Over the last few years, a major shift has occurred in online customer behavior - more and more consumers have started using their mobile devices to shop online. Our team at Newgen Payments has some interesting facts about the holiday season of 2015 that highlight the increasing importance of M-Commerce and the harmful consequences of ignoring this trend.
THE WORLD ON THE MOVE
M-Commerce sales reached $80 billion this year, 40% of the total E-Commerce pie, a significant increase over last year’s $57 billion and 29%. And we expect that trend to only increase in 2016. Mobile also tends to increase conversion due to the increased convenience, proximity, and accessibility of mobile devices which encourages impulse purchases. Merchants who have adapted to this mobile shift will grab the lion’s share of these sales.
EMBRACE THE CHANGE: INCREASE YOUR SALES
Research shows that 91% of small business websites are not mobile optimized. This results in a major loss of conversions and is increasingly detrimental to your business in the long run. Re-designing online stores and optimizing payment pages for customers that are on the move and carry their devices in their hands will help merchants capture that missed opportunity and even drive increased conversion.
MOBILE OPTIMIZATION: A STEP AHEAD
An optimized (not merely responsive) mobile website ensures customer satisfaction and increases repeat purchases. Mobile optimized websites contain streamlined text for a user-friendly interface, provide an easy-to-scroll experience, load images and pages at a faster pace and have accessible, and have clear and uncomplicated navigation.
The design of links and buttons on a webstore should be tap and touch-friendly, compliment the size of the screen, and be as adaptable to the touch of a finger as it is to a click of a mouse.
PAYMENTS: TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY?
The payments page is a crucial part of the checkout process which is often neglected by merchants. In order to convert a visitor into a customer, it is essential to make the customer feel at ease about the purchase and to provide a comfortable and reliable checkout experience. Recent research indicates that over 60% of online payment pages are not compatible with mobile devices which results in abandoned transactions- a major loss of sales.
To fully enhance the entire user experience, it is important for merchants to implement a responsive design along with fully-dynamic payment skins that automatically detect the screen size of the device used by consumers and adjust the payment pages accordingly. Apart from being optimized for mobiles, merchants should also ensure that their payment pages have a consistent look and feel that properly matches their website's theme for a seamless user checkout experience.
ADAPT OR PERISH
The M-Commerce market space is hyper-competitive and moves at a lightning-fast pace. If a customer comes to your webstore for the first time and doesn’t have a good browsing and checkout experience, they may never come back. So grab the opportunities that M-Commerce has opened up for you and make the most of this market shift, before your competitors beat you to it.
Taking your store online?
Looking to increase your mobile sales?
Want to expand and explore new markets?
Make it easy with Newgen Payments.
