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Optimising Your eCommerce Strategy For Mobile Devices

June 10, 2021
June 10, 2021

Last week, Econsultancy published a post on how to target mobile eCommerce customers and beat the competition. Here’s the key takeaways from the blog post and some added advice from The Chat Shop.

The article on Econsultancy began by pointing out the huge growth in traffic and revenue for mobile in recent years. Mobile’s share of eCommerce traffic has grown from 3.5% to 36.9% since 2010; mobile revenue has risen from $2bn to $42bn. As Arie Shpanya suggests though, this doesn’t necessarily mean that your eCommerce strategy should focus primarily on mobile devices and the revenue that they bring. Mobile may account for 36.9% of eCommerce traffic but it only accounts for 18.2% of total revenue.

This means that although you may get a lot of mobile traffic, that traffic probably doesn’t convert as often as traffic from a desktop and certainly will not be behaving in the same way. Therefore, when you are optimising your eCommerce strategy you should be looking at how people interact with your website through different devices, optimising for multiple touch points and devices and looking to create cross-over in your device strategies.

Webrooming is a key reason for a skew between traffic and revenue through mobile devices. ‘Webrooming‘ is basically when a customer is window shopping your online store. 78% of US shoppers have webroomed during the past 12 months and a lot of them will have been doing it on their mobile devices.

It’s quite a normal thing to do, you’re stood in a queue or on the bus and you pass the time by looking at products which you might buy in the near future or maybe even never. You need to be providing detailed information on your products for both mobile and desktop users, so that they can find all the information that they need, on your site. If they do decide to buy at a later date because of your description then they’ll no doubt have bookmarked your site or used your basket as a storage area for the product. Check out our blog post on writing product descriptions that convert for some advice on writing better eCommerce copy.

Live chat also provides an opportunity to interact with those webrooming and push them towards a purchase. Live chat can provide any additional information which browsing shoppers need to make a decision and uses sales through service to entice them to buy, there and then (even when they’re on a mobile device).

As the Econsultancy post states, consumers need to trust you before purchasing. Purchasing on a mobile device usually takes more trust than a desktop site so you’ll often find that an online shopper will have to make a few purchases on a desktop before even considering doing so via mobile.

One prominent way of building trust is with live chat. Having a real, contactable person on your site shows that you are a genuine business and builds trust between the consumer and you. This works for all devices…even if an online shopper doesn’t decide to interact with live chat, its presence reassures visitors.

Not all mobile traffic is consumers browsing around, of course. 64% of the population read their email via a mobile device. Mobile is where consumers pick up your marketing emails and offers, and use your promotions to then buy via mobile or save them for later for buying on a desktop. Optimising your eCommerce strategy for mobile devices means providing the right offers for consumers who buy via these devices. You should segregate users based on the device that they usually buy with and send them device targeted promotions to help them convert. We’ve got a whole blog post devoted to explaining how to increase conversions with device targeted promotions, check it out here.

In conclusion, to optimise your eCommerce strategy for mobile devices, you shouldn’t be expecting mobile customers to act in the same way as your average eCommerce customer. Your eCommerce strategy needs to prepare for both mobile and desktop visitors and use features which work well across both devices. Build trust with all visitors using features such as live chat and customer reviews. Increase conversions with device targeted promotions. Provide all customers with instant assistance through live chat.

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Enjoyed this blog post? Here’s some of our other top eCommerce related posts that we think you’ll love:

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