With more shoppers browsing and buying on mobile, it’s important for ecommerce business owners to understand what makes a website mobile-friendly. Since a customer’s first visit to your website might actually happen on a mobile phone or tablet, offering an effortless mobile shopping experience in your store gives you a competitive edge over sites that aren’t as mobile-friendly. Whether you already have an online store or you’re getting ready to launch one, there are extra details and features that impact whether your store is optimized for mobile commerce (mcommerce).
This guide will teach you the basics of mcommerce and how mobile commerce features can help you improve your sales and customer experience.
What is mobile commerce and why does it matter?
Mobile commerce refers to the steps involved in purchasing something on a mobile device. That includes:
Shopping on a smartphone or tablet
Mobile payments and digital wallets
Banking through a mobile app
Mobile commerce falls under the umbrella of ecommerce, which covers all online purchases, including online shopping via a desktop web browser.
Not optimizing your online store for mobile commerce makes it harder for your customers to complete a purchase or learn about your products. If you’ve set up an online store for your desktop site, you may think your customers and clients can access it via a phone or tablet without any issue, but actually, some website features won’t automatically translate to a mobile device.
Smartphones make up 71% of retail website visits in the United States and more than 50% of online shopping orders. If your store isn’t mobile-friendly, you could serve the majority of your visitors a less-than-ideal experience and affect your bottom line.
Learn more: Mobile Commerce 101
What makes a website mobile-friendly?
A mobile-friendly website is a site that communicates and works just as well on a phone or tablet screen as it does on a desktop browser. The most obvious way this shows up is in a site’s design elements. When you view a mobile-friendly site on your phone or tablet, the images and text resize and rearrange themselves to fit your screen so that nothing is cut off or obscured—a feature achieved through user interface methods called adaptive design or responsive design.
You have control over other features that can make your site more mobile-friendly, too. Details like how quickly pages load and how easy it is to navigate your site help to optimize it for mobile browsing and shopping.
Key mobile-friendly features for ecommerce
Entrepreneurs with online stores have a few additional factors to consider if they want to optimize their store for mobile commerce. Not only should your site check functionality boxes—like loading quickly and looking good on different screen sizes—but it should create a smooth shopping experience.
You’ll need to think about:
Whether your product listings translate to mobile: Your products should be easy to browse. That means clear images, easy navigation between listings, and descriptions that don’t require too much scrolling.
The checkout flow: Make it easy for customers to jump to their cart and fill out your shipping and checkout forms with minimal scrolling and tapping.
How customers pay: Continue that easy checkout flow by making it easy for customers to make a payment. Express pay or “buy now, pay later” options, for example, reduce hesitations about making a purchase and build confidence that their financial information is secure.
Calls to action (CTAs): Make sure your CTAs are clear and easy to tap, whether you’re directing a customer to add an item to their cart or asking them to sign up for a newsletter.
Learn more: How to Make Your Site Ready for Mobile Commerce
Design an online store for mobile in eight steps
Every entrepreneur with an online store should include mobile optimization in their store’s design process. An online store that works well on mobile devices gives you an advantage over competitors who have less functional mobile experiences. A mobile-friendly store also helps build confidence between your brand and your customers.
Here are eight steps to creating an online store that’s optimized for mobile:
Choose your ecommerce platform: Save time by choosing a tool to host and build your online store that has some mobile optimization features baked in, like Squarespace.
Upload products and descriptions: To optimize these listings for mobile users, make sure important visual elements are clear and descriptions are useful but brief.
Decide how to optimize your site for mobile: Ideally, your ecommerce platform should do some basic mobile optimization for you with built-in responsive or adaptive design, but you can also consider creating an additional mobile-only landing page.
Make it easy to navigate your store on mobile: It should be easy to find your online store from anywhere on your site, and for users to find a specific item or browse within categories.
Place features and text with a phone screen in mind: Make important features, like search or the navigation menu, easily reachable with the tap of a thumb.
Ensure mobile transactions are simple and quick: Consider adding express pay options or giving users the option to check out as a guest to help purchasing run smoothly.
Integrate your store into your social media: Social platforms that allow users to buy directly within the app (known as social selling) offer another way to make a sale quickly and easily.
Consider adding features that can grow your sales: Build on the foundation you’ve created by adding features like abandoned cart emails to scale your online sales.
Learn more: How to Design an Online Store for Mobile