Mobile mastery: optimising for on-the-go shoppers

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Why should I optimise my website for mobile?

Smartphones are becoming increasingly popular for shopping online, with 91% of online shoppers using their phones to purchase products. So, it makes sense to maximise your ecommerce website to make mobile sales fast and frictionless for your customers.

For ecommerce business owners, encouraging smartphone sales means they need to ensure their online shop is mobile optimised.

Optimising your website for mobile sales simply means ensuring your site is formatted in a way that is easy to view and navigate on a mobile device. Optimising your website for mobile can help to improve customer experience, making it easier to complete a purchase and therefore increasing conversion rates and revenues. It can also aid in improving website speed, which in turn can improve how well your website performs in mobile search results.

Mobile commerce sales are expected to account for 62% of all retail sales by 2027

Growth of m-commerce

With the knowledge that more and more people are using a mobile to browse the internet and shop online, you need to make sure there are no barriers or friction when a customer visits your website. In today’s world, people are often busy, stressed and impatient. They will not wait for a page to load or try to work out how to add a product to their carts. So, you need to make their experience a positive one – otherwise they won’t convert and make the purchase.

Mobile ecommerce or ‘m-commerce’ is taking off in a big way globally. Global m-commerce leaders are emerging, particularly across South-East Asia in Chinese, Japanese and South Korean markets.

Why you should consider optimising your site for mobile

Improves user experience

You need to ensure your customers can navigate your website with no problems or friction, so you must make sure that the appropriate mobile optimisation has been made. If you create an all-round positive user experience, your customers will come back!

Increase the average time spent on your site by mobile users

A mobile optimised website will keep your smartphone users on your site for longer and see them engage a lot more.

Websites load faster

When you optimise your website for smartphones, loading times greatly decrease. This is because pictures and text will automatically render at the correct resolutions.

Better search results for your site

If you have two versions of your website, traditional and mobile, the smartphone version will be displayed first for mobile users. This means that you will be way ahead of your competitors if they do not have a mobile optimised site, by being further up in the search results.

“It’s all about removing friction. Remove every barrier possible between the customer and the checkout so it’s as easy as possible to pay. Some pain points are necessary – like fraud checks – but removing obstacles to paying can only improve your customers’ experience and drive up sales.

James King, Head of Professional Services, Elavon Europe

Cart abandonment rates on different devices

According to Barriliance, almost 70% of shoppers abandon their carts, but people behave differently when shopping on desktop compared to tablets and mobile devices:

Desktop

73% of customers abandon their carts on desktop.

Tablet

On tablets, cart abandonment rate goes up to 80.74%.

Mobile

Mobile users have the highest cart abandonment rate, with 85.65% of shoppers failing to make it to checkout. However, unlike traffic from tablet devices, which make up a tiny percentage of ecommerce sessions, mobile traffic accounts for more than two-thirds of all ecommerce sessions, at 68%.

Increasing mobile website traffic is not the only reason to ensure that your website is mobile optimised. With Google’s mobile-first indexing, sites that have been optimised for mobile users will rank higher in search engine results. This can allow ecommerce stores to reach a wider pool of potential customers.

Taking the time to invest in mobile optimisation techniques can also help to increase conversion rates on mobile devices. Ensuring your site is easy to navigate via a smartphone is becoming increasingly important for sales revenue. Optimising for mobile also creates a more consistent user experience and can serve to enhance your brand image and ensure your customers keep returning to your store.

“Smartphones have transformed the behaviour of almost all consumers and they’re increasingly demanding a uniform experience across multiple sales channels.”

Michael Bosshammer, Head of Retail, Elavon Europe

Six ways to optimise your site for mobile

Your website is often the first place of contact that your customers will encounter. You’re far more likely to make a sale or retain a customer if you provide mobile visitors with a site that is accessible and as fully functional as on a PC or laptop. It makes sense to maximise your ecommerce website to make mobile sales fast and frictionless for your customers. Here are our six top tips for optimising your website for mobile.

1. Optimise your page loading speed

Customers often expect website pages to load in just a few seconds, and even faster for mobile pages. Compressing media files, reducing the number of videos and images, or opting for pre-loading or lazy loading will help to speed up your website for mobile users. Faster page loading times can reduce your bounce rate and can connect your customers to your products sooner

2. Resize images and icons

To allow your website visitors to easily view your mobile site content, resize images and icons so they are still easily clickable on a touchscreen, but don’t take up valuable space. Reducing image and video size can also help to improve your page loading speed.

3.Optimise checkout for mobile users

The checkout process on mobile devices needs to be simple and easy to navigate. Many mobile shoppers are often looking to complete a sale faster than desktop users, as they may be shopping on the go or multitasking. Including payment options that give customers instant access to their payment information can also help to speed up the mobile payment process.

To achieve this, your checkout process could offer payment via digital wallets such as PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay, or auto-save for card details for faster future checkouts. Additionally, consider using methods such as autofill for address fields or copying shipping addresses into billing address boxes to make form-filling easier on mobile.

Set up your ecommerce solution to accept recurring payments and offer repeat customers a speedy checkout. You can also set up payment schedules, create ongoing subscriptions and offer promotional plans to reward customer loyalty.

Offering the option to checkout as a guest can also allow for faster checkout and prevent mobile users from having to fill in lengthy forms on smaller screens. Although many mobile checkout optimisation principles are like desktop checkout optimisation, ensuring your website is tailored to mobile purchases can help to improve your conversions and sales revenue.

4. Simplify navigation

Touchscreens are much less accurate than a mouse or trackpad and your website navigation needs to accommodate for this. Compress navigation bars into ‘hamburger bars’, which allows visitors to expand the site navigation menu on when they wish to view other pages. This can save valuable space on your mobile site for more product information.

5. Make all your content available to all your users

Although images and icons may have to be smaller and some text rearranged for easier mobile navigation, this does not mean that you need to sacrifice any of your website content. Giving your mobile users access to all the same content and information available on your desktop site can ensure mobile visitors don’t become frustrated and leave your site, costing you potential sales.

6. Test your website

Before you make your newly optimised mobile website live, run it through a mobile testing tool so you can identify and correct any problems that could affect your mobile user experience.

Nearly half of online consumers prefer to check out as a guest for two key reasons: they believe it’s faster than creating an account, and they don’t have to input as much personal information.

Most (70%) of mobile app users will abandon an app if it takes too long to load. A one-second delay in response can result in a 7% loss in conversion, and nearly one in every two apps are uninstalled within the first month of download.

Conclusion

Mobile online shopping (or m-commerce) is quickly becoming the new normal. Ensuring that your ecommerce website is optimised for all your website visitors will allow your site to remain competitive and help prevent cart abandonment.

Americas

Europe

Americas

Europe

Why should I optimise my website for mobile?

Mobile commerce sales are expected to account for 62% of all retail sales by 2027

Growth of m-commerce

Why you should consider optimising your site for mobile

Improves user experience

Increase the average time spent on your site by mobile users

Websites load faster

Better search results for your site

Cart abandonment rates on different devices

Desktop

Tablet

Mobile

“Smartphones have transformed the behaviour of almost all consumers and they’re increasingly demanding a uniform experience across multiple sales channels.”

Six ways to optimise your site for mobile

1. Optimise your page loading speed

2. Resize images and icons

3.Optimise checkout for mobile users

4. Simplify navigation

5. Make all your content available to all your users

6. Test your website

Nearly half of online consumers prefer to check out as a guest for two key reasons: they believe it’s faster than creating an account, and they don’t have to input as much personal information.

Most (70%) of mobile app users will abandon an app if it takes too long to load. A one-second delay in response can result in a 7% loss in conversion, and nearly one in every two apps are uninstalled within the first month of download.

Conclusion

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