Online shopping apps have never been bigger than they are right now. More and more each day are opting for the convenience of being able to shop directly from their phone, with no need to visit a store, or even open their browser.
Any retailer worth their salt today has Judi Bola their own shopping app. But shopping apps aren’t limited to branded apps – some of the top shopping apps today are marketplace apps, multi-brand apps, or apps that help make shopping easier, both online and in-store.
Whether you’re a consumer, looking for your online shopping fix, or a retailer looking for examples of successful apps, we’ve got you covered in our list of the best shopping apps in 2024.
Mobile Commerce/Online Shopping Market Size
The online shopping market size is estimated to be worth over $1 trillion in the US alone. This figure is only the second largest global e-commerce market – the leader is China, with e-commerce sales in this market just under $1.5 trillion.
By 2027, experts expect that e-commerce will account for 5.29 billion users worldwide, with 66.6% market penetration.
The growth of e-commerce is nothing new. What is new is the growth of m-commerce, or mobile commerce; e-commerce taking place specifically on mobile devices.
The US m-commerce market accounted for $431 billion in sales in the most recent year. Mobile commerce spending currently makes up 38% of all digital spending in the US, and over 100 billion hours are spent each year in e-commerce apps.
The m-commerce market is expected to grow by 150% within the next two years. Once upon a time, brick and mortar stores were at threat by the rise of e-commerce. Now, traditional e-commerce sites face extinction if they don’t adapt to the rise of m-commerce.
Types of Shopping Apps
Not all shopping apps are the same. The shopping app market covers a range of different types of apps, big and small, branded apps and utility apps. Let’s take a quick look at these different types of shopping apps.
Marketplace Apps
Example: Amazon, eBay
Marketplace apps connect buyers and sellers of all kinds of products and services. Amazon and eBay are great examples, which offer products for sale from a large number of individual sellers
and small businesses.Because of the variety and competitive nature of sellers on online marketplaces, they typically have a wide variety of items to choose from, and offer competitive prices.
Brand Apps
Example: Nike, Zara
Brand apps are created by individual brands to sell their own products. They often provide exclusive deals and discounts to shoppers on the app, above what’s offered to in-store customers or shoppers on their website.
Multi-Brand Retail Apps
Example: ASOS, Target
Multi-brand apps are retailers offering products from a range of different brands. All products are sold by a single retailer (unlike marketplace apps, which have many individual sellers), but there’s a wider selection of branded products available than with a single brand app.
Grocery Apps
Example: Instacart, Shipt
These are only grocery stores, right there on your mobile device. Grocery apps are not too different from multi-brand retail apps, but specialize in groceries and household essentials. They generally allow users to create digital shopping lists and order groceries online to be delivered to their door or picked up in-store.
Buy and Sell Apps
Example: Poshmark, OfferUp
These are apps that directly connect buyers and sellers in a less formal setting than with marketplace apps like Amazon. Like a digital thrift store, buy and sell apps are focused on used items, letting users sell old or unwanted items to other users.
Coupon, Deal & Cashback Apps
Example: Rakuten, Groupon, Capital One Shopping
These apps offer cashback, deals, coupons and rewards on a wide variety of products and services. They may be used in-store, on retailers’ websites, or in some cases allow shoppers to buy products on the app as well.
Most Popular Shopping Apps on iOS
There’s going to be a lot of overlap between the best shopping apps and those which are most popular on the app stores.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the most popular shopping apps, starting with shopping apps for iPhone/iOS.
Today’s Best Shopping Apps
Now let us take a deeper look at today’s best shopping apps.
Amazon
Play Store – 4.3/5 rating, 3.35 million reviews, >500 million downloads
Apple App Store – 4.8/5 rating, 7.6 million ratings
Any list of the best shopping apps has to start with Amazon. One of the biggest companies in the world, e-commerce or otherwise, Amazon gets a significant amount of their revenue today on the app, with 98 million unique users shopping on their mobile app each month, to go along with over 200 million unique monthly visitors to the Amazon site.
Amazon is the best example of a marketplace shopping app, allowing users to shop from a variety of their favorite brands, along with Amazon’s own branded products.
Temu
Play Store – 4.6/5 rating, 317,000 reviews, >10 million downloads
Apple App Store – 4.6/5 rating, 225,400 ratings
Temu is one of two big new competitors to Amazon coming out of China. It’s currently the most popular shopping app in the US, for both iPhone and Android, selling a huge range of products, almost all at bargain prices.
Temu was launched in the US in late 2022, and is a subsidiary of a Chinese-owned company, Pinduoduo. Like Amazon, it’s a marketplace app, connecting shoppers with individual sellers and small businesses selling on the platform.
Shein
Play Store – 4.7/5 rating, 6.03 million reviews, >100 million downloads
Apple App Store – 4.7/5 rating, 1 million ratings
Shein is the other big new player in the shopping app landscape, alongside Temu. It’s the 2nd most popular shopping app for iPhone and Android right now, behind Temu in both, and like Temu comes from a Chinese parent company.
Shein is a fashion retailer, which originally gained popularity in China before branching out to US and international markets. It offers a lot of cheap designer clothing, with a shorter supply chain allowing them to offer better prices than other shopping apps like Amazon.
Walmart
Play Store – 4.7/5 rating, 3.5 million reviews, >50 million downloads
Apple App Store – 4.8/5 rating, 8.5 million ratings
Walmart is trying to replicate Amazon’s success as a retailer-slash-marketplace. They lean heavier on the retailer side, but they also have a thriving marketplace of third-party sellers.
Originally known for their physical retail stores, Walmart today has a strong digital presence, which includes their online shopping platform, which is one of the top 5 most downloaded apps in both the iOS and Google Play stores in the US.
Etsy
Play Store – 4.9/5 rating, 1.29 million reviews, >10 million downloads
Apple App Store – 4.9/5 rating, 4.6 million ratings
Etsy is a marketplace shopping app focused on authentic, hand-crafted and/or vintage goods. You can buy a range of unique, original products on Etsy from individual, third-party sellers, with these sellers being largely independent sellers, rather than the more commercial type of seller found on marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart.