How to Optimize Your Site for Mobile Commerce

In 2020, U.S. mobile commerce spending reached $47.8 billion, 31% of the total retail eCommerce spend. If you’re not paying attention to how your website functions on a mobile device, now’s the time to take notice. 

Your website must look great and work well when a user engages with it on any device. It should be easy to see, navigate, and interact with. 

To help you, we’ve put together a list of action items you can complete to make your website user-friendly and accessible on mobile. 

Assess overall mobile-friendliness

When you’re ready to start working towards a website users can easily engage with on mobile, start by running Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Plug in your website’s URL and Google will assess its level of mobile friendliness. 

If your website needs work before it gets the green light on mobile optimization, Google will provide a list of things you can do to improve the mobile experience, such as compressing images. 

Evaluate your page speed 

Google suggests your site should load in fewer than three seconds on any device, and it considers page speed an SEO factor. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to test your site’s current speed and find areas for improvement. 

You can look at your page speed for desktop and mobile. Once you put in your website’s URL, the tool will test it and provide a numerical result between 0-100. Websites with a result of 90+ have sufficient page speed. 

The tool looks at three areas:

• The loading performance (the time it takes for the site to load)
• First input display (interactivity, or the time it takes for the website to respond)
• Layout shift (how often a viewer experiences a layout shift as the page is loading) 

Just like with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, the PageSpeed Insights tool will provide opportunities for improving, such as:

• Reducing unused JavaScript 
• Leveraging font-display CSS
• Reducing the impact of third-party code 
• Avoid serving legacy JavaScript 

Once you implement the suggested changes, continue to test your site until it reaches an acceptable score. 

Consider accelerated mobile pages 

In 2015, Google introduced accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to help sites load faster on mobile devices. AMP strips web pages down to the essentials and stores a cached version on Google’s servers, allowing it to show the content almost immediately. 

Realize that if a website has AMP, visitors don’t land on your site; they’re on the AMP. As a result, implementing AMP pages is not a decision to be taken lightly. 

AMP is typically beneficial for sites that struggle with page speed, even after implementing suggestions from the PageSpeed Insights tool. It’s also suitable for sites that get a majority of their traffic from mobile devices.  

AMP may not be an appropriate solution for sites that already have acceptable page speed, are used to qualify leads, or are highly branded. 

Simplify your site navigation 

Visitors use the navigation menu to access different areas of your website. It’s critical that they can use it easily on any device. If potential customers can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave—not an ideal outcome when you spend so much time and money convincing them to visit your site!.

Mobile website navigation should be easy to scan, and it should lead visitors to the primary sections of your site. Clear and organized navigation creates a positive user experience and keeps visitors on the site longer, which is also important for SEO.

You should accommodate for small screen sizes when designing (or redesigning) your mobile navigation. If your website utilizes a responsive design that automatically adjusts to fit any device, you’ll need to decide what links must be included and list those first. Note any elements from the desktop version of your site that are probably unnecessary for the mobile environment, such as excess content, multi-column design, or rarely accessed pages. 

A search bar should be a part of your navigation, especially on mobile. Many visitors also prefer using a search bar instead of a traditional site menu. Even better, the mobile search bar can help you learn what people search for within your site so you can create content to support it. 

Choose above-the-fold content 

As we’ve learned, website visitors make snap judgments about whether to stay or go. Content that’s “above the fold” (i.e., visible without scrolling) should hook the mobile user and convince them to stay. 

Use your above-the-fold content to grab their attention, display the brand’s personality, and introduce a call to action (CTA). Place your most critical content there. For example, highlight your latest promotion instead of filling the space with a flashy photo banner. 

Personalize the mobile experience 

Consumers know websites continuously collect their data, and in return, they want a highly personalized online experience. Personalization can do more than just accommodate customer desires—as many as 26% of marketers in the U.S. and the U.K. reported an ROI of $3-$5 for every dollar spent on personalized content. 

You can deliver a customized shopping experience on several different pages and areas of your mobile eCommerce website. Consider the following tactics: 

• Offer a custom coupon for first-time mobile shoppers on the homepage
• Personalize product pages using a mobile visitor’s location, previous purchases, and browsing history to display products and related items 
• Remind customers of items in abandoned carts
• Offer curated guides or lists of the customer’s favorite items based on on-site interactions 

No matter which personalization option you choose, it will contribute to a positive customer experience, which could lead to additional purchases, return visits, and an increase in a consumer’s lifetime value. 

Update pop-ups 

If you want to include a pop-up on your mobile site, there are a few things you’ll want to consider before taking the plunge. 

The pop-up must comply with Google’s regulations. For example, ensure the pop-up doesn’t take up the entire mobile screen; if it does, it can’t appear on the homepage (it should only display on a deeper page after the viewer has been on the site for a few minutes). 

A returning visitor shouldn’t see the same pop-up twice. This is part of that personalized experience we mentioned earlier. If you go to a site and follow a pop-up’s request to complete a newsletter sign-up, you don’t want to see that same pop-up the next time you visit the site. 

Make sure you keep the copy short and, if it’s a form, only ask for information related to the CTA. If you’re asking someone to sign up for an email newsletter, you don’t need their mailing address. 

Finally, don’t forget to have a way for users to quickly close the pop-up (an X in the upper corner will suffice).

Provide a guest checkout option 

Offering a guest checkout option is a way to increase conversions from mobile devices because it simplifies the process. In 2020, 59% of eCommerce sites provided a simplified checkout option. 

Asking a viewer to register before purchasing can be frustrating and complicated on a mobile device, and even some pre-registered customers may have forgotten their login information. 

Final thoughts

By optimizing your site for mobile, you’ll make things easier for consumers who aren’t always on a desktop. If you’re already implementing campaigns that push users to your mobile site (via social media or a QR code, for example), you want to make sure they have a positive experience once they get there. And thanks to this guide, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to accomplish this!

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