Each week, we publish a mishmash of ecommerce related, insight infused articles for you to smash through. Just as we collect business information across all of a merchant’s channels in a single place, we’re doing the same for ecommerce related content from a variety of top-tier content creators. If you find the material filling your appetite for knowledge, feel free to share this post, as well as any article you see here.
Whenever nearly half of all online traffic is flowing through mobile channels, it’s probably something to pay attention to. As the trend towards mobile commerce surges forward, e-retailers are having to adapt — and quickly. This week’s mishmash is all mobile. From the customer’s mobile experience to mobile SEO tactics and mobile wallet demographics, something in this mishmash sure to motivate your mobile strategy.
Shopping for Answers
Naturally, the end-goal of any online selling strategy is to turn traffic into sales. We already know that mobile traffic is here in full force, but conversion rates are not so hot, currently resting at a little less than 2%. To understand what consumers are looking for as they shop via mobile, comScore conducted a survey of over 3,000 adults, looking for specific factors in the tablet and smartphone experience that ease them toward checkout. The results skewed largely towards understanding product information, with major factors like product photography and descriptions being major factors in shopping on mobile devices.
Experiencing a Good Mobile Experience
Now that we know what factors facilitate shopping, what is essential to the mobile experience overall? Sitecore surveyed over 4,000 mobile-device-wielding adults to find the answers, and those results are… pretty much a baseline of what you’d expect from a mobile experience. Above all else, convenience, security, and speed ended up most important, which makes sense considering they’re exactly what consumers expect when buying online via desktop. On a more interesting note, consumers aren’t satisfied with merchants’ ability to deliver on those elements, while, in some cases, brands feel they’re doing decently.
(SE)Mcommerce
Let’s not forget that SEO plays into mcommerce just as much as your standard ecommerce. For mobile specifically, Marketing Land has 6 critical parts of a mobile SEO strategy; core ranking, fixing mobile errors, keyword research and content creation, app store optimization and app indexing (if using apps), as well as using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Many of these look pretty familiar if you’re already perfecting your standard ecommerce SEO, but the app store and AMP specifically — two relatively new factors of mobile SEO — are worth a look.
Money in the Phone Bank
Back to the topic of purchasing on mobile channels. Believed to be a savior when it comes to boosting conversion rates, mobile wallets are still not widely used, even a couple years after Apple spearheaded the space with its Apple Pay. But who’s actually using them? Let’s look at the demographic makeup. Research conducted by Pew and Social Science Research Solutions (SSRS) painted a picture suggesting that younger, more educated, and somewhat-higher-income consumers were most likely to use mobile wallets. If that aligns with your target customer, supporting and encouraging mobile wallets may be a priority.
Expressing the Benefits of Express Purchase
The less clicks, the better. That’s the gist of preventing abandoned shopping carts, especially on mobile devices. Research (once again) suggests that one-click, express checkout is picking up steam, with many mobile payment processors, from Visa to Amazon to PayPal, pushing for e-retailers to adopt them before the holiday selling extravaganza (which had a remarkably high amount of mobile traffic in 2015). Like social buy buttons, express checkout seamlessly provides mobile-traveling consumers with the means to buy products in one click. And as those payment processors compete for a slice of the space, mobile tech is sure to continue innovating, which will hopefully turn that growing traffic into revenue.
