Small screens are a huge part of online commerce. And they only stand to grow.
And for retailers seeking to reach younger consumers, mobile is especially important. 18-24-year-olds only spend 15% of their digital minutes on desktop, while consumers ages 25-54 only spend 22-23% of their online time on desktops, according to Comscore Inc. Thus, as younger consumers move into their prime earning years and begin to spend more online, mobile’s importance will increase.
Digital Commerce 360’s 2020 How to Boost Conversion Rates Report outlines five key tips as well as case studies and examples from retailers on how to increase conversions on mobile.
1. Don’t copy and paste (your desktop site)
Mobile conversions today are still lagging. Mobile traffic is converting at less than half the rate of that on desktop, at 2.25% compared with 4.81% for desktop, according to ecommerce personalization and optimization platform Monetate. That’s, in part, because many online retailers haven’t taken a mobile-first approach to site design. They have simply resized a desktop site, squeezing it down to fit a mobile screen. This, naturally, often leads to a frustrating mobile shopping experience.
Smart, mobile-minded retailers today start their design projects with the mobile shopper in mind. As they have learned over the years, it’s typically easier to start by designing for a smartphone and then scale up to a desktop than to do the reverse.
2. Recognize the need for speed
Mobile pages can take longer to load depending on if the shopper is connecting to the Internet via a cellular service versus the usually faster Wi-Fi. Shoppers using their mobile phones are also more likely to be on the go, perhaps on the subway, waiting for their next stop. That means they rarely have the patience of a shopper browsing on her laptop. Retailers should, therefore, explore ways to speed up their mobile sites. One way to decrease mobile load times is to take advantage of Google Inc.’s AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, technology. AMP allows retailers to build lightweight mobile pages that load extremely fast when a consumer visits a site from smartphone search results.
3. Add mobile-friendly ways to pay
Nearly 94% of visitors who make it to a mobile shopping cart page do not complete their purchases, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers conducted by software company SAP in May 2019. The hassle of entering a name, address and payment card information no doubt contributes to this high abandonment rate. That likely explains why 78% of shoppers prefer to pay using a mobile wallet (such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Amazon Pay) on their mobile devices rather than use a credit card, as those wallets store the shopper’s personal information.
4. Become a (mobile) social butterfly
Mobile goes hand in hand with social media, and social networks like Facebook and Instagram offer several tools retailers can take advantage of to drive mobile shoppers to their websites and win conversions. Once a Snapchat app exclusive, Stories—photos and videos that appear in a slideshow format and disappear in 24 hours—have now spread to Instagram and Facebook.
Facebook reported that more than a billion stories were shared every single day across the company’s family of apps. Those apps include the core Facebook app as well as Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. According to Facebook’s research, one in two people surveyed say they have visited a company site—and 31% have gone to a store—to buy a product or service as a result of seeing it in Stories.
5. Don’t abandon checkout
Beyond offering mobile payment options, retailers should strive to make the entire mobile checkout process fast and easy. Consumers don’t want to type in their full address or be required to register for an account on desktop. This especially rings true for mobile.
Retailers can save mobile users time and boost conversions by auto-detecting a shopper’s card type based on her card number, and auto-detecting city and state based on ZIP code. Even just a couple fewer clicks can increase conversion. Retailers also should be sure to disable autocorrect for name fields, so that the consumer doesn’t have to redo names that are incorrectly changed, or, worse, fail to see the autocorrect and submit incorrect data.
For more tips and 55 specific ways on how to boost conversion rates, download Digital Commerce 360’s 2020 How to Boost Conversion Rates Report.
This article is based on analysis from the Digital Commerce 360’s 2020 How to Boost Conversion Rates Report. This first-ever, 112-page report offers tips on boosting conversion rates using strategies across 11 broad topics: Mobile; checkout and payments; live chat and customer service; marketing; marketplace selling; merchandising and promotions; site search; user-generated content; website design; website performance; and website personalization. You can learn how to purchase the 2020 How to Boost Conversion Rates Report here.
Favorite