How do your customers browse your site? Research shows that 60% of visitors’ access websites on their mobiles rather than a laptop or PC. Smart brands and retailers have prepared for this change by creating dedicated shopping apps or responsive designs optimised for mobile and tablet screens.
Despite this, an analysis by ContentSquare of around 300 million mobile site sessions revealed that only 1.5% of these visits are actually converting into sales. So how do you turn a browser into a buyer? Here are 4 essential tips for improving conversions for mobile customers:
- Streamline the customer journey
Just like stripping away elements of your main website to make it more mobile-friendly, you need to do the same with the customer journey. It’s vital with mobile customers to reduce the complication involved in interacting with a website or making a purchase. Reduce unnecessary steps and the number of taps involved to access information or take action.
- Make purchasing easy – investigate one touch, secure purchasing
ContentSquare researchers also found that mobile users are four times less likely to log into their customer account than those using laptops. This is often because passwords aren’t always saved by mobile browsers, or saved across all devices, creating a frustrating experience for the customer. Compared to just 10% of laptop users, 16% of mobile customers abandon account creation because the mobile experience is frustrating.
To overcome these barriers, retailers need to seriously investigate whether they can implement secure, one-touch purchasing. For the time being, allowing customers to use guest checkout is far preferable to making them fill in a long form.
- Use your analytics data
If your conversion rate for mobile customers is low, UX analytics data can give you some important clues as to what’s going on. For example:
- The number of taps on a button can suggest a slow mobile site
- Pages or stages in the purchasing process where customers abandon the purchase
- Visitors leaving immediately – suggesting slow loading, a lack of credibility or a page that doesn’t meet their expectations.
Product Manager Alec Berry explained to SaleCycle:
“You need to understand where they are leaving your site and what the reasons are. You can specifically isolate smartphone visitors in analytics, building segments according to visitor device type, to understand where in the funnel they make it to, looking at specific pages to understand where they drop out. This helps you to identify where the problems are so you can fix them.”
- Look to your competitors
How has a rival brand managed to solve a particular problem you’ve been having? If you can identify areas for improvement on your site, the next step is to research possible solutions to see what would work for you and your customers. It might even be that a competitor’s site is presenting information or products in a completely different way, which can be fantastic inspiration if you’re considering a redesign with mobile customers in mind.
If you need further advice on optimising your website for mobile or improving conversions for customers on all devices, get in touch with our expert team here at Ambos Digital.
