Holiday shopping in 2020 is a whole new ball game. Not only did it get off to an early start, but with store closures and lockdowns in many areas, it’s also set to be almost entirely digital, and your mobile experience will be at the heart of it.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen mobile sessions in eCommerce jump to 79.2% across verticals, indicating that despite shelter in place orders, consumers are clearly favoring mobile browsing to desktop.
What’s more, checkouts on mobile are nearly as high, reaching 70.6%, reflecting a growing openness to transacting on a smaller screen. With so many new shoppers taking their gift lists online, it’ll be critical to create a seamless and fully optimized mobile experience.
I recently sat down with our partners, Sina Mobasser, Founder & COO of Tapcart, and Matt Humphreys, Chief Experience Officer and Principal Consultant at Diff, to break down the mobile experiences and capabilities that brands and retailers must offer this holiday season — and beyond.
Click here or on the image below to watch the mobile masterclass.
Highlights From the Mobile Experience Masterclass
Clarity is King
Syte: What can brands and retailers do to really ensure that the mobile experience is optimized for, first of all, the holiday season that is just around the corner, and secondly, for these new shoppers that started coming online because they cannot shop in physical stores?
Matt: The thing that I think most merchants should be thinking about is just clarity — clarity and directness, making sure that everything is so obvious and easy that shoppers don’t even have to think if there’s mindless and unambiguous choices that they need to make.
There’s nothing worse than if you had to think about what you’re doing online and read something three times. Nobody has time for that.
Sina: There’s a really interesting book called “Don’t Make me Think,” about web design practices that explains that it’s not about the number of clicks that it takes to do something, it’s about the difficulty in decision-making that’s required for those clicks.
You have to make it extremely clear what’s going to happen when they tap on something. If I’m going to give my credit card, am I going to be charged now? Am I going to be charged later? Is the product going to be received in time? All of these things are extremely important.
Building Trust With New Shoppers
Syte: We know many shoppers still have some trust issues buying on their mobile devices. What do you think brands can do in order to help people trust the brand, trust that even if they didn’t shop on mobile before they’ll get a very good experience?
Matt: One of the things that we’re going to see a lot this season is brand new users that have never shopped on the web before, or have barely shopped on the web. We need to be even more conscious of that boomer generation that doesn’t trust using their credit card on the internet, period.
I know it sounds like a backpedaling move, but I’ve recently seen success by showing the credit card icon strip that everybody assumes we don’t need anymore. That has actually helped convert sales lately, and it’s a clear indication to me that more people who are a little bit less familiar with online shopping, especially on mobile, are doing it for the first time. Having everything as trustworthy and legitimate as you can in your design is key
For more insights, checkout the full masterclass recording here.