M-commerce: why is mobile optimisation important for e-commerce sites?
According to a 2022 Insider Intelligence report, m-commerce retail sales reached 359.32 billion dollars in 2021. And the experts believe this figure will double by 2025. With growth forecasts like this, it’s sensible to pull out all the stops to attract mobile buyers. After all, 35% of e-commerce turnover comes from mobile sales and, with 5G being rolled out, this percentage won’t be decreasing any time soon!
So, here is why and how to optimise your e-commerce site for mobile devices.
What is m-commerce? (definition)
The term m-commerce was coined in 1997 by Kevin Duffey from Finland to mean “the delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere, via wireless technology”.
Early forms of m-commerce used phone calls and text messaging. But with the arrival of mobiles then smartphones, m-commerce took a completely different turn.
Today, mobile commerce describes any commercial activity that uses mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Consumers depend more than ever on mobile devices, which are behind increasingly innovative sales channels (e.g., social commerce).
If you haven’t yet optimised your site for mobiles, what are you waiting for? A list of m-commerce’s benefits perhaps? Well, that’s handy. Here are all the reasons why you should optimise your e-commerce site for mobile devices.
What are the benefits of m-commerce?
For online retailers, there are lots of advantages to be gained from optimising sites for mobile devices. M-commerce offers so many opportunities, like improving the client experience, increasing the conversion rate and reducing abandoned baskets!
1. A higher conversion rate
Thanks to m-commerce, users can access their favourite e-commerce sites from any country or continent. Provide a mobile experience that works, and you’ll reach a broad spectrum of buyers wherever they are (in the street, on the underground, at the hairdresser, etc.).
For the client, the main benefit of m-commerce is that it’s quicker, easier, and more convenient than other sales channels. This generates a higher conversion rate for online retailers.
It goes without saying that the mobile buying process on your website must be as intuitive as possible.
2. A personalised buying experience
M-commerce enables you to target specific client groups and create tailored offers to meet their individual needs. To do this, you need clients to create an account on your e-commerce site or mobile app.
By creating a client account, users can save their contact details and preferred payment method. Once this data is saved, they won’t need to enter it again on their smartphones and can order in a few clicks.
To make future orders easier, their client accounts allow them to check their order history or add products to their favourites.
With all this information, the client buying experience can only be positive. And to take the experience even further, you can use special offers at strategic moments (e.g., a client’s birthday) and/or create a fantastic loyalty programme.
All these initiatives help to personalise the client buying experience via mobile.
3. The option to establish a multichannel strategy
Is your company on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and/or Pinterest? We recommend you use your reach on these social media platforms to boost your m-commerce sales. To do this, just add buy buttons to Instagram and other platforms you use. Buyers can use these to purchase from your e-commerce site without leaving their favourite social media platform.
Young people are more and more influenced by the products they discover on socials and via influencers. 87% of Gen Z beauty product consumers have bought something after an influencer recommended it.
So, why not introduce a multichannel strategy by using social media to your advantage? This aspect of m-commerce will help you target young consumers.
4. Better reach
Optimising your website for m-commerce will improve your brand’s reach and visibility. And with good reason: smartphone user numbers are growing. In 2022, 87% of French people owned a smartphone: most of the population.
By developing your mobile presence, you’ll benefit from more reach than competitors who haven’t optimised their e-commerce sites for mobile devices. And to give yourself the best chance of success, we suggest you create and update a Google Business Profile for your e-commerce site!
10 tips to help you optimise your e-commerce site for mobile devices
Now you know why you should optimise your e-commerce site for mobiles, it’s time to learn how to do it.
Here are our tips on making the most of m-commerce:
- Improve the loading speed of the mobile version of your e-commerce site
- Facilitate searches for products/services via your store’s mobile site or app (by adding filters)
- Make mobile payments secure
- Offer the maximum number of payment solutions like Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay (plus card)
- Maximise compatibility between your e-commerce site and Google Android and Apple iOS operating systems
- Provide quality customer service so clients are never disappointed by the buying experience
- Create a “Help” or “FAQs” session easily accessible from mobiles so users can quickly find answers to their questions wherever they are
- Make it possible to log in (create accounts)
- Track metrics for mobile users to adapt your mobile version to how they like to use it
- Send marketing text messages (according to various studies, the SMS open rate is around 98%)
Consumer buying behaviours on mobile devices 📲
Buying behaviours on mobile are different to those on a computer.
The smartphone is a buying tool in its own right.
Clients can find out about a product, compare solutions, discover more information and more, all using one device.
This is why we advise you to optimise your blog for mobiles and provide your prospects with information that has high added value.
The more they come into contact with your brand, the more they will tend to trust you and buy from your website.
Optimising your e-commerce site for m-commerce: recap
Still haven’t optimised your website for mobile devices? It’s time to act! ⏳
As a reminder, here are the benefits you can gain from m-commerce:
- Make your products available everywhere and all the time
- Get closer to clients via social commerce and SMS marketing
- Offer a personalised buying experience
- Benefit from increased reach
M-commerce seems to be a commercial opportunity with no negatives. But if you want your site to be available in multiple countries, you’ll need to have it translated into different languages.
At TextMaster, we offer a website translation service in over 30 language pairs and 50 areas of expertise.
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