Shopping Cart Software Solutions

Coupons Are Why You Need to Embrace Mobile e-Commerce

expedia coupon codes - mobile ecommerce

A Muscle Food Coupon Code Example:

Last year, 38% of buyers made their holiday purchases from smartphones or tablets, and projections so far for this year push that number over 50%. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on the lion’s share of buyers.

A Quick Case Study: Muscle Food Coupon Alerts

MuscleFood.com recently started offering a Muscle Food flash sale text alert here: free delivery deal. This alert would let you know about price drops for your favorite products. The result? A huge conversion rate that further cemented Muscle Food as the king of online healthy food delivery.

If your site scales properly, is mobile optimization really necessary?

Just because your smartphone does a good job of displaying non-mobile sites doesn’t mean it’s “good enough”. Many sites use mouse hover-based navigation to reveal categories or other site features, and they don’t always translate to touches on other devices. Remember, buyers aren’t looking at your site with the love and appreciation for it that you have as the owner – they’re only there to buy a product.

What are the differences between mobile and desktop users?

In general, you have the “full attention” of a desktop visitor. They’re at their desk, focused on their PC, and intended to seek out exactly what they’re looking at. The mobile visitor has a shorter attention span – they’re either researching something from their phone, where they’re more likely to be distracted or working from a tablet while doing other things like watching TV or making dinner. It’s your job to get to the point quickly, give them the information they need to make a decision without being too wordy, and sell them the product they came for. The tolerance is lower; if your site isn’t mobile friendly, they’re more likely to leave and buy from a different site that is.

What should I be doing differently on my mobile site?

Small text keeps the reader focused on a desktop site, but on a mobile site, it’s your enemy. Use large, bold fonts to highlight the most important points, and a naturally readable size on the rest so the user doesn’t have to zoom to be able to read.

Use images that tell the story, but not so large that they cause the page to load more slowly. Even users in 4G coverage areas still tend to have a slower experience than desktop users, because they aren’t always getting a full signal 100% of the time. And if they’re on an older phone, the processing speed may cause the pages to load more slowly. Keep it short and sweet.

Even for tablet users who may be viewing the “desktop version” of your site, they’re generally on smaller screens and don’t have a mouse or keyboard. Make sure your site is responsive to touch-based input.

Test your entire checkout process

Run through your site’s checkout process on your own phone or tablet, and ask yourself one question: If this were any other site, would you really try this hard? Mobile users want to type as little as possible, and if the site doesn’t look mobile friendly they’ll wonder if the checkout process will even work. Consider implementing payment gateways like PayPal that don’t require the user to type in their address and credit card information to check out.

Mobile and touch-friendly devices aren’t going away. By understanding the mindset of the mobile visitor, you can improve their overall experience and increase your sales. Remember, Amazon has a great mobile experience and probably sells most of the same products you do – don’t send your visitors to Amazon in frustration when you could have earned that sale yourself by having a mobile-friendly website.