Data from the research company Forrester shows that 55 percent of U.S. adults will probably abandon an online purchase if they can’t find quick answers to their questions. Another 77 percent say online retailers can show quality customer service by valuing their time.
Start catering to this rapidly growing crowd of mobile consumers by designing your site around smartphone sizes and uses. And now with smartphones increasing in size with every generation, mobile users are poised to surf online and shop more than ever. Read on for just a few ways to take advantage of larger mobile screens.
Make It GPS Friendly
Take advantage of the mobile revolution by offering GPS directions to your brick-and-mortar location. Pair your directions with a local, optimized SEO plan to appear on mobile maps and on nearby business searches.
Knowing what region your audience lives in doesn’t just benefit retail businesses, either. Any business can offer location-specific news, coupons and incentives by targeting the unique needs of your customers or readers. What someone needs in Manhattan or Santa Fe will vary widely, so utilize these differences to benefit your business.
Get Innovative With 2-D Barcodes
Potential customers want access to coupons, discounts and information on the go. So, think about lessons you can learn from companies such as Groupon and ScoutMob that give their users access to digital coupons and offers on the spot. Take their lead and eliminate the need to print offers, and don’t make them wait until they can hop on their laptop to sign up for more information about your services.
A 2-D barcode can instantly give your customers an incentive to shop or keep browsing. Best of all, 2-D barcodes have proven to be reliable with minimal failures and can give customers instant interaction no matter where they are. And, they can even be read upside down by your store’s reader, and thus reducing any hassle.
Don’t Get Left Behind
You may think you can keep your doors open by leaving your site as it already is, but your competitors are already re-designing and re-launching their web properties with promising results. For example, MTV re-designed several of its websites with responsive design and the results have been eye opening. They gained a 92 percent increase in mobile visits, 55 percent increase in mobile page views per visit and an 11 percent drop in exit rate across all devices, reports Search Engine Journal. Perhaps more importantly, there was a 297 percent spike in time spent per visit. Learn from this example by optimizing your site for mobile views and interactions.
Optimize for Success
Remember, it’s not enough to just design for ever-growing phablet screens and wait for a flood of mobile traffic to come your way. Test your design on a variety of smartphones such as the iPhone 6 with 4.7-inch retina HD display to make sure the graphics and content load quickly and seamlessly. Thoroughly check and re-test any sign-up or check-out processes to ensure a frictionless consumer experience. Keep the navigation simple and clean so your audience can intuitively access what they need. Do your due diligence to put across a user-friendly design and experience to stand apart from your competition.
