The bare stats for mobile ecommerce

If you haven't leveraged your online store to be an "absolute mobile experience", you are seriously moving out of the ecommerce ball game.

As shown in this report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the volume of data downloaded via mobile handsets for the three months ended 30 June 2018 increased by 40.9% compared to the three months ended 30 June 2017.

That's right 40.9% increase in 12 months, and with roughly the same amount of handsets.

Your customers are engaging online via mobile more than ever, including comparing online, in your store, whilst browsing your products.

The User Experience

UX in mobile ecommerce is king. You not only need a "mobile friendly" store, the User Experience needs to be spot on.

Checkout

Easy checkout and payment options create the environment for your customers to make the transition from browsing to buying. Apart from the usual credit card and paypal options, Buy Now- Pay Later services are becoming a preferred option.

"Check out Now" or "Call to action" buttons/images create easy paths to complete a transaction. Make this a labourous task, and say goodbye to conversions.

Navigation

Fast and easy navigation with large areas for customers to click on, means your customers get where they want to go without fuss. Considering most mobile browsers are multi-tasking at the time: coffee and/or lunch in one hand, talking with friends, a handful of shopping bags whilst browsing on mobile for the next bargain, the ability to easily navigate your site is crucial, especially when only "one hand" is available to complete the task.

Categories and Attributes

Quite often your customers are browsing a 'style' or 'category', looking for an item within that style that is perfect for them. A properly structured category system where your customers can browse by colour, size, price etc., provides another easy path for navigation. Also, the ability to choose and view size and colour (colour swatches), is a dynamic, higly visual call to action, and a proven function to increase products added to the cart. These functions can easily be done, however, they need to be easily navigated "one handed" on a mobile device.

Images

Detailed, beautiful pictures, especially lifestyle images engage the eye, the senses, and emotion. Images make great "calls to action", promotional points and access to other products your customers may not know you have avaialble. An image can replace a thousand words, and reduce "wordy clutter" that makes browsing difficult, however, as discussed above, easy accessibility to product information and availability is vital. "Burger Menus" - or collapsible menus that are easily clicked on help keep content close at hand if needed.

Summary

Knowing how your market searches and reacts across your retail verticals is the key to securing that Purchase Button Click. Engage your customers and find out what it was that made them buy - or decide not to buy, the last time they were on your site. Use this information to leverage your brands online experience.

Mobile ecommerce is a solution that is in your hands.

Happy Retailing.