How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Wayfair Like App?

This willow chair is so in trend, but will it look good under the staircase space? This dining set is so bohemian but will it match my room color? These are a few of the burning questions that the furniture shoppers have always wondered. The outcome? They either leave the product thinking it won’t fit their needs or they buy it and regret it. 

What if we told you there is an app that removes the element of wonder from the furniture shopping experience? 

Have you heard about the Wayfair app?

Wayfair, one of the best home decor shopping apps, is a brand that has been attracting thousands of customers right from the day it was brought into existence. So much so that at the time of writing this blog, the active user base of Wayfair stood at 19.1 million active users! 

You must be wondering why we are talking about this app today. Well the answer is simple. It’s partially because the wayfair shopping app is a classic case of how the use of next-gen technologies like AI and AR can transform a brand and partially because the app has garnered a lot of attention coming in from entrepreneurs asking the same questions – how to build app like Wayfair shopping app and and how much does Wayfair app development cost. 

However, this new-found CX trend of using AR in furniture store apps is not just limited to the Wayfair shopping app. As per a Deloitte Report, 38% of the companies are making use of AR and VR technology to deliver immersive furniture shopping apps experiences to their customers. According to some reports, 75% of the global population will be frequent users of AR by 2025.

Seeing the growth trend the technology is on, there are a number of apps that have received mass popularity through the integration of Augmented Reality.

Other popular apps like Wayfair

Now that you, an entrepreneur, have gathered the profit making ability of AR based online furniture stores like Wayfair, let us help you set your idea off the ground – by giving you the answers of how much does it cost to build AR-based apps to buy furniture online. 

Here in this blog, we will provide you with the different facets of how much the development of wayfair shopping app costs – its features, the role of technology, etc.

Let us look into the first cost impacting factor of Wayfair application development – the feature set.

Must-have features for Wayfair-like app development

The furniture store apps and their development cost typically involves various factors. 

The key cost factors of Wayfair mobile app development depend heavily on the platforms you want it to be active on, the technology that goes behind it, device compatibility, security testing, app functionalities, and maintenance.

Interactive Photo for View

The shoppers can visualize how the products would look and fit in their space through the abilities of augmented reality. What makes the app truly unique is that it enables the customers to take the experience on the go. It enables them to take a photo of their room and visualize different products even when they are not in their home.  

Room Planner 3D –

With the Room Planner 3D, the customers can build an interactive 3D room. In the digital room, they can play with layouts, styles, room dimensions, etc. by adding Wayfair products in the digital space.

Navigation:

The app is designed with straightforward navigation that contains both textual and visual ways to search for a product. What builds the navigation element further is the presence of large clear photos and a wealth of relevant product information, including item name, brand name, price, shipping times, and average product rating, all found on product category sites.

UI:

Wayfair provides an easy-to-use interface with quick access to the home screen and shopping cart. This app has a nice layout that allows trouble-free browsing. It has everything in its UI that is needed to enhance the user’s experience.

Wishlist:

Wayfair app for android and iOS allows you to save your wish list in the particular favorites folder, and you can easily organize the favorites by the groups for quick access later.

Checkout:

The most important thing about this is that it provides a convenient checkout station. It usually takes a few taps to complete your transactions. Automatically, this app can save the billing information for future use.

Push notification:

The Wayfair push notification game is on point. They trigger timely notifications to the customers informing them when a discount is activated, messaging around the product they view, and around the product delivery.

If we had to list down the generic set of features that make up for the Wayfair app development cost, it would look something like this. 

User Panel Features

• Sign in/signup
• User profile management
• View product catalog
• Push Notifications
• Custom search and filters
• Multiple payment methods
• Product reviews and rating option
• Multiple language support
• Share/ refer products through social media
• Ask questions

Admin Panel Features

• Manage product categories
• Manage store owners and users
• Reports generation
• Payments management
• Shipping and delivery management
• CMS management

Here were the must-have features for the users and admin that the store-like wayfair app for android and iOS should have to become a success.

The next element of the deciding factors list behind Wayfair app development cost or rather any mobile app development cost is the technology stack that it is built upon. 

Tech stack behind Wayfair – the popular furniture buying app

The success of a Wayfair-like application, on the surface, is dependent on the features and the skill-set of the team working on it. However, a major credit of that success also goes to the technology stack that goes into its making. 

Here is the tech stack driving the success of Wayfair application – 

How much does Wayfair-like app development cost? 

The cost of app development is dependent on a series of factors – The UI/UX of the app, creation of the feature-set, testing the application, etc. Let us deep-dive into the number side of your wayfair app development journey. 

App designing

The UI/UX design contributes massively to the app’s success. The users, even before getting to the stage of using the functionalities, look at the design of the application. They look at how realistic the design of the furniture looks, how easy it is to zoom in and look at the detailing on the furniture, etc. An app similar to Wayfair can take about 3-5 weeks of designing alone, depending on the skillset of the ecommerce app developers you choose. 

When you convert it in hours, this leads to 120 to 200 hours. A conversion of this in costs would be somewhere in the range of $14,000-$34,000.

Creating the app’s features

Building a furniture brochure usually takes 100-200 hours. Creating a virtual furniture framework having the flexibility to change an item’s colors takes approximately 110-220 hours. The potential to capture the photo of the placement at the user’s home takes 10-20 hours. Total time required is 240-480 hours. The average app development cost: $32,000-$76,000.

Testing

Identifying and eliminating bugs is the fastest step of the entire mobile app development project. However quicker it may be, it is deemed one of the most important parts of the entire process. Testing an application like Wayfair can take up to two weeks of the developers’ time.

Taking into account that an average app developers hourly rate in India is $35, you will need to shed about $4,000 on testing your Wayfair-like app. In totality, to build your augmented reality furniture app like Wayfair, you will need to keep a minimum of 440 to 760 hours (about 3-5 months) in hand. And based on this time range, the development will cost you somewhere about $62,000 to $118,000.

Besides these key factors, there is one more key element that helps fix the cost of app development. It is the mobile app development agency. 

Everything right from the location of the agency to the team size and experts working on the project plays a role in deciding the cost of online furniture stores like Wayfair. An agency based out of the US would cost somewhere between $80-100 per hour while that in India will be somewhere around $60-80 per hour. Likewise, the bigger the team size working on the project, the higher would be the app development cost. 

Everything right from the location of the agency to the team size and experts working on the project plays a role in deciding the cost of online furniture stores like Wayfair. An agency based out of the UAE will charge around $60- $65, a US-based agency would cost somewhere between $80- $100 per hour, while that in Asia will be somewhere around $60- $80 per hour. Likewise, the bigger the team size working on the project, the higher would be the app development cost.

Now that we have looked into the expense side of the elements where the entrepreneurs would have to spend their money, let us now throw some light on what is there for them. How can they earn returns on their investment? 

The monetization model for Wayfair like app

Wayfair’s business model revolves around earning money through product sales, installation services, and through advertising on its platform.

You, as a brand, can take an extra step towards gamification. You can sell digital furniture to the customers to buy for their digital room or you can simply add a feature where the users would get x discount if they invite their friends in the application and they make a purchase. There can be several ways to get your customers addicted to the mobile app.

There can be multiple ways to monetize from the Wayfair-like app, but the key thing to note here would be to ensure that it matches the brand image and doesn’t hinder the customers’ experience.

Concluding thoughts

In a store like Wayfair, shoppers can easily view the exact room in the place through the camera, choose a product, and place that in the room to check how it fits or looks in that space. The users can also easily change and move products to check the various perspectives and layouts. In short, the app is a textbook example of how technology should be incorporated to make customer experience supreme. 

Hope you have found answers to the factors that are considered when finalizing the overall cost for developing apps like Wayfair. The next steps? Get in touch with an e-commerce app development company that carries an expertise in building eCommerce apps. We can help.

THE AUTHOR

Sudeep Srivastava

Co-Founder and Director