4 Essentials for Capturing and Converting Mobile Shoppers Mobile devices are surpassing desktops for online shopping. Small screens and slower browsing are challenges marketers need to address.
By Eric Samson Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
These days, consumers spend more time shopping on their mobile devices than they do on desktop computers. As mobile adoption grows, Forrester estimates smartphone and tablet commerce will reach $293 billion in sales by 2018.
Brands with an intimate understanding of shoppers' mobile behaviors and usage are well positioned to see their revenues increase consistently over the next few years by developing more compelling and empathetic shopping experiences on smartphone and tablet devices.
Here are four ways businesses can build better mobile-first strategies:
1. Advertise differently.
Most major advertising platforms allow you to break out campaigns by device, enabling brands to optimize their creative assets for maximum clickthrough rates and engagement on desktops, tablets and smartphones. Each segmented campaign is an opportunity to create unique ads that will resonate well for that specific audience's browsing habits.
Tim Jensen, director of digital strategies at Overit, advises marketers to "use bid modifiers," "create mobile-preferred ads" and "use smartphone-specific ad sizes" when advertising on Google AdWords. Rather than duplicate successful desktop-focused advertisements for use towards mobile-specific campaigns, marketers ought to create entirely new materials – ad copy, images and landing pages – to best reflect buyer intention and needs on mobile.
Related: 3 Things to Consider When Building a Mobile Advertising Campaign
2. At a glace.
With a multitude of options available at their fingertips, mobile shoppers are more inclined to spend their valuable (and limited) time on apps or websites with simple, easy-to-navigate interfaces. Unnecessary information and gratuitous steps only frustrate shoppers who want answers and solutions fast.
That is why "glanceable UI' has become popular among retailers on mobile devices. Every page that users load should have a singular focus, with only as much information as shoppers can consume in a passing glance.
3. The faster, the better.
4G and LTE frequencies have spoiled mobile users. Smartphone and tablet shoppers want quick, seamless browsing experiences. The implication for brands of consumers' increasingly short attention spans is that every millisecond counts. For Amazon, a 100-millisecond delay causes a 1 percent drop in total revenues. For Shopzilla, conversion rates increased 7-12 percent when average page load time decreased by 6 seconds.
To minimize your bounce and exit rates, work aggressively to optimize the speed at which your pages load. Remove non-essential features and compress files to supercharge site performance.
Related: Why a Good User Experience Is the Most Overlooked SEO Strategy
4. Streamline mobile payments.
According to MediaPost, 97 percent of consumers abandon their shopping carts on mobile devices. That is partly because, for shoppers, it is burdensome to enter in payment information from a smartphone or tablet. No one wants to fiddle around with their mobile device and their physical wallet at the same time. A site's lack of mobile payment options further accentuates that problem.
Fortunately, solutions such as Google Wallet, PayPal and LevelUp make it easy for visitors to cruise through the checkout process without ever needing to type in a 16-digit credit card number. A quick integration with any one of the major mobile-friendly payment solutions minimizes the friction that customers face when shopping on their mobile devices, allowing them to go from add to cart through to order completion.
Related: How Mobile Payment Apps Are Energizing Businesses That Live On Cash Flow
