3 Ways to Perfect your Mobile E-Commerce
It isn’t breaking news that a good mobile site will boost your online sales: Ad Age found that 35% of users only visit popular ecommerce sites with a mobile device and 40% of users will go to a competitor site after a bad mobile experience. There are no excuses to have a poor mobile ecommerce strategy.
That said, the landscape in online mobile sales has changed vastly in the last couple of years. One thing to recognise about mobile ecommerce in 2015 is that mobile devices have improved exponentially. As a result, features like autocomplete search bars and site-wide navigation bars are less important. Companies with UX and sales in mind should make location-based services and high-quality photos their first priority.
When optimising your mobile ecommerce site these three tips will help improve the user journey and ultimately increase sales.
Know Your Customer
Getting to know your customers can be a challenge, but there is a lot of data out there to help you find answers. Learn what your customers’ pain points are by monitoring social media and the customer journey through your website analytics.
Test your mobile shopping experience with real consumers—getting data-driven answers to important questions is a marketing investment that provides real returns. In fact, data from Juniper Research suggests that mobile purchases will exceed $700 billion by 2018, almost a four-fold increase from 2013.
It is important to understand that customers on mobile devices are task-orientated. They won’t browse as long as desktop or in-store consumers so when they logon, they have the intention to purchase. Consider where customers are using their phones and tablets (which is why speaking to real consumers is important) when logging on to your site: are they watching TV? Are they in bed? On a lunch break from work? This information can help inform not just your mobile strategy but your overall marketing strategy as well.
Remove Clutter
Despite the fact that mobile is a relatively new purchasing platforms, users have high expectations of the experience. They want an easy-to-use interface and seamless check-out. One of the most important things they need is ease of browsing: important buttons should be obvious and important information easy to find and read.
That’s why it is incredibly important to keep advertisements and irrelevant information off of mobile apps. Allow consumers to keep their focus on the products. Make then photos easy to click on and zoom into, make the website easy to sort through and navigate, and minimise promotions. The mobile shopping experience should be smooth.
Easy Check-Out
This is the conversion so it’s the worst time to test a user’s patience! Make the process as easy as possible, from adding an item to the basket to confirming and paying for their order. The less your customer has to think about what to do, the better.
Don’t require logging in or signing up for an account – especially not before the purchase. A user shouldn’t have to sign up to add something to their basket or to browse, it just makes the process confusing.
To really perfect the experience, look at when users are abandoning their carts before check-out and consider how you can reduce the number. Do you show images of the products to reinforce the purchase? Do you have trust signals to assuage fears about payment security? Is your card easy to edit? Do you offer multiple payment methods like PayPal or Bitcoin?
Keep the check-out process minimal and seamless and you’re sure to see your sales improve.