By 2025, it is estimated that more than 44% of all eCommerce retail sales will be made through mobile devices. As your customers hold significant purchasing power through their mobiles, your aim should be to enhance your mobile visibility and ensure that your business catches their attention.
Mobile Web Design
The cellphone, which is now the primary means of accessing the internet, serves a greater purpose than just texting or using social media. It has become an essential tool for brands to engage with their customers.
As an eCommerce store owner, you understand the importance of having a robust online presence. You ensure that your website is optimized for search engines, promote your content, incorporate top-notch visuals, and provide all the necessary elements to present your best side in the eCommerce industry.
To outperform your competitors, it is essential to prioritize optimization for mobile as many of the steps involved in this process are distinct from those focused on desktop.
Mobile web design is responsive, meaning it adapts to screens of all sizes, including phones, watches, tablets, and desktops. It ensures that the site displays clearly and efficiently on any device. Designs that may look impressive on a desktop screen can become overwhelming and unclear on a mobile screen. Starting points for mobile design include:
- Mobile-first design. As more and more customers browse and then buy on their phones, mobile-first design, rather than desktop-first is a rule of thumb. Designers will optimize content for mobile and then scale up, rather than the other way round.
- Responsive design. The more screen space a prospect has, the more they see. Goodbye to illegible chunks of tiny copy on small screens.
- Search engine-friendly design. Check your website search rankings are fully optimized for mobile too.
Optimizing an eCommerce store for mobile can be achieved through the following step-by-step methods.
If your eCommerce website is not meeting any of the mentioned factors, then it is necessary to enhance it. This could be achieved by making small adjustments to your website or completely redesigning it. Your next course of action should be determined by the outcome of the mobile-friendliness test.
Below are some best practices for optimizing mobile performance that can be universally applied. If you are starting a new website, we suggest taking these into account from the very start.
1. Create responsive, eye-catching website design
Although your eCommerce website may have an appealing appearance on desktop, the mobile version may lack in satisfaction.
If you encounter issues such as partial design cutoff, improper loading, or difficulty clicking on certain elements when accessing your website on a cellphone or tablet, you should consider choosing a design that is more compatible with mobile devices.
In order to provide a positive user experience and remain competitive, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly website. This means that your website should be able to adjust to various screen sizes and resolutions, enabling customers to browse and make purchases from their mobile devices. As the number of individuals accessing the internet via their smartphones continues to grow, having a responsive design for your website is increasingly important.
When you have a responsive design, it can improve your website’s search engine rankings because search engines, such as Google, prefer sites that are mobile-friendly in their search results. Additionally, when users arrive on your page, they are more likely to stay, which can positively affect your conversion rate and ultimately lead to increased sales for your ecommerce store.
One way to improve the user experience is by creating a custom app for your ecommerce store. This can provide customers with a more convenient and personalized shopping experience, offering features like push notifications, in-app messaging, and easy access to their account information.
If your platform lacks this feature, it is advisable to collaborate with a web designer, although certain eCommerce platforms (like Adobe Commerce, powered by Magento) already include it.
2. Ensure user-friendly navigation
In order for your online store to be successful, it is important that it not only has an appealing appearance but also functions flawlessly. Users should be able to easily access essential elements of your site, such as the main menu, pages, posts, and links. However, due to mobile design limitations, the navigational features might be restricted and you may not be able to include all the tabs and pages that are present on the desktop version of your site.
In addition to ensuring your website has a responsive design, another crucial aspect in optimizing it for mobile is simplifying the navigation. Mobile users usually have a shorter attention span and are frequently on the move, so it is essential to facilitate their quick access to desired information.
To simplify navigation, implementing clear and concise headings, menus, and buttons can be highly effective. This will facilitate users in swiftly and effortlessly navigating through your website. Additionally, considering that users often navigate on small screens using their fingers, it is crucial to ensure that navigation elements are adequately sized and spaced apart to prevent inadvertent clicks.
To prolong users’ time on the site, it is important to make the most significant pages easily discoverable, accessible, and clickable.
3. Allow speedy website load times
A slow website is one of the most annoying and conversion-preventing things. If a user visits your site and it takes a long time to load, they will choose another option. Consider the potential sales that could be lost.
When optimizing your website for mobile, it is important to also take into account the speed at which your pages load. This is particularly significant because mobile users often rely on slow or limited data connections, so optimizing the page load speed is essential in order to avoid frustration and abandonment.
To optimize load times, follow these steps: compress images, reduce HTTP requests, remove unnecessary scripts and plugins. Additionally, test your website’s load speed on various devices and connections to ensure it is optimized for all users.
Your website should have a loading time of under three seconds, preferably less than two seconds. Although it may not appear to be a significant amount of time, even a one-second delay can have a considerable impact.
To enhance loading time, you can optimize your images, reduce the site’s content, incorporate a caching plugin, and adopt the AMP protocols, which guarantee fast, visually appealing, and efficient performance on all devices and platforms.
4. Institute intuitive checkout processes
Having a non-optimized mobile checkout process can impede users’ progress along your sales funnel and hinder their purchase of your products.
Ecommerce websites possess distinctive functionalities that differentiate them from other websites. They enable you to handle order fulfillment, payment processing, and various other tasks. To collect customer information, it is important to ensure that the steps are designed to be as user-friendly and intuitive as possible.
To ensure a smooth checkout experience for mobile users, it is crucial to ensure that your checkout process is mobile-friendly as it is a vital part of the customer journey. Simplifying the process, providing the option for users to checkout as guests, and incorporating fast payment options like Apple Pay or Google Wallet can contribute to creating a seamless checkout experience.
Most ecommerce software programs have the capability to integrate this feature into your ecommerce store. Moreover, it is essential to consider that mobile users might utilize distinct payment methods from desktop users, hence ensure your checkout process is adaptable enough to support various payment alternatives.
When considering mobile devices, keep in mind that their screens are significantly smaller compared to desktops. Consequently, it is important to ensure that your content is brief, your buttons are easily noticeable, and your forms and fields are user-friendly. If the page constantly rearranges or if it is too small for users to complete, they are likely to abandon your website.
5. Show only optimized images and videos
Including images and videos on your website enhances user engagement and comprehension of your products. However, it is important to consider that such media can considerably impact the loading speed of your website. If the files are excessively large, they might fail to load altogether.
To ensure clear images with appropriate sizing, engage with a designer to optimize image sizes for mobile. For seamless viewing on mobile, eCommerce videos should be of the correct size and should not automatically play. It is important to prioritize less intrusive website content for an enhanced user experience.
6. Eliminate invasive pop-ups and ads
Have you ever experienced visiting a website only to be overwhelmed with pop-ups, opt-ins, and “special offers”? It can be quite bothersome, don’t you think?
Your potential customers also share the same opinion.
Google is becoming stricter with websites that have intrusive pop-ups and ads, due to the negative user experience they create. Consequently, if these elements are present on your commerce website, Google is less inclined to display it in search results.
When it comes to mobile devices, it is more effective to focus on simplicity while attempting to expand your email list and provide existing customers with your latest offers.
7. Optimize for local search
It is essential to optimize your website for local search as it is important for businesses with a physical presence or local customer base. Numerous mobile users seek businesses and products in their local area; hence, optimizing your website for local search is crucial.
In order to improve search engine visibility for your business, you can take several steps, including optimizing your website with location-specific keywords, keeping your business information accurate and consistent on all platforms, and utilizing schema markup to facilitate search engines in recognizing your business’s location and services.
By optimizing for local search, you can make sure that your products or services are visible to potential customers in your area who are searching for them.
