Infinite Path

With smartphones and tablets becoming more prevalent in today’s society, it’s no surprise that mobile ecommerce is beginning to take off. The promise is though, even though people are increasingly using mobile devices for browsing, this just doesn’t seem to be converting into sales in the same way as it does for computer users.

According to a new report from Screen Pages, mobile accounts for ten per cent of ecommerce website visits, however, the conversion rate is around half that of PC users.

Some 30 websites were analysed for the report, which looked at more than 1.5 million visitors to ecommerce sites – none of which were optimised for mobile browsing.

The average bounce rates were lower for mobile users – showing sites must be doing something right when they’re engaging smartphone customers. Mobile users were also found to be less likely to view multiple pages per visit. If you think about it, it’s not surprising, since with a smaller screen, mobile users are bound to be less keen to scrawl through hundreds of pages.
Bearing this in mind then, it’s vital for ecommerce sites to ensure they have a mobile-friendly website, otherwise people will definitely take their trade elsewhere. The conversion rates in the Screen Pages report were shown to be a huge 41 per cent lower than those from PC users – really emphasising the importance of trying to engage mobile customers.

Mobile-friendly websites will take some effort to set up and if ecommerce retailers can’t afford that kind of outlay, there is an alternative. Looking at your current website on a mobile device will help you to ascertain if there are any problem areas, which you can then sort out on your main site.

Remember, there are some things which are easy to do on a mobile device – scroll and click, but it’s not quite so simple to type. This is the kind of thing to bear in mind when trying to make a mobile-friendly site – make things big and clickable, not small and fiddly.

You never know what effect these kind of simple changes could have upon your conversion rate. It makes a lot of sense for ecommerce sites to do whatever they can to take advantage of the high volume of mobile traffic they’re seeing come through.