Tips for IncreasingMobile

Commerce Sales

With the continued growth of the handheld device

market, mobile commerce continues its rapid rise.

Many millennials use their smartphones as their

primary internet connection, and mobile internet

traffic actually surpassed desktop traffic in 2015.

This increase is traffic has also led to a rapid

increase in mobile sales. A recent BI Intelligence

report states that mobile commerce will represent

a $79 billion market in 2016, and will make up 45%

of all eCommerce by 2020.

The mobile market is clearly growing by leaps and

bounds. With over half of all internet traffic coming

from mobile devices, what are some of the tips for

maximizing mobile commerce opportunities?

Mobile Apps Are Not Always Necessary

Many retailers feel that they always need a

mobile app to maximize mobile sales. That simply

is not true. Today’s mobile devices and browsers

have advanced to the point where they can

handle most of the functions of the top mobile

applications. For example, with the right

equipment, location information can now be

captured through a browser. A mobile app is only

needed if the incremental spend is justified by a

business case.

The key is to treat your website like a product with

mobile as a feature. You should dedicate

programming resources to it and update it

frequently to continually improve commerce

opportunities. It is also very important to review

your website periodically for errors and bugs.

These would ideally be caught before production,

but website owners often focus on adding new

functionality to their sites, but never clean them up.

Websites can easily get bloated this way.

SizeMatters

Mobile connections are typically not as fast as

wired desktop connections. Therefore, if a website

becomes very large and there is no alternative

mobile version, you run the risk of losing mobile

traffic. It’s great to have a feature-rich desktop

version of the site, but it is important to turn some

of these features off on the mobile site. You don’t

want to block or delay customers from the main

call to action which is to buy your products.

Navigation Is Key

Navigation is one of the biggest challenges in

mobile website design because there are so many

different products and so little room to properly

display them. Navigation control and design is one

of the main reasons many of the largest retailers

develop mobile apps.

When you build a website, there are ways to

enable and disable features on mobile devices

based on what’s called a “user agent”. This

technology can tell what type of device and

browser you are using, and then the web

application tunes certain site features to make the

user experience more appealing.

For example, let’s say your desktop website has a

fairly complex “megamenu” – a menu that presents

sub-menus when the user rolls over specific words

or icons. This feature is not going to work on a

mobile device. If you have this feature, you will

need to ensure an alternative mobile navigation

gets people to where they need to go while still

preserving some level of interactivity.

Also, many retail websites provide cross-selling

opportunities on certain product pages. This works

well on a desktop browser, but screen real estate is

limited on mobile devices. Let people focus on each

product and give them the ability to add to cart

easily if they choose. Your customers will

appreciate not having to scroll through all of this

extra information, as well as the faster, uncluttered

mobile experience.

Whether this is their first foray into ecommerce or

they are considering a retail website redesign,

most small and mid-sized retailers should build

their websites with mobile first in mind. Mobile

technology is the present and the future of

e-commerce. More and more consumers are

choosing to do their online shopping away from

their desks, and the mobile commerce market will

doubtlessly continue its rapid growth. Building a

feature-rich, yet lean mobile commerce experience

is a wonderful starting point for a desktop website.