Over the years, mobile shopping has become essential for consumers, as they have been progressively using it for research as well as discovery. Businesses are now striving to have a potent mobile presence.
Customers using mobile have a tendency to seek sites that have quick speed and effortless usability. In order to achieve this, it’s essential to consider the context and requirements of the customers. In this article, we will help you to know the factors that make up an amazing user-friendly mobile site.
1. Enhancing Homepage and Navigation on Mobile Website
Homepage page of any e-commerce website is crucial as it is the very first thing that the customer encounters. That is why it becomes important to have a versatile mobile homepage that is information focused and easily navigable so that the customers don’t have to meander around and reach their desired page instantly.
- Call-To-Action Front and Center
It is essential to keep the calls-to-action at key places so that maximum customers are able to notice it because often, customers using mobile tend to pay less attention to menu items. Also when the calls-to-action are available on the central page, customers are able to finish their tasks quickly.
- Keep Menus Short and Simple
Over desktop, you have the luxury to incorporate comprehensive menu but a mobile has limited space and customers would want to spend the least amount of time looking for their desired options. Thus, ensure to have fewer amounts of menu options as possible. It’s important on mobile to filter the product categories menu so that customers easily navigate through the site and reach on the page they are seeking in the shortest amount of time.
- Make It Easy to Get Back to Homepage
If the mobile site is easy to navigate right from the homepage to the point of check-out, customers will be bound to come back to it again and again. You can use the logo of your business at the page top to take the customers back to the homepage. This method is widely used and is one of the easiest ways to move through a site.
- Don’t Let the Promotions Steal the Show
Often it has been observed that displayed ads and promotions distract the customer attention and the content will end up getting neglected. When this happens, the customers generally lose interest and switch to another site with lesser ads and promotions. It’s highly advisable to keep a separation between calls-to-action and promotions. It is important to keep the attention of the customers on the content as well as the navigational buttons on the site so that they are aware of the products and services that you have to offer.
2. Ensure Speed and Relevance in Site Search
Speedy site search is essential for any mobile site to have because when the customers don’t have much time, they visit the sites where they get their work done quickly. Here are the tips through which you can enhance the value of your site’s search.
- Make Site Search Visible
The site search box should be the very first component visible on your site because it is the first thing users seek while they are in a hurry. It helps them to find their desired product in a short amount of time. Ensure to have a promptly visible and open text search boxes at the top of your site page as it tends to draw more customers.
- Ensure Site Search Results are Relevant
Once the customers have typed in the name of the product in the search box, the results that will appear play an important role in maintaining the customer retention. If the results are irrelevant, they will right away switch to another website and will not go through pages after pages to reach the desired result. Thus, it’s vital to ensure the search results that appear on the first page ought to be relevant. You can also attract the customers by using smart-search innovations such as autocomplete and autocorrect.
- Implement Filters to Improve Site Search Usability
Filters are one of the best ways through which customers can easily compress the size of their search results so that they are able to get their desired product without wasting any time. Using filters have also resulted in lesser cases of cart abandonment. But it is important to have the filters that rightly fit into the categories that are present on your site.
- Guide for Better Search Results
If your website has various categories for customers, you can ask the customers a couple of questions regarding their search so that they can arrive at the desirable and relevant results. Thus, narrowing down the product categories with the help of basic questions can be beneficial in providing the correct results.
3. Conversion Rate Optimization
With innovative and new methods coming up every day, the shopping process is constantly evolving. Customers now want to pave their own ways of making purchases and the following points will tell you about the tips through which you can get more conversions by keeping the customer at the forefront.
- Let Users Explore Before They Commit
If you are thinking to keep the registration pages in the very initial stage of your site, keep in mind that it will not always be beneficial. It has been proved by studies that customers generally become annoyed and abandon the site if they are asked for registration right after a few pages in order to move ahead. It is advisable to first let the customers go through the content and offerings on the site. You should then ask for the details so that they are able to make an informed decision and not a hasty one.
- Let Users Shop as Guest
It has been noted that despite wanting to shop from a particular site, customers do not want to create an account on the site. Either they don’t have enough time or they are simply not interested in creating one. In such instances, you should provide the option of guest checkout because it is immensely accessible, speedy and easy to use. If the customer doesn’t have time to create an account and your site is not having the guest check out option, then be prepared to face site abandonment unless you are offering registration with certain benefits.
- Use Existing Information to Maximize Convenience
It is important to remember and keep the pre-fill option available for customers who are registered so that they can instantly make purchases without having to fill all the information again. Users who are or new on your site can be provided with the third-party checkout service which is a time-saving method. Various contemporary sites do provide the third-party payment service that makes the conversion swift.
- Use Click-To- Call Buttons For Complex Tasks
There are places on the site that need sensitive information. You can provide click-to-call buttons at such junctures. Customers feel more secure by having the assistance of financial services company in executing complex procedure over the phone instead of completing those tasks by themselves on their smartphones. By providing a prominent click-to-call button on the site, you can retain the customers instead of facing their backs.
- Make it Easy to Finish Converting on Other Device
It is important to keep in mind that customers are not always comfortable while shopping through their smartphones. That is why it is important to provide a swift method through which they can either save their information or share it on another device so that when they are going to make purchases from the other device, they reach the checkout page without having to type in the information all over again. It is often possible that customers visiting the site through mobile might come back again to convert but with another device. So be prepared to provide the option so that customers can resume their shopping from other devices.
4. Streamlined Form Entry
You ought to strive to make the customer’s conversion experience immensely swift and quick be it while doing shopping, receiving a quote, joining an email list or anything other function. Here are the tips that can help you to find out ways through which you can enhance the user experience.
- Smooth Information Entry
It is observed that customers like it when they are provided with number pads by the sites while putting in values such as zip codes, phone numbers or birth dates. Furthermore, forms that are automatically advanced through boxes the customers just filled also make the process a lot quicker. Otherwise, when the customers have to type in such information, every time they have to switch the keyboard of their smartphone from alphabets to the numeric mode which ends up annoying them a lot.
- Choose the Simplest Input Method for Each Task
Customers find it easy to do shopping when the company provides them the simplest input method for every task. For instance, Google and AnswerLab found out that those participants with limited options found it easier tap a large toggle icon instead of clicking a dropdown or typing in the words. That is why it is advisable to select the easiest input method for an action and ensure the tap targets are large and easily identifiable.
- Provide a Visual Calendar With Selecting Dates
Customers already have a lot on their minds and it’s possible that they might not remember the precise dates. That is why it is advisable to provide a visual calendar when selecting dates that customers can check the date on your site instead of opening their own calendar available on the phone. It will save a lot of time and distractions.
- Minimize your Errors with Labeling and Real Time Validation
It’s essential to label the forms available on the site distinctly and ensure that the labels are displaying to the customers while they are typing in the important information. It will not do for a customer to type their name in the email box and address in some other label. By leaving customers without the right guidance, you can end up doing a lot of harm to your business. Also, in order to prevent having a wrong submission, make sure that after the information is typed in the by the customer, it is cross-checked for any possible mistakes in real time.
- Design Efficient Forms
It is vital to ensure that the forms available on your site do not have any sort of repeated action. They must have only the fields that are important. Also, make the most out of the auto fill and autocorrect options order to promote efficiency.
5. Usability and Form Factor
There are various methods through which you can boost the user experience on mobile and always surprise them. Here are the tips that can help you to design your entire site according to the requirements of mobile as well as the users.
- Mobile Friendly/Responsive Design
With the passage of every year, the usage of the smartphone to surf the internet, send emails and even make purchases has been increasing at a high speed. That is why it becomes essential for an ecommerce company to focus on becoming as much mobile-friendly as possible. Customers take much lesser time to navigating through a mobile-optimized site than trying to make purchases as compared to using a desktop site on mobile devices.
- Don’t Make Users Pinch to Zoom
Often, customers find it too distracting when to look closely at a product image, they require zooming in or out. This also leads to missing out the crucial messages provided on the site and calls-to-action. It’s important to make the layout of the mobile site in such a way that customers don’t have to bother it to change the image size.
- High Quаlitу Imаgеѕ
When you display the items on your website from various angles, it becomes easy for the customer to decide whether to buy it or not. You must have large, high-quality imаgеѕ that аrе орtimizеd to lоаd fаѕt on thе wеbѕitе. Among the image fоrmаtѕ, you can use JPEG аnd PNG for your product images.
- Tell Users Which Screen Orientation Works Best
It is important to inform the users about the right screen orientation otherwise they will keep using the site in the same screen orientation which can end up in poor customer experience. Some sites work best in landscape mode while others work in portrait mode. Videos are mostly watched in the former and the written content in the latter. You can provide the suggestion to users to switch to the right screen orientation for a better experience.
- Keep Your User In a Single Browser Window
Customers find it quite distracting on a mobile to jump from one window to another. It often leads to loss of interest as customers are not able to reach back the website by some or the other reasons. In order to ensure that the customers stay on a single window, prevent using calls-to-action that end up launching new windows.
- Avoid “Full site” Labeling
In a study done by Google and AnswerLab, participants came across an option for “full site” vs “mobile site,” where thinking of the mobile site as condensed, they selected the full site. There was a particular participant who chose the desktop site because he believed it possessed “so much more information” despite the fact that both mobile and desktop sites shared equal content. The point is that by using terminologies such as “desktop” rather than “full” can assist in preventing customers to think this way.
- Be Clear Why You Need A User’s Location
It is important for the users to know the reason you are enquiring about their location for. Remember to not automatically fill the location box and keep it blank. It is advisable to let the customers write their desired address.
6. Technical Checklist
It is important to have a commendable design in a mobile site but that is not all. Along with optimal design, it is crucial to have the correct technical expertise. Here are a few tips to avoid that you can employ to prevent mistakes.
- Ensure that your mobile advertisements are configured to transport the customers to the mobile site. If the configuration has errors, then your ads might even take the customer to the desktop site.
- Ensure that the content of your site page loads in a logical order so that customers are not confused or distracted by seeing the content at first glance.
- Minimize downloads to make sure that the customers receive a seamless experience. This can be achieved by consolidating and preloading the mobile web content for larger but some downloads.
- It is important to test the site on a range of devices because it is only by testing you will be entirely sure of the maximum performance of the sire.
- Make the most use out of analytics and conversion tracking on your mobile site so that you have an updated track of mobile conversion along with your desktop conversions.
As mobile phones are being widely used, the reliability of customers is progressively depending more and more on the mobile commerce. Be it, while researching, surfing or while making purchases. That is why ecommerce businesses are increasingly focusing their marketing strategies towards mobile so that they can tap into this vast customer base and have an effective mobile presence.