How Mobile Shoppers Are Changing eCommerce

Mobile shopping is not a fad. In fact, it is an irreversible tide of the digital marketplace. More and more consumers are turning to their phones, tablets and other mobile devices to buy goods and services online.

In fact, this statement is too general. Consumers aren’t just turning to their mobile devices to transact online. They’re using their phones to research products, read reviews, consume content and much more.

In addition, as people find themselves on the go for more and more of their time, they rely on mobile devices to use the internet overall, and that includes online shopping. Mobile devices like phones and tablets fill the niches that laptops and computers once filled. This has some real implications for eCommerce.

The Mobile Experience Is Integral to eCommerce

This is what it really all boils down to, without getting into any specifics. According to a BigCommerce blog by Nabeena Mali, almost 35% of all online sales occurred through a mobile device in 2017. That number is expected to total more than half of all online sales by 2021. Right now it’s 2020 – you do the math.

Consider that we mentioned that users are increasingly relying on their mobile devices – and not only to shop online. Consumers who research products, read reviews and more on their mobile devices, are all defining the way that business is conducted online. M-Commerce is becoming the new face of eCommerce.

Even without the hard numbers cited above, it’s clear that mobile eCommerce is defining eCommerce overall. More experiences and more transactions are occurring through mobile devices. So what can you do?

Prioritize Mobile User Experience and Interface

We’ve previously given you some insight into the importance of the user experience and interface that your online store offers visitors. If most of your visitors are coming from, or will soon be coming from mobile devices, you need to make your mobile experience a top priority.

Offering a mobile-friendly platform is important for many reasons. The first is that as of July 1st, 2019, Google began mobile-first indexing. For now, this is only for new sites, but going forward, Google will rank your site primarily on the mobile version of your site before it ranks the desktop version of your site.

It’s not all about the search engine, though. It really comes down to your visitors. Sometimes a desktop version of a website just does not translate well to a mobile device.

Smartphone Users Interact Differently with Your Website

A large reason that mobile shoppers are changing the eCommerce scene is the fact that they interact differently with your website. Customers have different expectations when accessing and interacting with the same website on different devices.

Mobile sites are plagued by issues that don’t affect their desktop versions quite exactly the same but let’s look at a problem they both face: speed. As we’ve stated previously, visitors to websites will wait just about two seconds for a page to load before bouncing. That doesn’t leave you with a lot of leeway. If there is a reason that your mobile website loads more slowly than the desktop version, don’t expect your mobile users to stick around. A web designer or web developer would be able to help you diagnose and remedy those problems.

But that’s only one way in which visitors to a mobile site will judge it by a different yardstick. Mobile users are more click-happy and scroll-happy than their counterparts on laptops and desktops, and that doesn’t even address the mix of media that will appear on the screen.

In short, mobile users expect to be able to scroll easily through your site to be able to find what they came for in the first place, with a minimum of typing. Some fields requiring type are acceptable, but generally, it’s best to offer a design that allows visitors to click through to what they came for. Therefore, if your mobile site design offers an easily navigable format whereby users can reach the extents of the site with a few clicks, you’re at least on the way to a successful responsive design.

There’s more to this picture, however. It’s important to keep in mind that a poor mix of media on your mobile site, which could include improperly sized images or font, can turn customers off. That won’t just hurt your customer experience – it can hurt customers’ impression of your business overall, which can have a negative impact on your conversion rate.

That’s because visitors to your site will judge the trustworthiness of your site by its design, and if your site is seen as outdated or otherwise disreputable, it will put a bad taste in the mouths of your visitors. Almost 80% of visitors to a mobile site that report a bad experience say they will not return. Slow load speeds aren’t the only thing that can improve your bounce rate – dated or discordant site design can be just as effective.

A Quality Mobile Shopping Experience Can Set Your Business Apart

Considering the rate at which m-commerce is growing and the number of sites that have yet to catch on, offering a responsive design that displays well on mobile devices is a great way to set your business apart and improve the value of your brand image.

Online sales are expected to break 4 trillion dollars in 2020, and m-commerce is expected to constitute half of that total. Creating a responsive design that will display well on smaller mobile screens and make it easy for visitors to find what they need is a necessity, not a suggestion. An eCommerce website that is optimized for the mobile experience is a great way to help prepare your business for the changes to the digital marketplace that remain, for now, unforeseen.

Therefore, it’s a matter of necessity, and not of mere suggestion, to ensure that your mobile online store offers the best user experience that it can. Here at 1Digital Agency, our specialty is creating web designs that not only drive success but are customer proven. We’ll take a look at your overall online presence and see it from a professional point of view as well as through a customer’s eyes. We can offer you design and development as well as a free SEO audit and SEO initiatives to get you better rankings and even higher conversion rates. We’ve been helping customers create sites that not only rank higher but are user-friendly for almost ten years. We’re ready. If you are, give us a call at 888-982-8269 or contact us at info@1digitalagency.com.