From Thumb Scrolling to "Add to Cart": Your Mobile Ecommerce Optimization Playbook
Solomon Mugo
Digital Marketing Content Writer | Creator of B2B & B2C content that converts | I will help grow your audience and get more leads
Shopping on mobile has never been easier or this fun thanks to advanced mobile technology and brands willingness to embrace the mobile phenomenon.
From buying my favorite pair of sneakers, ordering takeout to paying my Wi-Fi bill and buying airline tickets remotely, the convenience and safety of mobile commerce can’t be underscored.
And if you think it's all hype, look at the numbers.
By 2024, m-commerce will account for over 69% of global ecommerce retail sales and 8.7% of total US retail sales in 2026.
And if that's not enough,?
Forbes Advisor reports that 91% of online shoppers purchase on their smartphones.
Yet many e-commerce businesses are dropping revenue in this industry, which is expected to generate $6.4 trillion in 2024 because they aren't optimizing for mobile. From sluggish load times to unfriendly mobile interfaces and complicated checkouts, the problems plaguing m-commerce are numerous.
This article offers practical guides and simple steps to remedy this situation to boost sales and increase customer satisfaction.
Table of Contents
What's Mobile Commerce
Understanding the Mobile Shopper
Mobile Optimization for E-commerce
Why Mobile Optimization is Critical for E-commerce Success
Key Element for Mobile Optimization
Grow Your E-commerce Bottom Line By Optimizing for Mobile
Let's jump right in.
What’s Mobile Commerce
Simply put mobile commerce (m-commerce) is a facet of e-commerce and refers to any commercial online transaction undertaken on wireless handheld mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, or smartwatches.
Unlike common misconceptions, m-commerce is more than buying goods and services via mobile devices.
M-commerce also includes but is not limited to:
Understanding the Mobile Shopper
As an e-commerce brand, you might think you have your customers all figured out.
But do you?
Understanding online customers and their major pain points is critical for successful m-commerce campaigns. Modern mobile shoppers who are often on the go crave speed, security, and personalization.
Here are some of the biggest issues m-commerce pain points in 2024.
The online shopper is impatient, and speed matters a lot to them. Slow mobile page loading speeds directly impact a brand's sales, loyalty, and visibility. According to a 2022 study, decreasing the mobile page loading speed by 1 second can increase conversions by 5.9% and reduce bounce rates by 8.9%.?
According to Statista, over 50% of ecommerce transactions in 2023 were done via digital wallets, which is expected to reach 61% by 2027. Unfortunately, digital wallets like PayPal, Google, and Apple Pay have geographical restrictions locking out numerous potential customers
Although mobile screens are quite small, hard-to-tap elements like tiny icons and links are a major cause of cart abandonment. Many mobile shoppers complain about having to pinch and zoom pages to clearly see product pages and navigate menus, which leads to misclicks and user frustration. In fact, according to research, 67% of shoppers complain about this issue.
Imagine shopping for running shoes on your mobile phone, and you get a generic description like “great running shoes.” What are its key features, sizing information, availability, etc? Many users opt out of m-commerce pages that offer vague or incomplete product descriptions. Clear product information must include high-resolution photos, size charts, product benefits, access to customer reviews, and other information to assist clients in their purchase journey.
M-commerce clients are specific, and it only takes 0.05 seconds for them to form an opinion of your site, determining whether they'll stay or leave. A good mobile interface must be easy to navigate, offer a seamless purchasing process, easily adapt to mobile screens layouts, and feature all the necessary bells and whistles. More on this in the remainder of the article.
In a nutshell, mobile shoppers don't want much. Decent speeds, secure checkouts, high-quality visuals, and easy-to-use websites with intuitive navigation will do the trick.
Mobile Optimization for E-commerce
You've probably heard all the hype about making your e-commerce website mobile-friendly, but is it really that important?
Well, numbers don't lie.?
So yes, it would be suicidal not to optimize your online business for mobile.
But first things first,?
What’s Mobile Optimization for E-commerce?
Mobile optimization refers to the process of improving the site, structure, and functionality of an e-commerce website and other digital assets for mobile to increase conversions and enhance the shopping experience.
Check your site bounce rates, page load speeds, pages per session, and other engagement and conversion metrics to properly understand how to tailor your m-commerce optimization campaign,
Why Mobile Optimization is Critical for E-commerce Success
Having a mobile platform isn't enough: it should be fast, simple, and dependable to offer users the greatest value.
Imagine trying to buy a watch online, but the images take forever to load, and the checkout keeps glitching, would you continue with the purchase?
Or would you rather walk into your nearest Walmart and make the purchase?
I bet you would choose the latter.
And that's why mobile optimization is important for online businesses.
And optimizing for mobile isn't just about getting buyers to your site. A mobile-first approach also greatly improves user satisfaction,?engagement, and conversion rates.
In addition to the client, mobile optimization improves a brand's SEO ranking since Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites, allowing you to steal market share from brands that aren't mobile-enabled.
Here's why you need to optimize your ecommerce site for mobile.
领英推荐
A happy client will shop more!
This means a better shopping experience on mobile directly translates to greater sales and revenue for the business.
Online customers prefer mobile shopping for its speed and convenience thus, a slow or complicated mobile shopping experience will reduce conversions.?
Optimizing for mobile aims to remove all obstacles in a shopper's purchasing journey, guaranteeing quick checkouts, robust search function, and seamless one-click shopping.
Consider incorporating digital wallets, QR codes, robust search functions, and biometric authenticators to reduce purchasing friction.
M-commerce is a treasure trove of data that any forward-looking online business can use to its advantage.?
Customer data offers a glimpse into customer behavior, patterns, and trends that companies can use to optimize their mobile presence. Purchase data like high cart abandonment or site bounce rates may indicate a complex checkout system or poor app navigation. At the same time, demographic information can be used to create targeted Ads or marketing campaigns.
For example, an online store that has a higher percentage of Gen Z and Alpha customers may do better with social media marketing than email.
The table below shows how user data can help a company improve its m-commerce platform.
Since mobile accounts for approximately 70% of online shopping, brands that have optimized for this platform enjoy a competitive advantage over peers who aren't big in this space.
This means an online store with a responsive mobile website has a wider reach and attracts many more clients. For instance, tourists on the go will more likely contact a travel agency on mobile than on desktop.
Mobile offers a more convenient shopping experience, allowing clients to shop anytime, anywhere on their handheld devices. It works great for impulse buying. For example, a food delivery service company optimized for mobile will better meet the food needs of late-night partygoers than PC.
Studies also show that online shoppers are moving to mobile, which offers a more advanced user experience thanks to augmented reality, one-click checkout, and voice search.
In addition to a better UX, mobile optimization offers numerous SEO benefits, including mobile-first indexing, where Google crawlers prioritize indexing a brand's website on mobile. This means that a brand with a strong mobile presence will do better for user queries.
Additionally, since more people now shop on their handheld devices, the same brand will claim higher search mobile visibility than brands with an unoptimized mobile presence.
Local SEO is yet another example of why mobile optimization is important for an online business. For instance, restaurant A, zwith a mobile-optimized page that features GMB listings and accurate directional information, is more likely to show up for local search results than restaurant B, which lacks local mobile optimization. This also goes hand in hand with voice search optimization, where online brands with a mobile-first website will appear first for voice searches.
A mobile-first website also excels at social media shopping. Ideally, this site will feature robust social media integration, including share buttons, instant messaging functionalities, and chatbots. Optimizing for social media on mobile sites is likely to improve a brand's SEO due to increased brand visibility, social proof from user reviews, and backlinks from social media shares.
Key Elements for Mobile Optimization
Here's what to do to make your ecommerce site mobile-friendly.
Responsive and adaptive design
A responsive design is one of the most important ingredients for a great customer experience as more than half (57%) of online shoppers claim they won't recommend a site with a poor mobile layout.
For instance,?
A responsive design refers to features that make shopping on mobile a great experience like flexible page layouts that adjust to different screen sizes, large tap buttons, and advanced imaging technology.
Adaptive design, on the other hand, improves responsiveness by detecting a user's device specifications like touch gestures, camera access, and location to tailor the best user experience.
Consider using fluid grids, breakpoints, and flexible images that allow content to adapt to different screen sizes, resolutions, and layouts, eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling or zooming on small mobile screens.
For example, the Calvin Klein mobile site displays product images in a single column on a smartphone, while the same images appear in a multi-column layout on a tablet or desktop.
Simplified/streamlined navigation
The average mobile screen is only a few inches wide, and this is prime real estate that brands have to use optimally. To increase the UX on such small devices, consider implementing an intuitive but simple menu incorporating features like the hamburger menu, which expands to reveal options once clicked and back-to-top buttons.
Here are a few tips;
Speed and performance
In 2024, the modern mobile customer expects a fast and seamless shopping experience. Fast site speeds on mobile ensure higher conversions, reduce bounce rates, and guarantee an overall positive user experience. In fact, a 1-second delay in page loading times can increase page bounce rates from 9% to 38%.
Do the following to avoid the 20% drop in conversions on mobile commerce platforms due to low speeds.
Here's how to improve site speeds for m-commerce.
Unoptimized images are notorious for slowing down page loading speeds. To reduce image file sizes without compromising on quality, use image compression tools like TinyPNG, Optimizilla, Kraken.io, and JPEGmini. Another cool trick is to use efficient image formats like WebP and AVIF.
Caching involves temporarily storing data or file copies ( HTML pages, images, CSS files, JavaScript) locally so that returning site visitors don't need to redownload them every time. Browser caching involves storing user data on the browser, while server catching involves storing data on the server side.?
CDNs distribute a website's digital content to global servers, reducing user queries' wait time and latency. Every time a shopper accesses an online store's website, their requests are routed to the nearest CDN servers, with copies of the business's content, thus improving page load speeds. Popular CDNs with a global presence include Akamai (over 325,000 servers in 135 countries), Cloudflare (310 cities in 120 countries), and Amazon CloudFront.
HTTP requests eat up page loading times, contributing to slower sites and increasing user bounce rates. To minimize HTTP requests, minify Javascript, HTML, and CSS codes (remove unnecessary characters and white spaces), combine CSS and Javascript files, use CSS sprites and icon fonts, simplify web page designs, and optimize fonts (font display swapping, subsetting).
Mobile sites can drastically reduce page loading times by only displaying content above the fold. Lazy loading is a technique that delays loading certain website elements, particularly images and text until a user scrolls down the page and they become visible. By displaying content selectively, lazy loading reduces resource demand on a website, allowing it to load faster.
Streamlined checkout
According to Statista, a whopping 70.19% of global online shoppers abandoned their carts before completing their online purchases in 2023, with checkout issues being a major reason for this behavior.
So what can you do to improve your mobile checkout process?
Here are a few pointers.
Grow Your E-commerce Bottom Line by Optimizing for Mobile
Optimizing for mobile has the potential to grow an online brands revenue and customer base orgabically. As the client's demand for fast loading speeds, smooth checkouts, responsive designs, and crystal clear product descriptions increases, a business can turn these user needs to their advantage. By following the practical and actionable tips in this in-depth guide, you can now transform your m-commerce campaign into a steady and dependable client conversion machine, providing maximum benefits to users while growing your profits.