Taking a closer look at their customer’s preferred way of shopping, many online retailers have started to rethink their strategy. There are starting to remake themselves (eCommerce) to be mobile first and here are the reasons why.
For most consumers, shopping on their smart phones is a convenient way to buy what they need. This is the reason there’s has been a recent upsurge in mobile commerce sales. According to Statista—an online statistics, market research, and business intelligence portal, mobile commerce made up 34.5% of all eCommerce sales in 2017 and this number is expected to increase to almost 54% by 2021. Clearly, mobile commerce will dominate online sales in the future and the best time to think about your eCommerce strategy is now.
Why A Mobile-First Strategy is Important for Your Ecommerce Business
The eCommerce landscape has changed considerably since the proliferation of smart phones. More and more eCommerce businesses today are adopting a mobile-first strategy and there’s good reason for it. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), more than two billion people access the web using their phones. Moreover, 25% of the U.S web users mostly access the internet using their smart phone.
70% of the U.S population is with smart phone and over 90% of them use it for get information they seek. However, the most revealing stat is that almost 80% of the smart phone users in the U.S use their phones to make online purchases. In fact, most of them rely on their phones to make a decision when shopping for clothing/ accessories or planning for a night out.
Considering the above, it only makes sense for ecommerce businesses in the U.S and across the globe to have a mobile-first approach.
How a Mobile-First Approach Can Help You Improve User/ Customer Experience
A mobile-first strategy for eCommerce is basically designing the user experience of your eCommerce website to cater for smaller screens first and then thinking about optimizing it for desktops and laptops rather than the other way around. Ask any eCommerce consumer what the most important thing to them when shopping online for a product and they’re likely to answer user experience.
Yes, you can entice customers with promotional offers and other marketing tactics but if they find making a transaction on your site difficult or inconvenient, they won’t be sticking around for long. This is the reason your eCommerce site needs to be optimized for all devices that your customers may use to access your website.
Considering that more and more ecommerce consumers today are using their smart phone to make purchases online, it is essential for you to optimize your ecommerce site for mobile usage.
Today, the ways in which consumers browse and complete purchases on ecommerce site are becoming more seamless and slick. Moreover, there are many ways for shoppers to connect with your brand or any other ecommerce business they’re interested in. To build customer loyalty, you need to provide your customers with a superior customer experience both in-store and online. How can you ensure the latter? You can ensure it by providing a seamless user experience to mobile users who may access your ecommerce site using their smart phones.
While your desktop presence is still relevant, it is your mobile presence that will get you noticed and win new customers. Vital to the health and growth of your business, ensuring your ecommerce platform is mobile responsive will make your ecommerce site accessible and easy to navigate on any mobile device.
Now, the next question is how do you make your ecommerce site mobile responsive? You do this by ensuring that your website can adapt to any screen or device while maintaining optimal user experience. However, make it very clear that mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive is not the same thing.
Today, having a mobile-friendly ecommerce site is not enough to keep smart phone shoppers satisfied. You need to elevate your design so that it is easy to read and pleasant to use of smart phones and other mobile devices such as tablets. Simply resizing your display no longer works. In fact, zooming in and out of your current website layout may make it difficult for users to navigate it on their mobile device.
What you need to do is get your web designer to incorporate automatic adjustments to how text, photos, and media are presented to ensure easy, seamless interactions on your site.Most mobile users are less concerned about the design of your site and more concerned about ease of interaction and navigation.
When they visit your site, they have an objective and they won’t take long to leave if you make it difficult for them to achieve that objective. Whether it is browsing your ecommerce store or making a purchase, users want to process to be as easy as the click of a mouse. To help your users achieve their objective, ensure that your website loads quickly on all devices, can easily and almost instantly switch form page-to-page and product-to-product, and make it extremely easy to make a purchase.
If you ensure the above, then your eCommerce site optimized for mobile usage can provide you with a plethora of benefits, with increased sales and profitability being on top of that list.
Final Word
There should be no doubt that mobile commerce is the future of online sales. If you want to progress and grown as an online retailer, then you must adopt a mobile-first approach, which means having a mobile responsive ecommerce site. This is a site which makes it easy for mobile users to browse items and make a purchase online. For more information on how you can remake your ecommerce site to be mobile-first, get in touch with us today!
by Bobby J Davidson
We love our company and we love what we do. Check out the ‘Why Percento‘ page to learn more: Love of Technology and Business! As the President of Percento Technologies International, I provide day-to-day leadership to the company’s senior management and I am personally involved in the strategy, business development and sales activities of the firm.
The company was founded in 1999 with the purpose of providing a one call source for organizations in need of Enterprise IT Consulting and Management. We also provide a line of products in the boutique Cloud Server space with a touch of high-end website strategy consulting and design services. We personalizes the IT Service experience with a team approach, working with clients from diverse sectors of industry, including energy services, financial, legal, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, retail and general and/or corporate business.
Our Mission: “Creating innovative IT solutions for business leaders worldwide through cutting edge technologies.”
Contact me today to discuss how our great team can assist: 1 800 614 7886 or our Contact Form.