How Expensive Is It To Develop A Fashion App Like Shein?

Before assessing the features and cost of developing a fashion app like Shein, let’s talk about the app in brief.

It seems like an ancient time when fashion brands assessed the demand for their garments once they arrived at the store shelves to manufacture in the right amount of quantity. Today, brands built their merchandise on speed and agility. From spotting new trends, hyper-rapid design to supply systems, they strive to bring trends to markets as fast as they can.

That is where online-only fashion brands like Shein come into the picture. Shein is a Fast Fashion brand taking on legacy players like Zara and H&M through its fast deliveries and low prices. It aims to produce and ship orders within only three days. The international B2C fashion eCommerce app is one of the first fashion brands to leverage social media influencers as early as 2011.

The strategy paid off, and Shein’s apparel has become a mainstay in every Gen-Z closet from UAE to the USA. According to Sensor Tower, Shein’s Android and iOS apps crossed 229M downloads, compared to H&M’s 124M and Zara’s 91M. Another reason why Gen-Z is obsessed with Shein are those prices — tops for $7, dresses for $12, jeans for $17. Frankly, Shein makes Amazon look positively expensive.

Selling fast-fashion brands through mobile apps lets Shein continually offer its advantages and compete on three vectors it suits to win:

Price: “affordability”

Selection: “choice”

Retention: “addictiveness”

To achieve success, the fashion giant heavily relies on its software, eliminating human intervention to an extent. An executive told Tegus that, “Every area of their website is tied to the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system and their manufacturing. So they update their manufacturing capability in real-time based on who’s looking at what on the website and who’s buying what.”

By now, you must know the power of the online-only fashion brand actually lies in “how” it sells and not “what.” That brings us to the crucial part to develop an app like Shein, app features. The factor is quite influential in software development and also dominates your fashion app development cost.

Features of Make an App like Shein

Mobile application features are outlined before starting building an app and divided into subcategories, if any. For a fashion mobile app like Shein, we can split them into User and Admin panels.

User Mobile App

• Register with a social media account or email
• Brand Classification and Apparel Subcategories
• Product List screen with Search Option
• Product Details with available property colors and size
• Advanced Search filter with value, brand, size
• Bookmark option for Later
• Add to Bag
• A room for inquiry or complaint
• Address and Profile details
• Payment Options and Online Payment Integration
• Check out and shipping
• Real-time order tracking and push notifications

Admin Dashboard

• Indicator panel with deals report and Chart
• Organize classifications and their subcategories
• Sort product and their quality
• Manage Items Color, Size, Price trait
• Update order status
• Respond to customers inquiry
• Oversee Payment Transaction
• Control payment strategy
• Manage Coupons, Apply Taxes, Offers
• Announce News and Article
• Clean, responsive UI

Note: these are highlighted features only, and you should tailor your own feature list based on your project.

Take this guide to develop a women’s fashion application like Shein.

Shein App Onboarding

On top of the lucrative features, Shein offers a warm onboarding to its users, knowing which you customize yours too.

• It offers a 10% off and free returns on the first order to encourage shopping instantly and not much worrying about the product quality,
• It highlights the value proposition of 1,000+ new items every day to make users come back,
• It offers cash on delivery and Afterpay (to pay only for what customers want to keep after receiving the order) to remove even more friction from buying,
• It asks customers the category they want to shop to render better personalize the experience,
• It lures customers to turn on notifications to encourage repeat usage of the app and build the addiction,
• It provides 15–20% off when users sign in within a week to compel them to create an account.

Create a similar app onboarding experience for your audience to get them hooked!

Fashion eCommerce Mobile App Development Cost

Mobile app development and maintenance costs highly depend on the type of the app, app development company’s expertise, and hourly rate. Though, other factors are affecting the cost of app development.

Application Platform: Your Shein-like App development cost differs based on the app store/s you want to publish your app, Google Play or Apple Store, or both. Because both operating systems required platform-specific coding and designing effort.

App development approach: Suppose you develop a fashion app for both platforms; you can choose a Native or Cross-platform development solution. Unlike Native, Cross-platform app development with Flutter lets you build Android, iOS, and Web apps from a single codebase. Thereby, you can save much on budget and time as well.

Application design: The UI/UX design of an app like Shein acts as paramount for its success and the cost, too. You may require to iterate the app design a couple of times to achieve the look that resonates with and stimulates your audience. The UI/UX design journey goes through wireframing, mapping user journey, prototyping to test and finalize the design. Thus, it enhances the cost of building an app like Shein.

Application Developers: Self-evidently, Shein-like App development needs expert and reliable developers possessing mastery in the online fashion portal domain. The factor also affects the development time as an experienced development team can complete the project sooner. Since the cost is calculated at an hourly rate, it impacts the overall fashion app development cost down the line.

Advance and External features: The number of features and the technology to make them function also contribute to the development cost — for example, geolocation, booking, information transform, in-app chat/call.

All factors considered, the cost to develop a fast fashion shopping app like Shein ranges from $10k-90K as per your idea and requirements.

For an accurate cost estimation for your project, contact here.