7 Ways to Optimize Mobile eCommerce Experience for Your Magento Store
An average person spends 3 hours and 10 minutes on their mobile device. That is precisely the time any eCommerce business gets to interact with their consumers, which is way more than any brick-and-mortar store would ever get. That is one big opportunity at hand that businesses let slip through their fingers.
A study says that the mobile eCommerce business has the highest shopping cart abandonment rate, i.e., 85.65%– Barilliance
Although your eCommerce development efforts are optimized for the desktop version, the same is not always valid for mobile commerce, which is “a retail outlet in your customer’s pocket.”
Thus, optimizing for eCommerce is not enough! The thing is, mCommerce is a progression to eCommerce that needs to be perfected too, like what Catbird did.
Catbird, a custom jewelry on-demand Magento commerce platform, built a custom mobile Commerce solution that was entirely independent of their desktop store. They optimized it for mobile to offer a seamless experience. And guess what? Their mobile conversions took a complete upsurge with amazing results.
You could achieve those conversions too, and the thing is that it is no longer an option. The need is to think differently and adapt your business according to the changing dynamics, or you’ll be left with FOMO down the line.
Why Optimize for Mobile eCommerceWhat the Stats Say Change is part of life, and this stands true, especially for mobile commerce businesses that want to become an active part of consumers’ lives. If a mobile device is becoming the primary source of usage for your consumers, so be it. The attitude should be to take the challenge and make every opportunity count for your Magento eCommerce store.
So, the right question is; Why not optimize for mobile commerce?
These stats indicate the benefits of mobile commerce and how can mobile-oriented strategy prove to be a turning point for your business. So, to start with, what do you think, is your Magento platform mCommerce friendly? Let’s find out.
Is your Mobile eCommerce Website Mobile-Friendly? No matter how many self-run tests your back-end team executes, you’ll never know what your consumers have to say about the mobile user experience. That is a piece of job that you need to do on your own. On the brighter side, Google has stepped in to help you find your mobile eCommerce friendliness score. Their tool helps find how easily a visitor can access a mobile page. Here’s a mobile-test demo of a Magento eCommerce platform widely known as Konga. We helped them build a native eCommerce mobile experience across iOS and Android devices.
All you need to do is run this test and see what your mCommerce mobile-friendly results say. And, remember that even if it is all well, there is always room for improvement. Google also attaches a page loading issues report along with the results to help you maneuver through the bugs that exist. Next, you can simply ask Magento developers to work on the shortcomings to cover up the gap. However, to help you elevate mobile commerce growth, here are some optimization tricks that could do wonders for your business.
How to Optimize your mCommerce Platform? Optimizing your Magento eCommerce platform for mobile is the need of the hour if you do not want to miss out on achieving the product-market fit, i.e., where customers themselves become your marketers. So, here are some simple tactics to keep up with the competition like a pro.
1. A Powerful Website Design that Adds to the Wow Factor The desktop homepage is all about promotional content and welcome banners, but the same cannot be said for the mobile commerce platform. The need is to stick to the point by letting users find what they are looking for. If you are running your store on Magento Commerce, you need not worry much about the website design as its Magento 2 upgrade supports numerous extensions to help ease the process. On the other hand, if your store is running on the open-source version, there is a need to hire a professional mobile web designer who can help you experiment with the latest UX design trends.
However, the standard practice is to dominate the calls-to-action on the screen, keep the menus short yet visible, creating a seamless back and forth navigation, and minimize the promotional content.
2. User-Friendly and Intuitive Navigation Lets’ say you are in a new city you do not have much idea about and are driving for a conference scheduled at two. It should take you around twenty minutes to reach there, but it takes over one hour due to confusing directions. How would you feel? Quite frustrated and disappointed, isn’t it?
That is the same scenario that happens with visitors who are trying to find their way across the mobile commerce platform if the navigation is not taken care of. That is why the need is to mend the broken links and support a delightful customer journey map across the mobile website. Three aspects need to be in place, i.e., Find, Access, and Click. The more you work on these elements, the more the chances of conversions.
3. Website Loading Time Should Not be Given a Miss It still takes around 15 seconds for a mobile landing page to load entirely according to an analysis by Google. This average speed index provides a clear picture of the time it takes for a mobile page to load completely. This index is with respect to various industries across the United States.
These 6.3 seconds for the retail industry makes achieving the conversion target quite a long shot. So the best strategy is to compress the images and text as it can alone turn the events in your favor. Other user experience design practices to speed up loading times include; using a flat design approach, implementing the caching plugin, and then converting the pages into AMP format for the mobile commerce pages that are loaded with substantial content.
The purpose is simple; do not let your mobile visitors take a u-turn no matter what.
4. Intuitive and Fast Checkout Process If a visitor adds a product to the cart, he is likely to make a purchase, at least he intends to. But, sometimes, cart abandonments happen because the checkout process is not that intuitive. Sometimes there may be instances where the checkout process is broken or unresponsive, and the other times it might be just a long and tiring process. In either case, your mobile eCommerce business is at a loss. To counteract the issue, the need is to think with the perspective of the mobile-first approach.
The first step should be to take the initiative to restrict the checkout process to 4-5 steps, design buttons that are visible and bold, and maintaining minimal input fields so that typing efforts can be reduced on the mobile device.
5. Graphics Should be Optimized Well Visual delight is the key to attracting new customers as it increases the attention span of an average user. Agreed! But, what about these elements slowing down the mobile page load speed. Choosing between the two can be a daunting task altogether. It is like saving one friend while the other drowns away. You need to realize that more the images and other elements on the page, the fewer the conversions. So, the question is – How to make it a best of the two worlds scenario? First of all, check your page speed using Google’s “Page Speed Insights” tool. This will score your Magento platform from 1-100 based on how well it loads along with suggestions on how to make things better. Other simple tricks that can be incorporated, include- restricting the number of images on the page, compressing the images and graphics, saving the images in JPEG format, and sticking to a minimalistic design.
6. Bid Adieu to Distractive Pop-Ups & Ads The interface of the mobile eCommerce platform supports a limited space, unlike a desktop web page. This means that you can afford to experiment with the desktop web page and present users with landing page offers and ads. On the other hand, you need to keep it simple and stick to the intent of letting the users effortlessly place orders in case of a mobile device. Even if you think otherwise, Google suggests you stop right there as the search engine is less likely to rank you higher in the search results. Their crawlers are tracking down such bad user experiences to outrank your mobile impressions. The better idea could be to try push notifications or try sending targeted emails across the network. Where your desktop website already holds space and bandwidth to support pop-ups and ads, the mobile experience should be spared from such distractions.
In the case of mobile commerce, less is always a smarter idea.
7. Content Needs to be Placed Evenly A website that loads similarly on desktop and mobile would count for a hay-wired scenario. Although the content is the same, how it loads on different screen sizes is a different story altogether. Suppose that you receive a letter from a friend, and the page is torn off from one of the corners. You’ll only waste your time trying to figure out the missing words. The same is the case with your mCommerce platform if left unattended. To tackle the situation at hand, act like a customer for a day. Open the mobile eCommerce website to check where the user experience has been given a miss. Do not leave it for tomorrow. Whether it is the cut-off content, the extra white spaces, overall spacing, or the content font size and distribution, everything should be considered. Next, talk to Magento development partners to help you optimize your mobile web visibility. They can help you with the best of standard practices that are doing the rounds in the market.
Tips to Enhance your Magento Mobile Commerce Journey Magento is a great eCommerce platform that powers over 168,000 e-retail websites presently. The ability to optimize and present brands in the best way possible has made it a leader in 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce Platforms.
Magento understands the need for Mobile Optimization, and that is why they went ahead with establishing the “Mobile Optimization Initiative� to equate for a seamless shopping experience. Here are some mobile commerce trends that can help you align your strategy towards better conversions.
1. Enabling PayPal Payment Methods Paypal Express Checkout and Paypal Credit on your Magento store can make a significant difference when it comes to checkout optimization. Both the revenue and conversions will witness an uplift if you choose to install PayPal. To give you a ballpark figure, the RPV is expected to lift by 8.72%.
2. Display Cart Value Beforehand By just displaying cart value in the page header beside the cart icon, positive response is expected. The logic is that your mobile eCommerce platform is eliminating the surprise factor by keeping things transparent. Also, the RPV (Revenue Per Visit) can increase by 4.13%, which is a great percentage hike for an eCommerce business.
3. Exclude Chatbots from Checkouts Try and exclude the chatbot pop-ups from the cart and checkout pages alike as they are likely to invoke distractions. By doing so, the RPV is expected to grow by 15.22%.
4. Do Not Remove Breadcrumbs By suppressing the product name breadcrumbs, a significant improvement in mobile eCommerce website design was expected. But, the opposite proved to be true as removing them reduced the RPV by 7.09%. The simple logic is that the consumers like the breadcrumbs, and they should be kept.
5. Collapse “Coupon Code” Field Collapsing the coupon code field will help utilize the most of the mobile screen space available. By providing a maximize & minimize field option, the screen seems less cluttered while maintaining a natural flow of the checkout process. And, the RPV sees an upsurge of over 1.46%.
Conclusion Consumers are spending a part of their day’s time on their mobile devices, but merchants find it challenging to set a clear vision for making the mobile experience count. While in the dilemma for what optimization strategy to choose, the need is to act immediately and put your best foot forward towards achieving exceptional ROIs. Optimizing your mobile eCommerce store is made easy with Magento, thus eliminating additional efforts on your part. Therefore, it’s a good practice to maintain a balance between your DIY tricks and trusting Magento development partners. Only then will you be able to make a difference that would be a result of your mindset of accepting the challenge to create a powerful mobile experience. Source - https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/magento-mobile-ecommerce-optimization/