle critical features like the navigation bar, search, and smooth transitions. These ensure fast interactions and reduce any lag when users perform essential actions.

WebViews, though slightly slower, allow real-time updates of product listings, prices, and reviews.

For MobiLoud, native components include features like: 

• Push notifications
• A management UI
• Login and loading screens
• Smooth animations

Additionally, it supports tab bar navigation and integrations with platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. 

These integrations enable automated cart abandonment notifications and direct communication with customers through push notifications, enhancing performance while keeping the app flexible.

Further Reading: In our Ultimate Guide to Push Notifications for eCommerce, see why push notifications are such a powerful tool for eCommerce brands, plus get tips and real examples to help you craft impactful and high-converting push campaigns.

Challenges and Trade-offs

While hybrid apps offer flexibility, WebViews can sometimes load slower than native components. 

However, modern eCommerce frontends, such as Shopify themes and headless solutions like Hydrogen, are now highly optimized. They can match or even exceed native app performance. 

With the technology available today, you can build fast and responsive web features, making pure native code less essential for eCommerce apps.

The major advantage of the hybrid approach is compatibility with your full tech stack (i.e. the tools you use for analytics, conversion rate optimization (CRO), reviews, and loyalty programs). 

Most of these tools are built for the web. They often lack support or APIs for native apps, making integration into a fully native app difficult or impossible.

For established brands, this is a significant limitation. There are always essential tools that won’t function properly in a native environment. With a hybrid app, you can keep these tools fully functional within the app, without needing major custom development.

The hybrid model allows your eCommerce tools to operate just as they do on the web. From reviews to loyalty programs, nothing is left out. You can manage everything from one central platform, ensuring your app mirrors the web experience with no sacrifices.

In contrast, building a fully native app might mean missing out on these key tools. Even with effort, some tools don’t offer APIs, making integration impossible. 

The hybrid approach ensures that all your important tools, built for the web, continue to work in the app seamlessly. This flexibility is critical for brands that rely on a sophisticated set of tools and integrations to drive performance, optimize user experience, and increase engagement.

Development Efficiency and Control

The Amazon app’s use of WebViews offers a significant reduction in development time and complexity. 

Instead of developing separate native code for both Android and iOS, the app leverages web content that works across platforms. This means fewer platform-specific adjustments and easier maintenance.

By relying on WebViews, Amazon can update content (like product pages, deals, and promotions) without needing a full app update. This ensures that the app always displays the latest information without requiring users to download a new version from the app store.

This efficiency allows brands to manage content updates swiftly and maintain a consistent experience across devices. 

With MobiLoud, eCommerce brands can achieve similar efficiency, avoiding complex platform-specific development, and managing the app’s content centrally, just like updating a website.

Final Thoughts

Amazon’s hybrid approach, combining native components with WebViews, offers a smart balance between performance and flexibility. Native elements ensure fast, responsive core functions like navigation and search, while WebViews allow for dynamic content updates without the need for full app updates.

This hybrid model is ideal for a content-heavy app like Amazon, where real-time changes in product information and promotions are essential. It ensures that users always see the latest updates, while keeping development and maintenance efficient across platforms.

It’s also ideal (we’d argue even more so) for brands operating on a much smaller scale than Amazon.

When you have a limited amount of resources (capital, staff, time) to work with, you can’t be wasting these resources on duplication of effort, updating content and building features twice to maintain consistency between app and website.

That’s where the hybrid approach is so valuable. You can launch an app (and access all the benefits of having an app, such as increased engagement and retention, access to native push notifications, and greater brand authority), without having to manage another platform.

You’ll just manage everything on your website, and any changes you make automatically reflect on your app, cutting down the overhead and extra work that often comes with trying to juggle an app and a website.

Launch an Amazon-Style App in Just a Few Weeks

MobiLoud helps brands convert their website into mobile apps, which function much like the Amazon app does.

The core content of your app is synced with the website, meaning the app stays consistent with your website, and requires little added work to maintain.

But the mobile apps come with native features, such as mobile navigation UI, a tab menu, and native push notifications, to give app users a proper native experience.

All of this is delivered with a done-for-you service, for low four-figures up front, in a timeframe of less than a month.

That means you don’t need a million-dollar budget, or a team of app developers on staff, to launch an app that looks and feels like Amazon’s.

For an idea of what’s possible, just see these examples of other brands who launched successful mobile apps with MobiLoud.

If you’re ready to learn more, and see if this approach will work for you, book a free demo now. Our app experts will walk you through the process, show you a preview of your website as an app, and help you understand what MobiLoud can do for your brand.