What good is a store that gets thousands of visitors if a disappointingly low number converts? The writer penning this article has more than 30 mobile apps geared towards shopping.
Some are horizontal marketplaces for multiple brands, but most apps have products and a catalog from just their primary brand. All of them have realized how critical it is to be accessible on a smartphone because of the rapid boom in mobile eCommerce.
An average of 79% of people shop through their smartphones, but the average conversion rate is shockingly low. We all know the culprit- clunky mobile websites that don't inspire confidence.
In this blog post, we will dive deep into strategies in design, functionality, copy, and optimizing an eCommerce store for mobiles, looking at several retail apps, and comparing features to find those that can boost your conversions too.
Best practices to improve your eCommerce mobile conversion rates
Based on our surveys and research, here are some tried and tested ways to improve your mobile conversion rate:
1. Build a mobile app for a seamless user experience
We're starting with the strongest and most effective tactic that can increase your mobile eCommerce conversions, a dedicated app.
We have found that 90% of eCommerce traffic comes from mobile devices.
Mobile apps can deliver a seamless, personalized, and engaging shopping experience, with features that delight, convert, and retain.
Our studies have found that mobile apps drive 3X higher conversion rates than mobile web, and 5X higher conversion than desktop.
Moreover, everything from LTV to the cost of acquiring new customers is far better on eCommerce mobile apps compared to websites.
The good thing is that building a mobile app isn’t tough either with Shopify mobile app builders like AppBrew. Here are some of the features that the builder enables for your app to help boost mobile conversion rates:
- Personalized product recommendations: AppBrew can leverage your user data to suggest relevant products, increasing the likelihood of purchases.
- Push notifications: You can then send targeted messages about promotions, sales, welcome offers, abandoned cart reminders, and new arrivals alerts to bring users back to your app.
- Offline browsing: With AppBrew, users on your app can browse products even without an internet connection, ensuring uninterrupted shopping sessions.
- One-click checkout: Checkouts typically add friction to conversions. Instead, streamline the process by offering saved payment modes and auto-fill shipping information.
- AR product visualization: Help your users visualize your product blending seamlessly into their life and space with augmented reality features.
- Loyalty programs: Retention is the other side of the coin of conversions. In your app, you can add a rewards system to encourage repeat purchases and help improve eCommerce retention rate and customer loyalty.
By offering these advanced features through your mobile app, you can provide a superior and far more engaging shopping experience that drives higher conversion rates compared to mobile web browsing.
2. Optimize page load speed
Average attention spans are decreasing monumentally with each passing day. As a result, in mobile eCommerce, speed is everything. A delay of just one second in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions!
Smartphone users access apps often on the go and have limited patience for slow-loading sites. To improve your mobile store's speed and boost conversions, here are a few key strategies to leverage:
- Enable lazy loading for images and videos (a technique where the loading of non-critical resources is deferred until they're needed).
- Minimize HTTP requests by merging several CSS, and JavaScript files into a single file and using icon fonts instead of image files.
- Use a content delivery network (CDN) like Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, and Akamai to distribute your site's static content across multiple servers while serving large media files and libraries.
- Optimize and compress images to reduce a page's weight with tools like TinyPNG to avoid quality loss. Use the correct image formats (JPEG for photographs, PNG for graphics with transparency, or WebP).
- Enable browser caching so that on subsequent visits, the page loads without sending additional HTTP requests to your server.
- Optimize for mobile-first indexing with Google's industry standard test and use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for key landing pages.
- Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML files to remove unnecessary characters from your code without changing its functionality
- Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or WebPageTest to analyze your site's speed.
3. Implement a mobile-first design
A mobile-first approach prioritizes the user experience on their devices at the outset, instead of simply adapting a desktop design for smaller screens. The latter harms conversions while the former ensures your store increases user engagement and sales as mobile users have different behaviors and expectations compared to desktop users.
Here are a few ways you can achieve this:
- Use larger, touch-friendly buttons as mobile users navigate with their fingers, not a cursor.
- Ensure all interactive elements are easily tappable by making buttons at least 44x44 pixels (Apple's recommended minimum size)
- Leave enough space between clickable elements to prevent accidental taps and utilize white space effectively with ample margins and padding.
- Use contrasting colors for CTA buttons so they stand out.
- Add a hamburger menu for navigation and place it on the top left or right corner, which is typically where users expect to find it.
- Consider trying a slide-out drawer for the menu content so that context is maintained.
- Use a single-column layout for easy scrolling and place the most important info a user might need to take the next step at the top.
- Add an infinite scroll feature to your app for product listings to create a seamless browsing experience.
- Optimize your typography for mobile screens by using clean, sans-serif fonts, and a minimum font size of 16px for body text for better legibility.
- Implement a thumb-friendly design by placing frequently used actions within each reach of a user's thumb and using a bottom navigation bar for key functions.
- Leverage mobile-specific features like swipe, pinch-to-zoom, and pull-to-refresh
- Enable GPS for location-based services and personalization and camera functionality for visual search or AR experiences.
- Make data entry in forms easy by reducing the number of form fields, using appropriate input types, and implementing auto-fill wherever possible.
Additionally, today, you may consider researching an e-commerce CRO agency that can help you implement these strategies effectively, making sure your site loads quickly and keeps users engaged. It can also guide you in continuously optimizing your mobile store to adapt to evolving user expectations.
4. Simplify the checkout process
Many mobile users abandon carts due to complicated checkouts.
Since there's limited screen space with innumerable elements, placing an order can become overstimulating and overwhelming. Here's how you can simplify your checkout to reduce abandonment rates and boost conversions instead:
- Offer guest checkout options as many users tend to abandon carts when forced to create a new account.
- Implement one-page checkout using collapsible sections to organize content to avoid repeated page reloads
- Display all the essential fields like shipping, billing, and payment on one screen.
- Add a progress indicator to show users how close they are to completing checkout.
- Use autofill for form fields and standard input field names that browsers recognize to speed up data entry.
- Provide multiple payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal and "buy now, pay later" services like Klarna or Afterpay.
- Design your checkout process to enable thumb-friendly interactions, especially for critical actions like 'place order'.
- Help users quickly find and correct any errors in their input by enabling inline validation and using specific, actionable error messages.
- Consider adding a save and return option so users, if distracted, can come back to their cart without having to re-add the products.
- Display order summary (with total cost, including taxes and shipping) throughout checkout
- Include trust signals throughout checkout to reassure users about the security of the transaction.
5. Leverage social proof
In eCommerce, trust is currency. Almost 92% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase and products with reviews are 270% more likely to be purchased than products without reviews.
Another study has shown that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. By displaying social proof in your mobile or app, you can build trust, rescue uncertainty, and significantly improve your conversion rates.
Here's how to do it right:
- Display customer reviews and ratings clearly and prominently, with the number of reviews alongside the rating to cement how popular that product is
- Put average star ratings next to product images in listings so users don't need to scroll to the review section to get an idea about the product.
- In the review section, enable users to filter and sort reviews based on keywords, ratings, reviews that come with images, and verified purchases with badges or icons.
- Include review snippets to make it more easily and quickly digestible for mobile users. You can use AI to highlight helpful snippets.
- Consider showing real-time purchase notifications like 'X number bought in the last 2 hours' or even 'X number of people in (location of the user) are looking at this right now'.
- Add a 'bestseller' tag on popular products and consequently, create a new section of top-selling or highly-rated options from your store.
- Include user-generated content in product galleries or highlight it in the review section as many users depend on visual proof to purchase
6. Implement smart search functionality
You must understand that working on mobile screens needs apps designed in such a way that they reduce visual overwhelm. When user patience is thin, your search bar can make or break the user experience.
Did you know that a poor search experience can result in more than 68% of users abandoning their browsing? Here's what you need to keep in mind while implementing Smart Search:
- Use autocomplete, auto-suggest, and predictive search to help users find what they're looking for faster.
- Include product names, categories, and popular search terms in suggestions to broaden the search capacity.
- Display thumbnail images with autocomplete suggestions so your users feel instantly reassured that the product is exactly what they're looking for
- Add in visual search since many users find brands through influencers they follow and take screenshots of the outfit.
- Offer voice search for users who like hands-free browsing.
- Enable AI to understand conversational queries and drum up relevant results.
- Give filtering and sorting options within the search results like size, color, price range, popularity, relevance, etc.
- Make sure users can select multiple filters together to help them reach the right product faster.
- Add in personalization by using users' past purchases and browsing history.
- Position the search bar on top of the screen, clearly and prominently.
- Respond to "zero results" by suggesting alternative terms or products or add a "notify me" feature for out-of-stock items.
7. Optimize product pages for mobile
Your product pages are the final touchpoint before a user decides to place an order. The last thing it should be, as a result, is overwhelming and cluttered which product description pages are notorious for.
Follow the below tips for a well-designed PDP:
- Use high-quality, zoomable product images as that is a critical bit of proof for users to move further along their purchase journey.
- Ensure that images load quickly and the gallery is swipeable.
- Offer a 360-degree product and AR virtual reality view so they can visualize your product blending into their life.
- Show essential product information like name, price, and size guide and allow users to expand other sections when they want
- Make sure that the buttons for selecting variants (colors, sizes) are visible and easy to tap.
- Showcase user-generated content with the tips mentioned in the previous section on social proof.
- Make it easy and clear for users to place an order with a prominent "Add to Cart" button that provides haptic feedback when items are added.
- Cross-sell without overwhelming your users by showing a select number of highly relevant products
- Leverage dynamic pricing and scarcity marketing by showing limited-time offers with countdown icons or stock levels for fast-selling items.
8. Utilize exit-intent popups
Such popups are usually used for desktop users but can also be effective for mobile websites, helping recover lost sales and keep the customer engaged to continue, even if it is just to capture leads.
Exit popups can recover up to 15% of lost visitors since you can nudge users through special offers and discount codes. Here are a few tips on how to leverage them properly:
- Since smartphone users don't navigate through a cursor, your trigger for the pop-up can be sent when they leave the checkout page or if they scroll up once they check the product details.
- You can also use time-based triggers, for example, if a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time.
- Remember to incentivize them to move to checkout by sharing exclusive discount codes to complete their purchase or by offering free shipping.
- You can also ramp up the urgency by using countdown timers and contrasting colors of the copy.
- Even if users claim a discount code in exchange for their contact details and then abandon their cart, you can still reach out and nudge them to finish their purchase.
9. Implement live chat and chatbots
In mobile eCommerce, customers expect rapid-fire support for any queries. To scale this and be available 24x7 can be tough, but critical to increasing conversions since users can find searching through FAQs on a mobile screen.
79% of consumers prefer live chat for its instant responses and a whopping 47% are more likely to order via its product recommendations! Here are some strategies for implementing live chat and chatbots:
- Build or find an AI-powered chatbot made for mCommerce to respond to queries.
- Remember to train your chatbot with your FAQs, shipping details, and previous common questions.
- Include clear options for users to access human support but collect initial logistic info through the chatbot before transferring.
- Display live chat hours of operation so a prospective customer is reassured you are available.
- If you have a long waiting line, share an estimated wait time and offer a callback option.
- Design your live chat so that it's easier to use on a variety of small mobile screens.
- You don't have to wait until the user initiates a conversation either, be proactive and trigger chat invitations after a user has spent a certain time on a product page or if a user has had multiple failed checkouts.
- You can cross-sell and upsell by training your chatbots to share personalized product recommendations based on user preferences and history or update them about restocks and new arrivals.
- If your app has customers across the globe, consider offering chatbot support in local languages.
10. Create a sense of urgency
Continuing from various examples of urgency you can employ under previous tactics, here are a few more tips on how you can motivate your users to finish placing their orders faster:
- Display limited-time offers and flash sales not just in your exit-intent pop-up but on the mobile homepage
- Design and deploy visually appealing banners for daily or hourly deals to gamify the user experience
- Send push notifications for time-sensitive promotions and low-stock alerts
- Add visual countdown clocks to limited-time offers with micro-animations to draw attention to the countdown
Wrapping up
As online shopping continues to explode, optimizing your mobile eCommerce experience is essential.
By trying even some of the above strategies, you can boost your mobile conversion rate and effectively use marketing budgets.
But the single tactic that will bolster your conversion rate is having a mobile app. And the best thing?
Building one has never been easier!
If you're looking to build experiences customers will love coming back to, let us know, we will be thrilled to get your store seamlessly transitioned into an engaging mobile app.
