How to Optimise an E-Commerce Website for Mobile

Factors that Boost ecommerce Website Optimisation

Inappropriate redirection results into slow page load and scares off the customers

If you have ever waited for a page to load on your smartphone, you can understand how frustrating such experiences could be. Slower page load time and wretched mobile experiences can make smartphone users to give up on browsing, oftentimes leaving the site forever. Unfortunately, showcasing more of the content by retail stores adds up unnecessary time into their loading process that ultimately get reflected through lost sales.

An ongoing research about mobile eCommerce sites revealed that mobile redirects are spreading like wildfire among the most reputed retailers. The analysis showed that 39% of such e-retail websites redirects visitors two or more times prior they load. The sites having the maximum number of redirects – let’s take four or more o average- takes 16 seconds of loading time, shockingly 8 seconds more than the websites having mo redirects at all.

This sort of substandard experience does more harm than just making a customer frustrated. According to a recent survey of Aberdeen Group, conversions can fall up to 7% even if there is just a single second delay happens in the response time of the website. Fortunately, there is no need to panic as this problem has workable solutions.

Let’s have insights into three most considerable tips that can help optimising your mobile eCommerce website:

1)   Reach Potential Customers through a Mobile Site (m.) and Keep it Functional on Mobile Devices only

In a utopia, a website having a mobile web address (m.) on a mobile device will readily redirect from its fundamental URL to the standalone mobile version in a single step. Unfortunately, this happens quite an often, even if you take top e-retail stores into consideration. In fact, sites redirect users 3.03 times (on an average) before making them land on the right page.

For avoiding such a condition, you should consider launching a m. Site. This will ensure that you have a mobile-oriented content while reducing the amount of time it takes the user to load a particular page to the minimal. Lesser will be the time for waiting on redirects; more will be the amount of time of user engagement on your website.

2)   Run and Test Your eCommerce Website on a Variety of Devices

It is not a necessary thing that the site loading in good speed over a phone will respond similarly on a tablet. It might fail. So, you should consider testing your website on the multitude of mobile devices so as to determine the common issues as well as device-specific issues. Don’t forget to analyse your website in multiple locations, different types of mobile browsers and its response for varying degrees of mobile connectivity. There are numerous tools available for testing such as website test offered by different resources.

Once passed through such tools, your website will never experience downfall. A practical approach could be taking your phone in hand and move out for a walk, a drive or commute through public transportation so to get a better idea of what real users experience while using your app on the go.

For being a continuous performer in delivering a qualitative retail experience, you should consider assigning your IT team with a task of managing mobile site testing. This team will keep a constant check on the performance of your mobile site and its adaptability on new browsers and devices.

3)   Consider Approaching Via Responsive Design

Responsive design has become indispensable need than merely a trend and pays off a number of advantages for retailers who want to offer an omnichannel experience of shopping to their visitors. With a responsive design, retails can easily maintain the same website across multiple channels including mobile, desktop or tablet, thus needing minimal redirects for exploring a mobile-compatible site.

Responsive design can be a bit tricky hence, should be deployed with caution. Such designs tend to consider mobile as the first mode of communication, but still are bulky in size and have a complex structure. They work smoothly for desktops and drags down when it comes on performance over a mobile. This occurs because responsive designs offer full desktop experience while hiding the content over mobile devices that results into an ill user experience.

Therefore, for implementing the responsive designs, it is preferable to keep a mentality of mobile first. Design a layout that’s attractive yet functional on a mobile device ensuring that its performance is as per the flow. In the end, visitors seek for desktop and mobile experiences that are not just identical in looks, but also in performance.

Mobile eCommerce is a trend to progress and will only be confined within retail shopping experience. It becomes utterly important for you to dedicate efforts and time for offering the best possible mobile shopping experience to your potential and existing customers – to be precise, an experience that fosters engagement- in order to elevate the conversion rate drastically.

This post has been written by Kristy Bernales – working as Sr. Designer at Web Design Xperts Melbourne, Australia. She is a passionate researcher and site-explorer. Spending time with nature fosters her innate creativity that makes her designs truly unique and appreciative artworks.