The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and if you are determined to make this year the most profitable one ever, mobile needs to be at the top of your list!
The majority of us search, shop, and pay with our mobile devices daily—and with over half of all search being done on mobile—this attention cannot be overlooked.
Combine this with the continued shift to ecommerce purchasing in 2021 and there is a perfect storm of opportunity when it comes to your holiday season marketing strategies.
Still have doubts? Well, check this out.
- Nearly 55% of all internet traffic is on mobile devices.
- Almost 80% of all smartphone users have made a purchase from their device in the past 6 months.
- Mobile purchasing is projected to account for nearly 73% of all ecommerce purchases in 2021.
- Mobile sales are projected to grow over 22% (reaching 3.56 trillion) in sales in 2021.
- About 75% of mobile purchasers do so because it saves them time.
So, these numbers pretty clearly outline the impact that the mobile world has when it comes to ecommerce purchase activity.
The Flip Side of Mobile
However, there is a flip side to all of these rosy mobile purchasing numbers. While purchasing on a device is attractive, there are some points of contention that may turn off customers and send them to your competitors.
Mobile also makes it easier for customers to cut and run if there is something they dislike.
Here are some of the most common culprits…
Broken Mobile Experience
This should go without saying, but if your site is not built with the mobile experience first you are doing yourself a disservice. Mobile makes up the majority of internet traffic and over 55% of all page views—so ignoring mobile shoppers is simply not an option.
Images, forms, page copy, checkouts, and especially navigation must be built with the mobile user in mind.
Can you scroll, swipe, and click with one hand? Are links and buttons simple to just tap with your thumb without having to zoom in and click exactly the right spot?
Heck, can you read text and product descriptions while holding your device a couple of feet away?
Just because your site is amazing to use on a desktop does not mean this will translate to a handheld device flawlessly.
Even Google will provide different results for desktop and mobile searches!
So if you want to be found and you want to make those cash bells ring for the holidays—your mobile shopping experience needs to be on point.
Do This Instead
If you are on a platform like WordPress or Shopify, finding a mobile-first theme to build your website with should be pretty straightforward. In fact, Shopify has been pretty good about keeping the mobile experience in mind and providing mobile-first options.
WordPress still has its quirks and some theme providers will opt to use the phrase “mobile optimized” rather than “mobile first” as kind of a catchall meaning “size reduction.”
But be sure to preview mobile versions of all these themes before you settle on one.
If you can keep from having to create any custom coding to make your mobile site pristine, you will save yourself from a lot of headaches in the future.
Members Only & App Downloads
Requiring customers to create an account and not providing a guest checkout option is not only annoying but it can cost you a ton of potential sales revenue. In fact, over 30% of customers abandoning their orders can be attributed to forcing customers to create an account before purchase.
And we get it—customers with an account might be better in the long run for your company, but when it comes to having to perform this task on a mobile device, the process is often tedious enough to send your customers running to a competitor.
The same goes for requiring a customer to install your app to order your product. One study showed that an average of 78% of users aged 18-55+ have abandoned transactions because they were required to download (yet another) app.
The data also shows that the younger your target market is the more “app-adverse” they are. So, keep it simple and don’t make it more difficult for customers to give you their hard-earned cash.
Do This Instead
Stick to using a mobile-first website experience that provides a clear guest checkout option. When it comes to the mobile experience, you want to be as friction-free as possible, any steps that can shave off even seconds will increase the likelihood of an order being completed.
You can even integrate those handy “Sign in with your Facebook or Google profile” as options which can double as a time-saver as well as an account creation option.
Remember, customers are guests on your website, so always give them the option to checkout as a guest—it is what a good host does.
Pop-Ups & Lightboxes
Yes, it is 2021, and we are still talking about website pop-ups. While they are not as prevalent as they once were, they do have their time and place on desktop sites—but rarely on mobile sites.
The fact is that mobile pop-ups too often disrupt the experience and can cause vast amounts of frustration as we try to pinpoint that tiny “x” that will allow us to get rid of it.
Additionally, often they are not optimized for the mobile experience—extending far beyond the screen real estate can essentially “break” the ability to navigate your mobile website.
Now is this to say that you can never use a pop-up on your mobile site? No, a case can certainly be made that having a minimal form with minimal form fields can be useful.
But as we move into the holiday shopping season and more customers are researching their upcoming purchases, you want to stick to providing your best products and offers directly wherever possible.
Do This Instead
Utilize your prime above-the-fold real estate of your mobile home page (and/or other pages) to feature your most enticing offers to keep customers engaged.
If you are going to offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more, let customers know as soon as they land on your site—you don’t need an additional pop-up for that.
Want to use a countdown timer (a classic with pop-ups) to drive home that FOMO amongst your customers? You can add this directly to your homepage banner as well—again, without disrupting the experience.
Having this “countdown to Black Friday” clock staring you in the face from the first second will be sure to get the point across without giving visitors the extra task of having to close out a pop-up.
Mobile – Beyond the Basics
The preceding are just a few of your focus points when it comes to mobile shopping this holiday season.
You should also consider providing additional payment options, ensuring secure checkouts, and reducing repetitive form entries when it comes to the checkout process.
The point is that we live in a mobile world and your ecommerce process needs to reflect this wherever possible. If you aren’t sure where to begin, we suggest starting with a mobile conversion rate optimization analysis to focus on your biggest bottlenecks.
You can click right here to drop us a line if you would like our experts to assist you, and if you haven’t already, download our latest ebook all about improving conversion for the 2021 holiday season.
Cheers to a profitable 2021 holiday season!