The 3Cs to Optimize Your Mobile Shopping Cart
While m-commerce merchants (and e-commerce merchants who adopted mobile early to get a head start) focus on driving traffic to their mobile store, they donât put enough thought into the mobile conversion funnel that is the ultimate barometer of business success. Often times, m-commerce marketing is a step-child to the more senior online store with opportunistic rather than planned activities that lead to a broken and leaking funnel.
At MartMobi we have developed a marketing framework that we call âthe 3Cs of mobile commerceâ. This framework can be used by mobile commerce merchants to plan their marketing activities and approach mobile sales with the same scientific approach that has become standard with online stores.
The 3Cs of Mobile Commerce
Covet mobile shoppers. Donât accommodate them. Donât accept them. Anything less than coveting them will fall short of converting shoppers into customers. Be everywhere they are. Email, search and social are the biggest drivers of traffic to commerce stores, so make sure you are prominent on all platforms.
» Search: About 34% of all search traffic comes from mobile, so if you sell cameras then make sure you show up in mobile search results for âbuy 12MP digital cameraâ.
» Social: Allow your existing users to share your products. About 75% of Facebookâs user base accesses the social network from mobile so you can safely bet that such referral traffic is going to visit your mobile store.
» Email: Send emails to retain your customers, or to acquire new ones. More email is read on mobile than on a desktop so once again, there is a good chance you will be driving traffic to your mobile store.
Once the shopper lands in your store, do everything you can to coax her to buy. Given that our average attention span is now 8 seconds (1 second less than a goldfish), it is imperative to grab and hold on to attention by all (ethical) means possible. The most critical in-mobile-store factors that coax a shopper to purchase are:
» Navigability: 91.4% of users say that ease of navigation is crucial to the success of an online store. This helps them quickly find what they want before they change their mind or go to a competitor. Research from Compuware found that 40% of consumers will go to a competitor after a bad mobile experience.
» Fast Site Load Times: 91.2% of users say that load time is the most important factor for online store success. This is unsurprising because a 1-second delay in page response leads to a 7% reduction in conversions.
» Competitive Pricing: Needless to say, online shoppers are price-conscious. 21% users say discounts and promotional offers are the most important feature to consider for an online shopping experience.
» Transparency: One of the key factors for acquiring new users is to be thoroughly transparent about your business. Once a shopper makes a purchase and returns for future purchases, then she is already familiar with your storeâs services. But the first time around, be clear about any additional costs, delivery times, stock-outs, return/refund policies, validity dates of coupons or any other issues that the shopper needs to be aware of.
Shopping cart abandonment is probably the most frustrating problem that online merchants face. The average abandonment rate is 72%, with mobile having an abandonment rate of 97%. These statistics are from 2012, and the numbers have improved since then, but mobile commerce merchants could do a lot more to reduce abandonment and increase conversions. Sometimes mobile shoppers are using their smartphones only to research (ROPO â Research Online Purchase Offline) and that explains some of that monstrous abandonment rate, but the same shoppers have also maintained that user experience is the most critical factor in making a mobile purchase. In fact, 30% of mobile shoppers have stated that they abandon a transaction if the experience is not optimized for mobile. So what can a merchant do to increase conversions?
» Pay attention to detail: Tiny design details such as using âBuyâ instead of âAdd to Cartâ, or adequate space between buttons to prevent accidental clicks, or colored buttons in prominent locations make a massive difference to conversion rates. Such details can easily be tested by putting out different versions and measuring the conversion rates.
» Convenience: Provide enough choice for shoppers to find their preferred payment mechanism, but also keep the process to as few clicks as possible. Make the shopping cart easy to edit and update. Bring up the right keypad at the right place (numeric keypad for filling the credit card number versus alphabetic keypad for filling out the name). For returning users, allow 1-click purchases, while first-time buyers should be able to do a guest checkout.
» Trust: Security is one of the biggest apprehensions of the mobile shopper. Alleviate such concerns by display secure site icons (which you should be approved for).
» Information: Different users have different criteria for deciding on a product. This criterion also varies by product line. Shoppers should be able to see a full-screen product gallery without much effort (and go back to the product page equally easily). Likewise, product reviews and testimonials should be easily viewable for those who value them (which is quite a few).
With this 3C framework of Covet-Coax-Convert, online merchants should be able to polish and refine their mobile offering and create a compelling experience for mobile shoppers. If this article has helped you, do let us know at [email protected]