UX in m-commerce

Back in 2013, the mobile commerce revenue reached 98 billion US dollars. The next year, in 2014 this number has risen to 184 billion, which is twice as much. Can you guess how much it will be this year, in 2018?

The estimated revenue amount for 2018 is 669 billion. This trend has brought a lot of pressure on the mobile user experience, which is still, in some cases, not as good as it should be. In fact, if you look at the statistics from previous years, you will see that PC users have made more conversions than mobile phone users.

Maybe you are wondering what to do in order to avoid losing your customers just because your website doesn’t offer them what they are looking for, or more precisely they just can’t find it there.

While designing a m-commerce website, you should always keep in mind that you will never fit much information on the small screen of mobile phones. Is there an information on the desktop version you don’t necessarily need? Leave it out, save the space for important information.

Try to get the most from all the mobile features. Do you have stores, where the customer can pick up their purchase? Let them find the nearest one via GPS localization. People are grateful when you save their time and they don’t have to type their address. It is also very useful when estimating the delivery costs, so go ahead, implement geolocation to your website.

It is always great to put yourself into the shoes of your customers. Let’s say you have a question about a product and you need the answer as fast as possible. What would do? Call the company, what else. The easiest way to do it is just tap on one button and start calling immediately. How to simplify calling you? It is very easy, just put a button with your phone number on your website, which after being tapped on, dials the number.

Another very common mistake in m-commerce UX is made with pictures. When buying a product, you will most likely want to see what you are spending your money on. Almost 40 % of mobile e-commerce don’t allow their users to zoom the pictures via gestures (e.g. double tap).

When typing the number of your credit card, would you rather switch the keyboard from letters to numbers or would you rather have the numbers ready for you as soon as you tap on the field, where the card number goes? The second option. So, remember it, you are not the only one.

Finally, make your websites and web apps fast! We live a world, where every second is precious. Nobody wants to wait for their request to be completed. Some people say that the maximum loading time is five seconds. Well, honestly, try to even faster. Keep in mind what you could do in those 5 second…for example load a completely different website.

There are many other tips to make your website more profitable on mobile devices. We could write about them for hours. However, the only valuable recommendation is to always think about your own online experience and try to avoid the mistakes that made you angry a you didn’t finish your order. Highly recommended is to conduct user testing to see the advantages and disadvantages of the particular website. 

If you know your websites could have been better on mobile phones, but you don’t know what to do about it, feel free to look at our services. In Pixelfield, we will figure it out for you.