What is a product recommendation app?
A product recommendation system is a web, mobile, or desktop application that recommends products to users based on the user’s preferences and previous purchases. Product recommendation systems may work directly with e-commerce sites or may be embedded in other applications such as news websites.
Product recommendation apps share many of the same features as other niche ecommerce apps. For example, some product recommendation apps have tools to help users build out wishlists or review products they own. Popular examples include Houzz, StitchFix, and Trunk Club.
Examples of product recommendation apps built with Crowdbotics:
- A wine recommendation app. The consumer will login, fill out a palate quiz, and get wine recommendations from the store. The wines will be ranked based off of the same quiz questions in order to recommend properly and will be done manually.
What is the typical cost to build a product recommendation app?
A product recommendation app usually costs about $37,500 to build. However, the total cost can be as low as $25,000 or as high as $50,000. A product recommendation app with a low number of features (also known as a minimum viable product, or MVP) will be more affordable than an app that includes all intended functionality.
For example, here are some previous product recommendation app price quotes from Crowdbotics:
How long does it take to build a product recommendation app?
A product recommendation app usually takes 400 hours to build. However, a product recommendation app can be built in as few as 67 hours, or in as many as 733 hours. The exact timeline mostly depends on how complicated your specific app is. As a general rule, it will take longer if you require highly custom designs, niche features, complex logic, or non-standard release platforms.
For example, some previous product recommendation apps build with Crowdbotics received the following hourly estimates:
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Crowdbotics has quoted and built hundreds of applications for teams of all sizes. Browse our historical estimates by industry and app type to understand possible costs and considerations.
How to successfully grow your product recommendation application
A product recommendation app uses user behavior data to recommend products according to a user’s interests. If a user likes one product, the app is likely to recommend similar items in the future. In order for a product recommendation app to grow, it needs to provide users with incentives for interacting with the platform and with other users. It should also verify that its recommendations are valuable by monitoring user engagement with products they are recommended, and by measuring how many times they buy those products.
Risks and challenges of building a product recommendation application
Product recommendation apps may face legal and reputational risks associated with the representation of product information, violation of vendor terms of service, and the transmission of sensitive information. Because these apps are often used in conjunction with ecommerce platforms, they must take care to comply with vendor requirements for both app development and data collection. Product recommendation apps should also consider syncing their data with a third-party point-of-sale system to allow merchants to easily verify that their inventory is being properly represented on your platform.
