Is your eCommerce’s mobile conversion rate in tatters? Here are 6 tips for fixing this (and why you should care about this)

Let’s start with this piece of information that will knock your socks off.

A research study conducted by Episerver (a tool for eCommerce and web creation) established that 53% of consumers who buy online do so on their smartphones.

This information already offers a clue to how important mobile users are to eCommerces, right?

And yet, paradoxically, it’s on smartphones where your sales are at their lowest.

That’s just how it goes.

There are many factors you must bear in mind if you want your store’s mobile version to convert as much as your web version.

If you’d like to know what they are, keep on reading because in this post we’ll tell you everything you need to know to boost your mobile conversion rate.

Here we go! 😉

👉 Essential guidelines for improving your mobile conversion rate (and for not losing customers)

Let’s cut straight to the chase.

Grab a pen and paper because you’ll want to write down the advice we’ve prepared for you to improve your eCommerce’s mobile version.

Ready?

✅ 1. Don’t make users wait

It’s often said (and there’s evidence for it) that if a web takes more than 3 seconds to load, about 50% of users will abandon it.

And yes, that also happens on smartphones.

So if you don’t want to lose any users, make sure your eCommerce’s mobile version is geared up with a good load speed.

In order to do so:

• Get a good hosting site: because having a faster or slower website will partly depend on the server it’s hosted on. If you don’t know how to choose the most appropriate one for you eCommerce, have a look at this post.
• Optimize images: avoid large images (more than 150 kB, approx.) because they’ll slow down your website. Here you’ll find everything you need to know about optimizing your store’s images.
• Use a caching plug-in: this kind of plug-in allows you to generate a “fixed picture” of your web which will be stored in the user’s browser. This way, when the person comes back to your store, it will load much faster.
• Be careful with sliders and videos on the homepage: even if they add value and are eye-catching, they’re not as useful on the mobile version and they make the web slower. 
• Consider having an on-site chat function is sensible. Responding quickly to queries without compromising site performance or mobile compatibility is possible thanks to customizable chat API solutions like Sendbird.

If you’ve already tried all of this and want to analyze your website’s speed, you can use tools such as Google’s Test My Site.

✅ 2. Make sure you have an actually responsive design

Even if the template you used to set your online store has a responsive design, that doesn’t mean you should lower your guard.

There are certain common mistakes —typically overlooked— that can worsen browsing on small screens. For example:

• Portrait orientation on smartphones: a laptop has a landscape orientation while we usually have a portrait orientation on smartphones. So don’t forget to adjust the design of every element on the page (banners included) to facilitate mobile browsing.
• “Mobile-friendly” texts: avoid long paragraphs or small fonts that make reading on a smartphone difficult.
• Leave space around CTAs: don’t place two calls to action or two clickable images too close from each other; the person might end up clicking something they didn’t mean to (and that’s a negative point in terms of user experience).

In order to detect these problems, we also have a specific tool: Google Search Console (below “Mobile usability”).

➡️ One step beyond: PWAs

What we’ve just reviewed above are the basic requirements of responsive design.

But if you really want to stand out from the rest of eCommerces, you should consider turning your web into a PWA.

PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) are a hybrid between a mobile app and a website.

For you to better understand it, check out this example from Alibaba, whose website is actually a PWA.

What we have here is a screenshot of their website when you access it from your smartphone.

As you can see, it looks just like an app (which makes it more comfortable to use). In addition to this, there are other advantages to it:

• A PWA improves load speed (by a lot)
• Now we can talk about 100% responsive design, and that translates into better user experience
• If we put it all together, we get a higher conversion

For you to have an idea of the potential these progressive apps have, Alibaba increased mobile conversion by 76% thanks to the one they use.

If you want more information on this type of technology, swing by our post on PWAs.

✅ 3. Be careful with pop-ups

Pop-ups are a very useful tool for converting more. Let’s make that clear.

But on smartphones, they can have the opposite effect and make the user leave.

Now picture this:

You access a website and, all of a sudden, you get a pop-up over the whole screen and it totally makes the site glitch. In addition to that, you have to hit upon the X button to close it (which can be a whole challenge on a small screen).

Conclusion: don’t test the user’s patience and avoid pop-ups. 😉

✅ 4. Help them find what they are looking for

A person has come to your store and is browsing at ease.

So far, so good.

However, there’s a long way from browsing at ease and finding what they’re looking for.

Let’s be honest: as comfortable as the browsing experience might get, looking for a product using categories on a smartphone is a hassle.

That’s why it’s fundamental to have a good internal search engine.

One that has the following features:

• Autocomplete: it that anticipates what you’re looking for, showing possible results according to what you type.
• Quick results: again, it’s about not making the user wait too much.
• Search filters: Being able to filter products to get more precise results is more user-friendly.
• Synonym and typo comprehension: on a smartphone, it’s really easy to end up typing “toadter” instead of “toaster”. The search engine should be capable of spotting these mistakes and still provide the most relevant results. This way, the user doesn’t have to keep on deleting and typing again.

For example, on the following screenshot, you can see the results that come up on a search engine with autocomplete.

But that’s not good enough.

The thing is that on smartphones, you need to pay attention to another kind of search that’s becoming more popular on these devices.

➡️ Take “special” searches into consideration

Do you know what we mean?

• Voice search: it’s a growing trend and many users prefer it over typing.
• Image search:  maybe the user has a screenshot of a product but doesn’t know what it’s called. With this feature, they can upload that screenshot to your store and the search engine will take care of finding, among all your product cards, those whose images match the user’s.

But, of course —as you may imagine— not every search engine offers all of these features.

For that, you need a smart search engine such as Doofinder. 😉

Thanks to all these features, eCommerces that use it have increased their conversion rate by 20% (both on web and on mobile versions).

Do you feel like trying it out in your store?

Get access to a 30-day free trial and start selling more (on smartphones too).

✅ 5. Is the product in the customer’s shopping cart already? Make it easy for them to complete the purchase

Checkout is the critical part when the customer gets to complete the purchase or… abandon the cart.

Unfortunately, the risk of them going for the latter is way higher when they are on their smartphones.

So how do we avoid this?

By simplifying the purchase process. Here are two basic tips to do that:

• Condense the checkout in a single page instead of 2 or 3.
• Ask for as little personal data as possible.

Another option would be —in case they have bought from you before— to have a person’s info stored in their account and then autocomplete. 

✅ 6. Use A/B tests to measure and optimize conversion

If you don’t assess, you don’t know what works and what doesn’t on the mobile version

That’s why running A/B tests to assess and then optimize results is really interesting.

An A/B test is a tool used in marketing that creates 2 different versions of a website, randomly displaying both versions to users.

You then compare results in both versions and determine which works best.

For example, imagine we want to test two scarcity strategies.

To do that, we have:

• Version A: we use a label that reads “few units left in stock”.
• Version B: we use a label that reads “only 3 units left”.

Some users will see the A version and some others the B one. After a while testing, we analyze the results and check which version gets the most conversions.

👉 Now it’s up to you to follow our tips to boost mobile conversions

You’ve seen how important it is to optimize your eCommerce’s mobile version. Surely, you’ve written down the tips we have given you.

So now you’re up.

Put into practice everything you’ve learnt here and you’ll see your mobile conversion rate skyrocket in no time. 😉