Optimizing your online store and business website for mobile can help boost sales. After all, there are more people who use mobile devices than desktops for browsing the web. If buyers can access your site with minimal problem on mobile, they’re more likely to explore and purchase your items. Thus, you can increase your revenue potential and grow your business.
Characteristics of Effective Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization can be done in two ways. You can either adjust your website’s design or build a separate mobile platform. Either way, the most important thing to consider is your customer’s mobile shopping experience.
A well-optimized E-Commerce site should have the following characteristics:
1. Pages should load fast.
Customers are more likely to stay and search items on your site if your pages are quick to load and easy to navigate. Usually, if a page takes longer than five seconds to load, customers become impatient and tend to abandon their shopping carts.
2. Text should be clear and readable.
Small mobile screens can only display a few lines of text at a time. If your website isn’t well-optimized, your site’s text might appear too small or big and awkward. Customers are more willing to buy items if they can read the product details clearly and completely.
3. Clickable objects are easy to tap on.
Clickable objects on your site should be tappable on touch screens. Mobile devices don’t use the mouse, so you should position and align icons and buttons for easy tapping. If buyers can’t tap on the right button because the icons are cramped, they’ll be discouraged to use your site.
4. Images are just the right size.
Customer engagement is more likely if both the product image and details fit on the screen. If you use images that don’t fit mobile screens, customers will struggle in sliding and scrolling to view the whole image and product details.
5. Pages are easy to navigate.
Your E-Commerce site should be easy to navigate on touch screens. If users can access more pages to find what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to stay and decide to buy.
Mobile Optimization Best Practices
To help ensure that your site has these qualities, best practices should be followed. You can check the following mobile optimization tips recommended by SupplyGem’s expert developers:
Keep it simple.
In optimizing for mobile, simplicity is the rule. Simplify your site’s content so it’s easy to read on smaller screens. Simplify the navigation so that users can access more content in less steps. Simplify the ordering process so that customers can spend more time searching for other items to order. And, most importantly, simplify your checkout process to make buying a breeze.
Keep nested menu items to one level.
If your website’s menu has several levels of nested items, it could be hard for customers to navigate to those items on touch screens. To ensure that both desktop and mobile users can navigate around your site properly, you should keep nested items to one level.
Switch from Icon Fonts to SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics).
More developers are now switching to the use of SVGs or vector icons. This is because SVGs offer more flexibility in displaying website graphics on browsers. These will make your website look more professional and avoid the graphic glitches that are common with icon fonts.
Wean your site from the use of hover effects.
If you use hover effects to display additional information or key function, you’ll deprive mobile users of that information. Instead of relying on hover effects to display key functions of clickable icons, you can just use the words as the icon. For example, if a $ icon means “view price”, just use the words “view price” for the icon button instead of the $ symbol. That way, every user will know that the button’s function is to display the price.
Optimize everything involved in the buying process.
Everything else, from forms to pop-ups and verifications, should be optimized for mobile. Make sure that mobile users can view the information on pop-up menus when they add to carts, checkout items, and finally make the payment. If you optimize your website but forget to optimize the order and buy forms, you won’t get the result you want.
This isn’t a definite guide on how to perfect mobile optimization, but these tips can help you get on the right track. After all, the focus of optimization is to improve the shopping experience—and in turn, to boost sales.
