Next time you are in a crowded environment, take a look around and no doubt you will notice that most people will have their heads buried in their phones. It’s so common now, that it should come as no surprise that mobile traffic is starting to overtake desktop traffic on most ecommerce websites. Indeed, smartphone visits to U.S. websites are up 89.4% since January 2015, while tablet and desktop visits both decreased by 30% and 16.6% respectively.
While these numbers are eye-opening, mobile hasn’t taken over just yet. While desktop traffic might be falling overall, when it comes to revenue, desktop has lead the way for years. Currently, mobile users account for 32% of traffic, yet they only bring in 16% of revenue on the majority of ecommerce websites. A smaller screen size not only drives less in sales, but the average order value tends to be smaller as well.
It's clear that if businesses don't figure out how to improve conversion rates on mobile devices, they stand to lose huge amounts of potential revenue as more of their traffic shifts their browsing to mobile.
To help you improve your website's mobile experience and increase your mobile conversion rate, we've put together the following steps to get you there:
Step #1: Make your images and text larger (yes, really!)
There is no getting around it, regardless of how big screens get on mobile devices, they will not match those on desktops. To most businesses, this means sacrificing content quality i.e. reducing the image and copy size to fit everything in place.
Yet on surveys, consumers highlight difficulty viewing imagery and reading copy as a top reason why they don't shop on a mobile device.
So instead of reducing the quality of your content our recommendation is for you and your team to review your websites purchase funnel and determine what elements your users can actually do without. The best way to figure out what elements should be retained and what could be abandoned is through multivariate testing which determines which combination of variations performs the best out of all of the possible options.
Once you have removed the unnecessary noise, you will be surprised how much additional space is available on key pages to increase product imagery and copy size.
Step #2: Design for fingers, not mouses
One of the biggest mistakes made during a website build is assuming that users will be navigating it with a mouse pointer. With this mindset, elements such as links in corners of the page and the placement of navigation buttons too close together are common occurrences that lead to user frustration and high abandonment rates, especially during the checkout process.
To combat this, ensure all elements are properly spaced apart so that users can engage with them without having to pinch and zoom. On high engagement sections of the funnel, such as the checkout process, it's best to break up the fields into sections and display only a number of fields at a time.
Step #3: Straightforward browsing experience
Unlike desktop users, mobile shoppers have a higher probability of being interrupted or distracted while shopping online. Due to this, the average mobile session duration tends to be shorter while bounce and exit rates are higher.
When it comes to your own site, this makes it crucial that you ensure you are building a straight-to-the-point browsing experience. But what does that mean, exactly? In a nutshell you need to state the exact information that is needed to encourage your visitors to convert. Whether that's what the product or service is, the costs associated with it or even what your latest sale dates are – having this information front-and-center for your busy mobile visitors will be sure to drive higher conversions.
While you may feel you know your website better than anyone, this can often make it difficult to see where your customer's frustration points are while navigating your website. A simple solution is to look outside of the box; ask colleagues in a different department, friends or even family members who don't look at your company's site often what issues they found when navigating through the website. It's no surprise that the feedback you receive will be invaluable in helping to better optimize your user's browsing experience.
With more and more people relying on their handheld devices to navigate, it's time to start ensuring your site is optimized or risk missing out on the potential revenue. While these recommended changes will take time and resource to implement, the payoff for the improved user experience on your site will bring in even greater results.
