Success Is In the Palm of (Their) Hands: Mobile Commerce Becomes Essential

As mobile devices continue to proliferate and evolve in the market, businesses with thorough, fast, and agile mobile-friendly services are in the position to gain a huge competitive advantage. That’s because…

Most mobile commerce users aren’t happy with their current shopping experience.

Current Mobile Shopping Experience

Mobile users, according to a recent study by comScore, expect pages to load in a maximum of four seconds, while the median score for the top 100 mobile commerce sites (sites that have an m. prefix) was 4.33 seconds. An even wider discrepancy was found in the performance of full sites (sites that don’t have an m. prefix) on mobile devices, with a median load time of 7.84 seconds. These delays in page load times vs. user expectation have a significant impact on sales conversions: the mobile shopping cart abandonment rate is 39% higher for mobile than desktop, yielding a total of only 3% overall. Even worse for mobile commerce sites is that 3 in 10 users who have a negative shopping experience on a site never return to that site. In order to take advantage of mobile platforms, businesses must ensure that their pages load quickly across the spectrum of mobile internet browsers. However, while a fast page is essential, it may not be sufficient, because…

Mobile users increasingly expect a consistent web experience across multiple platforms.

Mobile Shopping Expectations

In December 2013, 57% of online shoppers accessed a retailer’s website from both a mobile and desktop device, which is a 4% increase from what was observed in July 2013. While multiplatform users may not expect identical experiences on different devices, businesses that don’t emphasize brand consistency and equivalent usability across multiple web platforms will risk alienating customers from their mobile sites and jeopardize a customer’s desire to remain loyal. Using advanced Google Analytics to understand how visitors use a site is critical to designing a site that anticipates customer desires. Additionally, a mobile site should almost never be a carbon copy of a desktop site, but it should be user-friendly without denying visitors a robust experience.

Interpreting mobile usage creates a nuanced picture of overall web usage. Data show that 63% of U.S. consumers own a smartphone, while 35% own a tablet, with tablet owners representing higher income brackets, favoring a more laid-back shopping experience. This makes having a responsive web presence and the ability to detect a user’s device extremely important. As stated above, your business’s website should never attempt to look the same across devices because web visitors use devices differently and for different purposes.

It’s important to note that mobile sites aren’t a cure-all for mobile ills, since 35% of mobile users will still opt to view the business’s full site when given a chance. Furthermore, the full site visitors tend to outspend mobile site visitors $5.50 to $1.00.

The good news is that there are ways to speed up load times, even with mobile latency notorious for its inconsistency. Smaller mobile pages, around 1 MB, are much more likely to meet user expectations regarding load times and consolidated page resources limit the number of server requests, which makes sites less vulnerable to mobile latency.

A mobile web presence is important for all businesses because mobile commerce is growing far too big to ignore. While mobile commerce accounts for 16% of all ecommerce right now, it’s expected to grow to 26% in 2017, or roughly $113 billion. Don’t let your business fall behind one of the most dominant commerce trends of our time.

Contact Media Genesis for help with your mobile web presence.