4 Ways to Build a Jewelry Mobile App

There are several viable options to build a mobile app for a jewelry store. The best option depends on what you want, the time, cost and expertise you have at your disposal, and a few other factors.

In this article we’ll help you make the right choice, and avoid wasting time, energy and a lot of money on a development method that’s too complex, expensive, inflexible or otherwise unsuitable.

The Case for Jewelry App Development

Jewelry as an ecommerce category is growing fast. The online jewelry market size is poised to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.55% between 2022 and 2027. It's forecasted to grow by $36.23 billion during this period (source).

At the same time, ecommerce as a whole is booming, and consumers are gravitating towards mobile, with mobile currently making up 38% of all digital spending in the US.

More than two thirds of the US population have made a purchase on mobile at some point, and those who do shop on mobile convert at a higher rate, spend more, abandon carts less and purchase more often.

Having an app lets you provide a better user experience to mobile shoppers, cultivate more loyal customers, and get more revenue from each person. It also sets your brand apart from the competition by providing a huge signal of trust and authority to potential customers.

Jewelry Mobile App Examples

Check out these examples of jewelry shopping apps for ideas of real brands 

Melorra

Melorra is a jewelry shopping app offering trendy gold and diamond jewelry. The app takes inspiration from global fashion trends to provide daily wear designs. A unique feature of Melorra is its 3D viewing option, which allows users to get a 360-degree view of each piece. 

The app provides secure payment options, easy returns, and home try-on services.

Bayam Jewelry

New York City-based Bayam Jewelry sets themselves apart in this crowded market with a convenient, user-friendly mobile app.

They sell a wide variety of diamond and gold jewelry, including chains, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, rings, earrings and watches.

Their app lets you browse their entire collection from your mobile phone, with a smoother browsing experience than the mobile website.

How to Build a Jewelry Shopping App

Providing your customers with an app is a great way to grow your business, but it can be tricky for ecommerce businesses with limited knowledge in-house when it comes to mobile app development.

Broadly speaking, there are four ways to build an ecommerce app for your jewelry store:

• Native development
• Hybrid development
• DIY app builders
• Managed app services (i.e. MobiLoud)

Let’s take a look at each, with the biggest pros and cons, and how well they might fit your business and your goals.

Native App Development

Native development means building an app specifically designed to run on a particular platform, like iOS or Android.

When you build a native app, it’s native to one operating system. iOS apps can only run on iOS devices (e.g. iPhones), and Android apps can only run on Android.

They require specific coding languages and development tools (Swift or Objective-C with Xcode for iOS, and Java or Kotlin with Android Studio for Android apps).

Pros:

• High Performance: Native apps generally run smoother and faster.
• Better Integration: Native apps seamlessly integrate with the hardware (like camera, GPS, etc.) and software features of the device.
• UX: Native apps tend to provide a superior user experience, adhering to the specific UI standards of each platform.

Cons:

• High Cost: Native developers are costly, and you’ll need to build two separate apps if you want your app to be available on both iPhone and Android.
• Development Time: A native app takes a long time to build (and again, you’ll need to build two versions).

Native development is what you want to do if time and money were not an issue. It’s the best way to provide a fully optimized, immersive user experience.

However, considering that high-quality native apps cost six figures and take more than six months to build (not to mention significant expense and complexity to maintain your apps), native development often isn’t worth it, when other methods can give you 95% of the end result for much less.

Hybrid App Development

Hybrid apps are capable of running on different platforms using the same code. 

Frameworks like React Native and Flutter are popular in hybrid development. These tools allow you to build single apps compatible with iOS and Android, instead of requiring completely new builds for each platform.

Pros

• Speed: The same codebase can be used for multiple platforms, so development is quicker than with native apps.
• Cost: You only need one development team, so the overall cost is lower.

Cons

• Lower Performance: The payoff for the increase in convenience is that hybrid apps are not quite as fast and smooth as fully native mobile apps.
• Expense: though more affordable than native development, building a good jewelry shopping app via hybrid development will still cost tens of thousands of dollars upfront.
• Time: though faster than native development, it’s still a complex project that will take a number of months, minimum.

Hybrid apps are likely a better option than fully native development. They come with less time, expense and risk than native apps. However, the time and expense required to build a hybrid jewelry app is still a lot, and requires a lot of work.

The technicalities of both hybrid and native development are beyond the scope of this article, we covered them briefly just to make you aware of your options.

DIY App Builders

App builders are software platforms that allow users to create mobile applications using drag-and-drop interfaces, and without coding.

App builders have become very popular in recent years, especially in the ecommerce industry. A number of tools exist (mostly for Shopify) that are specifically designed to help ecommerce brands launch their own, branded apps.

These tools use blocks, templates and themes (which you can customize, to a degree) to quickly and easily create the interface for your mobile app. The backend syncs with your web store and allows you to import product details, images and customer accounts into the app.

App builders are popular with non-technical individuals or small businesses looking to develop simple apps. 

Pros

• No Coding Required: App builders are user-friendly, and require no coding skills.
• Fast and Affordable: Users can quickly create and publish an app on multiple platforms.

Cons

• Limited Customization: App builders have a limited set of templates and features, restricting unique customization.
• Performance: Apps made with builders will not perform as well as native or hybrid apps.

App builders significantly cut down the time and effort required to build a jewelry app, but come with serious limitations.

The things that make them fast and cheap - reliance on APIs, templates, and widgets - also make them inflexible and generic.

Your brand will be forced into generic templates, with little freedom, and platform APIs only unlock a small amount of functionality, far less than what you can do on your website.

APIs also come with platform risk. All it needs is one major update to turn your workflows and app functionality upside down.

“The hybrid solutions on top of Shopify are just too limited. The Shopify API only enables certain things and for all the major providers of hybrid apps for Shopify, they had major limitations that the Shopify API would not let them get around. When our first wrapper app stopped working, we were forced into working with another app provider. That was a year of work, and then we discovered all the different things they couldn’t do because of the Shopify API.”

  - David Cost, VP of Ecommerce and Marketing at Rainbow (read their story)

App builders are affordable and simple, but if you want a high-quality, professional, fully-functional jewelry app, you’re likely going to be disappointed.

For jewelry stores in particular, providing a great user experience is vital. With the value of each conversion, minor improvements in UX and conversion rate will have a huge impact on your bottom line.

Your jewelry mobile app will never reach its full potential if you rely on a DIY app builder.

MobiLoud

The fourth, and best, option to build a jewelry store app is a managed app service like MobiLoud.

MobiLoud gives you the best of both worlds from app builders, hybrid development and native development.

It works by converting your existing, online jewelry store to a mobile app.

The app will work just like your website does; it’ll have all the same features and design scheme as your mobile website, but with the browser tabs removed, and native mobile features added like tabs, navigation UI, splash screens and push notifications.

The app will run the same on Android and iPhone, without requiring separate builds like native development. It’s also fully synchronized with your website, so whenever you make a change on the web, your apps will update automatically.

MobiLoud is a full, managed service, meaning we handle every part of the process for you. You don’t need to hire anyone or have any technical expertise whatsoever.

We do the entire build, including custom design work to make your apps feel fully unique. We also handle the app store submission process, and technical updates and maintenance after launch.

All in all, MobiLoud is:

• Affordable: It costs low-four figures upfront, a tiny fraction of what it costs to build a custom app.
• Full-Featured: You’re not limited in the way you are with an app builder, and your app will look and feel native to the end user.
• Quick: You can go from zero to app in less than a month.
• Convenient: There’s little to no work required on your end, both to build your app and to keep it maintained after launch.
• Scalable: Anything you can do on your website, you can do on your app. There are virtually no limitations.

How to Build a Jewelry Mobile App with MobiLoud

It’s incredibly simple to create a jewelry app with MobiLoud. The process is entirely done for you, with our team of experts using our streamlined process and battle-tested software to create the perfect app for you in under a month.

• Start with a free demo with one of our project managers, where you can discuss your project needs and look at a working prototype of your app.
• Next, sign up for a plan and give us the go-ahead to build your app.
• Wait for our team to compile the first version of your jewelry app.
• Once it’s ready, test it out on your own devices and send us any feedback.
• Wait again as we complete your app and publish it to the app stores for you.

That’s it; you’ll have a working app, live in the app stores and delivering sales, in the same time it would take for native developers to code the login screen.

You don’t need to have a development team in-house, or hire developers and manage a project you’re unfamiliar with. You just maintain your focus on your website, and converting customers, while we handle the mobile app side.

It’s risk free; we’ll refund you in the unlikely event that you get apps you aren’t happy with, and we don't do annual contracts either, so you can cancel at any time.

Ready to Get Started?

“It was an easy experience. I've always got a million projects on my plate and with this I was able to spin up an app in two months for a couple thousand bucks. It made me look really good. I like everything about the experience.”

 - Brent Stimmel, VP of IT at JF Petroleum (read their story)

We've already built apps for thousands of businesses, including many high-revenue ecommerce brands. Check out these case studies to see what’s possible:

• Rainbow Shops
• SYN.DI.CATE
• Bestseller
• John Varvatos

These brands got top quality apps with MobiLoud, saving themselves tens of thousands of dollars and months of effort. You can too. 

Let’s build your Jewellery ecommerce apps - book a call today and we’ll give you a free preview of what your site will look like as an app, answer all your questions and explain why MobiLoud is right for you.