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Five Keys to Mobile Ecommerce Conversion

This is guest post from Alexa Lemzy at TextMagic.

If you haven’t bought something online using your mobile device, you’re now in the minority. In fact, 62 percent of mobile device owners made an online purchase on their device this year. For ecommerce stores, this trend represents significant dollars. In fact, last year a full third of holiday purchases and close to 40 percent of Black Friday sales were made via mobile devices.

As consumers prefer the convenience of mobile shopping more and more, it’s important for ecommerce businesses to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy from them via mobile. That means optimizing your website for easy mobile navigation and guaranteeing the security of your customers during the checkout process as well as other common concerns.

Here’s a breakdown of how to help increase your ecommerce site’s mobile conversions:
 

Seamless Navigation is a Necessity

Be considerate of the fact that mobile screens are smaller than desktop ones, so your interface has to be as user friendly as possible. Mobile users get distracted faster since they may be checking out your site on the go, while they’re in a meeting, or anywhere else and they may be getting pulled away by notifications from other apps on their device.

That means you have to get straight to the point:

  • Let them scroll your most important offers. Call your customers’ attention where you want it first, don’t make them have to hunt around for things, they won’t have the patience for it
     
  • Eliminate image sliders (they kill conversion). Image sliders are often used to give consumers many offers simultaneously. This just doesn’t work. It takes too much concentration for viewers to absorb each one.

    They also are often confused for banner advertisements, making them even less effective. And in the end, they rob your customers of the ability to freely navigate your mobile site to find what they’re looking for.
     

  • Skip big call-to-action buttons. They distract the viewer and take up too much precious screen real estate for very small conversion rates

Long story short: minimize, simplify, emphasize.
 

It’s All About Speed

It’s essential that you get this part right. As soon as a customer taps on your mobile site, the seconds are counting before they give up and go to another site. 53 percent of consumers abandon a mobile site if the page takes more than three seconds to load. And just a 1 second delay in page load time causes a 7% conversion rate drop.

In a case study for AliExpress, we saw that they managed to increase conversion rates for new customers by 27 percent after cutting their mobile site’s load time by 36 percent. While it may be tempting to use video, animations, and high resolution images to make your site stand out, there’s really no point in doing this if nobody is going to see them.

Avoid the elements that make your mobile pages slow. Say ‘no’ to slow loading animations and heavy images.

Embrace Text Marketing

Mobile marketing methods are not just restricted to mobile sites and apps. Text messaging is becoming more and more effective for ecommerce businesses when it comes to delivering last-minute offers, flash discounts, and other time-sensitive marketing messages. For example:

  • Follow-up after cart abandonment. A simple message reminding a customer of the items they left in the cart can be just what they need to head back to your site and make that purchase.
     
  • Products they might like. Personalize your messages by using a customer’s purchase history to send them relevant texts on products you know they’re interested in.
     
  • Shipping status. Customers love to know the status of their order and text is the perfect way to keep them updated since people usually open text messages immediately after they receive them.

Just make sure that your customers have explicitly opted in before you reach out to them with SMS. It’s a requirement by law for marketing via text.
 

Optimize Your Checkout Process

A mobile-friendly checkout process can also help prevent mobile cart abandonment. Be aware that an already irritating process of filling out credit card information, billing and shipping addresses, and other information should be made as simple as possible on mobile.

That means you should take out any steps that aren’t absolutely necessary for the client to complete the transaction. For example, if you generally require a new customer to register with your company on desktop, you should definitely try to skip this step on mobile.

Also, enable autofill for general information fields so that customers only need to check and edit them, not type in all the details. At this stage you should ensure your customer focuses on the purchase, so don’t divert them from finishing the process. You can always capture more information from them later.
 

Ensure the Payment Process is Reliable

Many consumers simply don’t feel safe making a purchase through a mobile site. So, it’s important to do your utmost to provide safe and easy-to-use payment methods. Things like sending a security code to their phone and asking a security question make it more secure to buy via mobile.

Visual cues such as a secured lock next to their credit card information show your customer you care about the security of their sensitive information. In addition to payment security, consumers also want payment choices. Provide your shoppers with mobile payment options.

According to a study by PayPal, 63 percent of consumers failed to complete an online purchase because their preferred payment option wasn’t available. Beyond credit and debit card purchases, there is a world of options for consumers to choose from and you as the vendor should be well-versed in these options.

From Paypal to Amazon Payments, BitCoin to Google Wallet, and other providers like BluePay, Stripe, and Authorize.net, find out what methods you should add to give your customers more ways to buy from you.

In Summary

Ecommerce businesses can increase their mobile sales by paying attention to page loading speed, payment options and security, text marketing, landing page navigation ease and a fast and easy checkout process. Effectively addressing these areas can help you provide your customers with a better user experience, increasing brand loyalty and conversions.

Have lots of mobile users? Learn more about our device targeting features, available in Plus plans and above.

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Written by Admin Privy

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