It is not new knowledge that mobile conversion rates are not keeping up with those of desktop. Having said that, specifically now more than ever before, optimizing your mobile site for conversions is extremely substantial. But why? One may wonder.
Here is one simple answer: More people around the globe access the internet from mobile devices than from computers. And well… let’s just all face it, everyone’s always on their phones. Everything from phone calls, messaging, surfing the web to shopping can be achieved via mobile devices. Therefore, it only makes sense to improve the mobile experience of your ecommerce website.
Keep in mind that if people experience a negative journey on mobile, they are 62% less likely to purchase from you in the future.
Here are a few techniques to ensure increase in mobile conversion rates for ecommerce businesses:
Adopt Responsive Website Design
- Design shape your website’s layouts, the styling of your content and just generally the overall look of your website.
- Changing design means a change in how the content is displayed to your shoppers, especially on mobile devices. Not all websites are responsive. It depends on the design and modules used, so make sure to it is mobile friendly.
- The type of modules used affect the overall responsiveness of your website. A responsive design gives the best resolution from the largest screen to the smallest screen type.
Use sites such as Google Website Mobile-Friendly Test to evaluate how responsive your design is.
Mobile Usability
“Goal-oriented” are mobile users, so make sure they can find whatever they want with ease. A few tips on how to accomplish that include:
Ensuring relevant search results using product filters
Mobile users won’t have the patience to look up tens of pages – taken the small size of their mobile screens and hence the few products displayed at a time. Therefore, a good technique would be to implement auto-completing queries, correcting misspellings and perhaps giving suggestions to related queries. You could also use filters to narrow down results, that way you would help your shoppers by specifically displaying what they came in search for. Try using product filters for better sorting functionality.
Keeping menus short and to the point
Shoppers will interact with your website using only their thumbs, so make sure they find all sort of clickable elements (links, buttons, menus items). Make sure they are large and visible enough for your shoppers to tap on. Chances are they might click the wrong thing by mistake if these elements are small-sized or piled upon each other.
Avoiding pop-ups and distractions
“First things first” that’s the rule. Prioritize essential items over secondary ones. And do not use pop-ups or ads that cover the entire page because that would only disturb your shoppers’ experience –let alone that it would affect your search engine rankings negatively.
Creating a visible search bar
Some websites choose to leave it at very bottom of the page, but that’s only a disadvantage. Users are most likely to look up what they need using that search box so make sure they find it easily. A good solution to this would be by placing the search box in the menu, where it would be clearly visible to your users.
Adopting a Simple Checkout Page
One thing you need to know is that the average ecommerce conversion rate on mobile devices is only 2.03% whereas it is 3.83% on computers. Simplifying your checkout page is a very essential step in the process of increasing your mobile conversion rate. All you have to do is:
Eliminate any unnecessary steps and shortening the number of fields to offer a short checkout
You just need it to look as simple as possible, so perhaps you could remove the header and footer on checkout pages. The fewer fields, the lesser distractions, the better your mobile conversion rate.
Include multiple payment options
It is always a great advantage and a time-saving method to allow customers to pay using existing accounts such as PayPal or Amazon Pay –instead of filling in their credit card credentials. You could also enable guest checkout option, that way new customers could purchase the items they want as quickly as possible. And just perhaps, at last, you could suggest account creation.
Provide customers with extra benefits at checkout
Your main goal is to keep customers coming and a good way to achieve that is by offering them some… bonuses. But what bonuses are we talking about? Free shipping and fast delivery help and make your products ten times more appealing to your shoppers.
Make the cart easily accessible
Let your shoppers enjoy the journey of shopping during checkout process. It would be a little daunting for them to start all over again if your cart isn’t easily accessible. Perhaps they want to add or remove items from the list… so let them!
Here are few other effective steps to optimize your mobile conversion rate
- Enable social login using Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.
- Make product photos expandable: Shoppers will want to examine what they are buying before buying it. Make sure to include arrows or dots to let your customers know that there are more photos to see
- Present contact information in a clear fashion, perhaps it would even be best to include a clickable email address or phone number. That way users can easily get in touch with you.
- Optimize your website speed: Try allowing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) which is a framework designed to offer a lightweight mobile experience.
Conclusion
It is critical to focus on improving customer mobile experience especially that now, everyone’s using their phones to browse/purchase products. Increasing your mobile conversion rate won’t be too difficult a task if you follow the techniques listed in this article.