As eCommerce sales grow each day, so does the use of mobile devices for Internet browsing. Companies need to adapt their customer experience and become far more mobile-friendly, addressing customer frustrations and concerns.
As eCommerce sales grow each day, so does the use of mobile devices for Internet browsing.
In fact, market trends indicate that almost three-quarters of internet users will access the web solely via their smartphones by 2025. This is equivalent to nearly 3.7 billion people, per a World Advertising Research Center report.
This represents a massive opportunity for mobile commerce. In 2018, $101 billion was spent on mobile apps alone, according to a report from App Annie. With numbers like those, it’s easy to see just how significantly mobile users will impact online shopping.
Indeed, the commerce market has already begun adapting to the incredibly rapid increase in the use of mobile phones for buying online. Advertising on social media has quickly become the most popular way to reach potential customers, and online retailers are adjusting to mobile marketing accordingly.
Yet while more and more customers are preferring mobile over desktop, the conversion rates on mobile remain far worse.
There are a number of reasons that can explain the relatively small conversion rates in m-commerce:
Significantly, all of these reasons are related to user experience (UX) factors.
This means that eCommerce companies need to adapt their customer experience and become far more mobile-friendly, addressing the frustrations and concerns that prevent mobile customers from converting.
Creating a mobile shopping experience is a shift in thinking for the average eCommerce brand, but companies that do it effectively will control a much larger market share than their competitors.
There are some key steps that businesses can take in adapting their user experience to accomodate increasingly mobile-based transactions.
A responsive website won’t just adapt to a mobile phone, it will work for tablets, smart devices like the Apple Watch, and even consider voice commerce, such as how a device like Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa could be used to place orders.
This makes a significant difference in customer satisfaction. According to Google, 67% of people are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site.
This means that at a minimum, you’ll need a responsive design, ensuring the layout of your site adapts to various screen sizes. Images and other interactive elements will re-size accordingly, automatically fitting whatever screen your customer is using.
Other avenues to explore, particularly for large companies, is a mobile app. Yet even if you develop an app and get customers to adopt it, you’ll still need a responsive site to meet the needs of non-app users.
Many users fear mobile purchasing because of concerns over security. Perhaps even more significantly, eCommerce brands site mobile payment security as one of their major concerns in embracing mobile commerce.
In fact, according to MonetizePros, some surveys cite that as many as 61% of participants will decide not to purchase a product because the website was missing a trust seal.
Thankfully, all of this can be avoided by having a secure payment process, and clearly displaying these security settings to potential customers.
Directly connected to secure payment options is the need to have secure, mobile payment options. From PayPal to Apple Pay to Google Pay, Visa Checkout, etc., the less work a customer has to do in order to actually purchase an item, the better.
Too often, customers fail to convert on mobile simply because they don’t have their wallets on them. If you have to run upstairs to grab your credit card, chances are you’ll just leave the item in your cart. But if you can quickly and easily sync your PayPal account to checkout, you are far more likely to complete that transaction.
The overarching theme? It’s time to simplify your user experience.
Creating a seamless, simple, streamlined experience for customers is more critical than ever before. Autofill forms where possible. Allow users to log in for faster checkout experiences. Clearly label buttons and size them appropriately. Offer various mobile payment options.
Make mobile so simple that your customers can’t resist, and watch your revenue increase.
