Mobile e-commerce is no longer a secondary topic for online merchants. On the contrary, m-commerce is on the verge of taking the absolute lead in online shopping. In November last year, Digital Index reported that 49% of all visits to online stores came from smartphone and tablet users. In the most developed e-commerce countries, payments made through mobile devices have reached 45% of all e-commerce payments. The situation in our region is similar. Someone recently said that the idea that we need to adapt our websites to mobile devices is actually outdated. Today, we must first and foremost take care of how our site looks on a mobile device, and only secondarily of how it looks on a computer. This trend will continue.
All online merchants who care about the success of their internet business already know that the road to a successful online store leads through a good shopping experience. This is especially true of mobile payments. Good interaction leads to a transaction! Every negative experience drives the customer far away from your store, straight to your competitor who has invested more time and resources in creating, testing and improving a good shopping experience.
It is also interesting that, alongside the growth of purchases through smartphones and tablets, the rate of abandoned purchases is growing too. In January this year, the Baymard Institute summarized 33 different e-commerce studies and concluded that the abandonment rate is now over 68%. This percentage has been rising for years, that is, since the first study conducted four years ago, when the abandonment rate was around 65%. And this is not solely the merchants’ fault. Customers are simply changing and become sensitive as soon as they feel they don’t like something about an online store. That is why the main issue all online merchants are trying to solve today is precisely what we call improving the shopping experience.
How to Improve the Mobile Commerce Experience
#1: Responsive design
Experience confirmed by many studies shows that responsive design increases conversion by 54%. A little less than two years ago, 46% of the top 500 online merchants used HTML5. This percentage has continued to grow since then.
#2: Don’t ask the same question twice
Really. Don’t. Remove everything that might annoy the customer, as much as possible. Of course, occasional suggestions to customers can also be useful if well dosed (for example, using intelligent product recommendation systems – “customers who bought this also bought…”)
#3: Increasing sales through social proof (social validation)
The best examples of online shopping are those that constantly work on reassuring customers that they made a good decision by buying from that online store. Yes, that is perfectly OK! Focus all your marketing efforts in that direction.
But don’t neglect customer opinions. Testimonials and opinions of other customers, as well as social media posts that talk about the quality of your online store, services and the goods you sell, have a very strong impact on success and conversion rate. The opinion of your other users and customers means a lot to those who have not yet had the chance to do business with you – more than any advertisement.
#4: Make sure the checkout process is simple and fast
- Reduce the number of steps needed to complete the payment
- Customer registration should be done after the purchase, not before. Experience shows that the extra effort of registering will make customers abandon both the purchase and the registration.
- Adding products to the cart, as well as removing products from the cart, should be simple and easy.
- Content on the online store should not distract customers from their intention to complete the purchase.
- The shopping cart should look simple and clean, with every stage of completing the purchase clearly marked.
- Mobile-friendliness, as we have already said, is now essential. Without a version of your store that is easy to read and easy to use on a smartphone, you can freely say goodbye to all the customers who came to your store via a mobile device.