Is your business mobile-ready for the holiday season?

08 December 2016 - 02:00 By PayPal
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SPONSORED| For retailers, a mobile-ready website is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity.

Mobile usage and mobile commerce in particular are growing remarkably fast. A recent survey from Deloitte points toward nearly $1-trillion in holiday sales during the 2016 shopping season alone. As part of this surge, e-commerce sales are expected to grow 17%-19%, of which mobile commerce is expected to grow 42%.

It’s not just the festive season that businesses can take advantage of – 45% of smartphone owners now use their phones to make purchases online, according to an article by Stefany Zaroban in Internet Retailer in February this year titled “US e-commerce grows 14.6% in 2015”.

In many countries, more searches today take place on mobile devices than on computers. Eighty-two percent of smartphone users say they consult their phones on purchases they’re about to make in a store, Zaroban reports.

Mobile commerce is growing so rapidly that many retailers – most small businesses as well as large international companies – now think mobile first for all their online sales. However, some online storefronts are still not 100% mobile-ready. A common mistake some retailers make is to assume that because their website looks great on a desktop, it will still have the same impact on a mobile device. This assumption could lead to lost sales.

So what can business owners do to ensure they are mobile-ready this festive season? Below are six key tips:

1. Have a mobile-ready site: Your website payments screen must work well on a variety of mobile devices and screen sizes. To do that, you should build your website on a responsive or adaptive platform. Such as website can detect the device your customer is using and automatically resize itself to work best on that device.

2. Be your own shopper: Be your own mystery shopper or watch someone else, who hasn’t shopped with you before, navigate your site on a mobile device. Pay attention to the frustrations that would drive away a paying customer – and do so well ahead of the holidays. Where are they getting stuck? What did they expect in a purchase path and what did they experience instead? Just two or three testers can help you uncover some of the bigger issues with shopping and checkout on your website, ensuring you are mobile-ready for the holiday season.

3. Simplify navigation and add pictures: Your goal should be to minimise data entry, clicking or zooming on your mobile site. Use big buttons, larger fonts and a fixed navigation bar so customers can easily find what they are looking for. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words. Use simple, uncluttered and professional product images to sell your goods.

4. Include easy-to-find checkout buttons and your phone number: It’s a good practice to have sticky “Add to cart” and “Checkout” buttons on screen. This makes it easier for customers to buy, particularly on peak shopping days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Also, include your customer-service phone number frequently, especially where users might experience problems on information pages and throughout the checkout process. This will help reduce the number of people leaving your site.

5. Perfect your mobile payment process: Another critical area of being mobile-ready for the holidays is to streamline your payment process to reduce cart abandonment. Allow guest checkout, minimal text entry and use of a payment system that is mobile optimised. One such tool is PayPal One Touch, which allows customers to check out with their PayPal account quickly from a merchant site without having to enter credit card details or other information from their mobile phone. Simplifying this last mile is critical on mobile to turn an “on-the-go browse” into a sale this festive season.

PayPal’s payment systems are designed for mobile payments. They simplify the payment process, helping to reduce errors and increase conversion rates.

For example, in a recent study commissioned by PayPal in the US, checkout conversion is up to 44% higher for PayPal versus non-PayPal (credit card) transactions (as reported in Nielsen’s Online Panel research for activity from July to November 2015, which compared PayPal transactions to non-PayPal transactions on sites that offer PayPal as a payment option).

PayPal saves your customers from the awkwardness (and possible danger) of entering credit and debit card information, and billing and shipping information – sometimes in a public place – on small screens.

6. Consider a mobile app for your loyal customers: Mobile apps can be particularly effective when used for building and rewarding customer loyalty, which is shopper catnip during the holidays. When well designed, they provide a platform to establish and deepen customer connections. Consider building one well ahead of the holiday season so you can offer perks such as reduced shipping rates to loyal customers. The upside is you can use this app to communicate with your loyal customer base all year long.

Follow these simple tips to ensure you are mobile-ready for the upcoming holidays and beyond.

This article was paid for by PayPal.

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