Shopify changed the ecommerce landscape by making it easier for merchants to set up their websites quickly and cheaply. A startup called Tapcart now does the same for mobile commerce.
The company that has called itself “Shopify for Mobile Apps” drives the shopping apps for the top today Brandsincluding Fashion Nova, Pier One Imports, The Hundreds, Patta, Culture Kings and thousands more. After a year of triple revenue growth, partly driven by the pandemic, Tapcart today announced the completion of a $ 50 million Series B financing round led by Left Lane Capital. Shopify has clearly taken note of the appeal of Tapcart with its own dealer base and is one of the participants in the round.
Other investors in the round include SignalFire, Greycroft, Act One Ventures, and Amplify LA.
Co-founder of Tapcart, Sina Mobasser and Eric Netsch, have been working in the mobile app industry for years. Mobasser’s previous company, TestMax, offered one of the first test preparation courses for iOS, while Netsch recently worked on the agency side to create mobile and digital experiences for brands. Together, the two saw the potential of helping online retailers get their businesses on mobile devices as easily as it was possible for them to get online with Shopify.
Tapcart founders Sina Mobasser and Eric Netsch at their headquarters in Santa Monica
“Now you can start an app on our platform within a few weeks, whereas in the past it would take up to a year if you wanted to create a bespoke app,” explains Mobasser. “And for a small monthly fee.”
Tapcart’s platform itself offers a simple drag-and-drop builder that anyone can use to create a mobile app for their existing Shopify store by using tools to design their layout, customize the product detail pages, checkout options integrate, include product reviews, and even optionally add other branded content such as blogs, lookbooks, videos (including live videos), and more. Everything is synced to the app in real time directly from Shopify, so the retailer’s inventory, products and collections are all up to date. This is very different from some competitors who require duplicate records and data transformations.
Tapcart meanwhile uses all of Shopify’s APIs and SDKs to build a native application that works with Shopify’s existing data structures.
Credit: Tapcart
This tight integration with Shopify helps Tapcart because it doesn’t have to focus on the ecommerce infrastructure as the way things around inventory and collections are structured is about 90% the same across brands. Instead, Tapcart focuses on the 10% that set brands apart, including things like branding, content, and design. The CMS allows merchants to create exclusive content, change colors and fonts, add videos and much more to fully customize the app.
In addition to creating mobile apps for their business, Tapcart also supports retailers in automating their marketing. Via the Tapcart platform, merchants can communicate with their customers in real time using push notifications that alert them to new sales, encourage them to return to abandoned carts or other promotions. The marketing campaigns can also be automated, which helps merchants plan their upcoming product launches and launches in advance. The company claims these push notifications deliver click-through rates that are 72% higher than traditional email or SMS text because of their interactivity and branding.
Credit: Tapcart
The platform has quickly caught on from SMBs to medium-sized corporate customers who have reached the stage of their business where it makes sense for them to double customer loyalty and conversion and optimize their mobile workflow.
“Our sweet spot is when you have maybe a few hundred customers in your database,” notes Netsch. “This is a perfect time now to focus less on the paid acquisition part of your business and more on retaining and retaining these existing customers. [so they’ll] shop more and have a better experience, ”he says.
Over the past 12 months, Tapcart’s platform has generated over $ 1.2 billion in retailer sales. And in 2020, Tapcart’s recurring sales tripled as mobile apps grew even faster during the pandemic that had increased consumer mobile screen time by 20% year over year from 2019. Mobile commerce spending also increased 55% year-over-year. Year and topped $ 53 billion worldwide during the Christmas shopping season, the company says. Tapcart’s own retailers recorded orders for mobile apps more than once a second during this period and believes these trends will continue even after the pandemic ends.
Today, Tapcart generates revenue by charging a flat SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) fee that sets it apart from a number of competitors that charge a percentage of the retailer’s total sales.
Credit: Tapcart
With the additional funding, Tapcart plans to focus on its goal of becoming a vertically integrated suite of mobile commerce tools that recently added support for iOS app clips. It will also be releasing an updated version of its Insights Analytics platform soon, offering scripts that traders can install on their mobile websites to compare what works on the website and what works in the app.
Later this year, Tapcart plans to roll out a full marketing automation product that will allow brands to further automate and personalize their notifications. And the company plans to invest in market expansion to better develop its product for mobile, global commerce.
The funding will allow Santa Monica-based Tapcart to recruit an additional 200 employees over the next 24 months, up from the current 70. This includes new additions in all time zones and even in markets like Australia and Europe on its way to global expansion.
Shopify’s investment will also open up a number of new opportunities, including in the areas of product, tech, business strategy, and partnerships. It will also help get Tapcart in front of Shopify’s 1.7 million global retailers.
“There are still many retailers who need better mobile experiences, but have not yet really doubled their mobile effort and get something like a native app,” notes Netsch. “Merchants are experimenting with a lot of different methods and methods with mobile growth, and we’re trying to bring all of the best bits of it to a single platform. So Tapcart has a lot of room for expansion to do just that with the existing addressable market, ”he says.
“We believe brands need to be where their customers are, and that means being on their phones today,” said Satish Kanwar, VP of Product Acceleration at Shopify, in a statement. “Tapcart helps merchants create mobile-first shopping experiences that customers love and reaffirms Shopify’s mission to improve commerce for everyone. We look forward to Tapcart building its success on Shopify with the more than 1.7 million retailers on our platform today. “