Is your conversion funnel truly leak-free?

Right now, there are about 5.11 billion mobile phone owners worldwide. If you provide anything less than a seamless experience between desktop and mobile, you are losing out on massive potential sales.

In this article, we walk you through the different ways that you can best cater to your visitors anytime, anywhere, and thereby future-proof your conversion funnel.

 

Why is Mobile CRO Suddenly So Important?

We’ve often highlighted the importance of conversion rate optimisation (CRO), especially to e-commerce sites. And as more people rely exclusively on their handheld gadgets for Internet access–as much as 75 percent by 2025–optimising for mobile devices will become increasingly urgent for online retailers.

Already, mobile comprises 34.5 percent of total e-commerce sales, and this is expected to increase to 54 percent by 2021. This may in fact be an understatement, with Google announcing recently the “biggest leap forward” in its algorithm, which will enable the search giant to better understand natural language in queries

The impact of this latest development is even greater on mobile search, given the behaviour of modern consumers: When thinking about buying something, most shoppers today will turn first to a search engine for some quick online research, such as to compare prices or find deals. This has been proven to convert into a purchase 92% of the time – that is interest transformed into intent in mere minutes! 

 

Mobile CRO Techniques

With the increased adoption of mobile search, retailers need to look more closely at the unique needs of device users and strive to deliver the right speed, efficiency, and relevance across the entire omni-channel experience.

Here we list some quick and effective strategies you can use to see immediate results in your mobile CRO implementation.

 

Mobile SEO

Are you attracting the right kind of traffic in sufficient numbers? First things first: Drive more of your ideal customers to your site! Launching your own app at some point would be the perfect way to do this; but for now, you can start by applying even the basic mobile search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques:

  • Optimise your page titles and descriptions. This will help increase small-screen readability and improve audience retention.
  • SEO-ify your content. Make sure you’ve inserted the most searched keywords and phrases in the top places crawled by search bots.
  • Mind your links. Establish your website’s credibility, by linking to authoritative external content and by linking together your own website content.

Once you’ve pinned down your fundamentals, it’s time to review your mobile design strategy.

 

Minimalist design for mobile pages

A mobile site that is cluttered or takes too long to load is the quickest way to bounce a customer and lose a sale. Compare this to Buzzfeed, one of the Internet’s most viral mobile sites, which presents a clean overall design, easy-to-read menu, and large images for better navigability. As a result, every month, the news company draws some 650 million viewers and nine billion content views!

Be like Buzzfeed and design your mobile site to attract your best users:

  • Keep your mobile site simple. Limit the number of your website elements and load the most important ones first. Remember: If a mobile page takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of users will abandon it.
  • Use bullet points where you can. This will more clearly convey key information and improve readability.
  • Optimise all images and videos. Format your visual assets for mobile display. For example, you want every photo light and responsive.
  • Avoid using pop-ups. There is no place for distractions on your mobile pages. One wrong tap and you divert your user from making a purchase.

 

Optimisation for different screen sizes

Smartphones alone come in various shapes and sizes, and then there are tablets, ultra-mobile PCs, personal digital assistants, and wearable devices. As a marketer, you need to cater your content to suit the common screen variations, so as not to lose  conversions from any one single source:

  • Scale your site for both landscape and portrait view. 
  • Set your images, videos, and other visual assets to adjust to various screen sizes and leave nothing to chance.
  • Every screen type has its own ideal thumb zone. Place your most important buttons in this comfortable touch area.
  • Locate your most important buttons towards the bottom of the screen, to make it easier for buyers to sort, filter, add to cart, and so on.
  • Make sure that your search functionality is on point and that the dropdown list of results will not cover the entire page.

 

Intuitive navigation

Having a simple and intuitive navigation structure clears the path of potential obstacles, reducing the number of steps  along your customer’s journey, from the first touch point down to the ultimate purchase. Some might even say that, most e-commerce stores need no more than a single page website containing the most basic of information, your brand name, a search field, a menu, your contact details, and of course, a shortcut button for checkout. That is the beauty of mobile design.

 

Push notifications and messages

No mobile marketing toolbox should be without SMS messages and push notifications. Both features offer a better response rate than conventional emails, and you can use them to re-engage with your customers, after they have completed a purchase or even when they have abandoned your website. Push notifications, for example, have been seen to boost engagement by 88 percent.

 

Optimising your site for mobile access does not leave you with too many options, does it? From the number of assets you are allowed to use to the character count on your meta descriptions, it’s not quite as flexible or free-wheeling as designing for desktop users. But it is no longer just “nice to have”, what with more than half of total web traffic already attributed to these devices.

The question for retailers now is: How prepared are you for this mobile revolution? Talk to us about creating an aggressive mobile marketing strategy that is future-proof, to plug any leaks in your conversion funnel and help you maximise your sales.

Contact us

Share page: