Mobile Commerce: Ensuring Your Ecommerce website is mobile-friendly

There is a reason why mobile phones has its name. They are so much easier and convenient to bring around compared to PCs and laptops. These days, the majority of shoppers such as Gen Zers and millennials much prefer the convenience of shopping online over visiting physical stores. These are the group of people who largely contribute to mobile commerce and an increase in sales for many online retailers. Therefore, it is very important that e-commerce applications and websites being viewed on mobile phones are user friendly to cater to this group of people. 

How do we make this happen and what is mobile commerce?

Mobile optimization is the development of a website to ensure it is seamless and functions well on mobile devices. Some examples include responding to different screen sizes and resolutions respectively. Mobile commerce which is commonly known as m-commerce refers to commercial transactions that take place over mobile applications or websites. There are a few things to take note of to ensure that your ecommerce website is mobile friendly to users, by using the right marketing techniques. 

Mobile websites and applications are becoming increasingly popular, contributing to an increase in website traffic for mobile commerce. With such a huge increase in people contributing to mobile commerce, there has to be an ease of navigation and accessibility within the website itself. This would increase user engagement and satisfaction by heaps. Without a doubt, a website that is complicated, laggy and difficult to access would have much lower traffic compared to a user-friendly website. A positive mobile experience also makes it easier for users to share information and interact with others on social networks. 

Many websites lose customers during the checkout process when users are being asked additional information such as to fill up forms with their personal details. This creates extra friction and deters them from doing a seamless and quick checkout like they wish to. Many times, customers just want a quick checkout and leave the webpage immediately. The friction created would likely discourage users from completing payment as it is too much of a hassle for most people. Additionally, the ability for customers to pay via most payment methods is important. For instance, new users who don’t have their credit card details stored on the website would likely prefer paying via Apple Pay. If the website strictly accepts credit card payment only, a user would likely not checkout as it is a hassle to search for their credit card to key in the card details. This would decrease future web traffic and mobile commerce transactions. 

Call to action buttons are extremely important for mobile commerce, they are prompts on a website to take a specific action or desired conversion such as “learn more”, “add to cart” or “checkout”. These buttons are usually found on the homepage and on specific landing pages that contain content relevant to the button. These buttons are usually big and bright, so that users can locate it easily and take the specific action. 

It is extremely important for mobile commerce websites to have a user friendly webpage to cater to the local and global audiences. A business could potentially lose out on a lot of valuable web traffic and conversions if they have a non-user friendly website. On the other hand, a seamless and user-friendly website could open up plenty of opportunities for the business by boosting sales and conversions. This accessibility could potentially create customer loyalty and retention, making it a long term gain.