For starters, you need to be mobile in every sense of the word. There are many factors to consider, but one you can’t ignore is the rapid rise of shopping via smart devices — aka m-commerce.
The stats don’t lie. During Black Friday 2019, for example, $2.9 billion of sales came via smartphones, with nearly three quarters — 71% — of UK shoppers doing their Black Friday shopping from mobile devices!
As a percentage in the UK, mobile sales are expected to overtake desktop sales by 2023. In 2018, mobile purchases accounted for 38% of total sales.
M-commerce, growing at a rate of 16% annually in the UK, has been made so much quicker and easier for consumers via tools such as in-app purchasing, mobile banking, marketplace apps like the Amazon mobile app and digital wallet options such as Apple Pay and Android Pay.
Here, we look at how m-commerce is evolving and some of the key steps you should take to optimise the mobile shopping experience for your customers!
How does your content appear on mobile devices?
When optimising product content on marketplaces such as Amazon, it’s vital to keep in mind how it will appear on mobile devices.
All copywriting such as titles, bullet points and product descriptions are likely to be condensed, so think about how you can trim your product details to make it more digestible for mobile. Are your bullet points concise, focusing on the most important product features and benefits for the consumer?
For those who like to skim-read, consider capitalising words at the beginning of each bullet point to help the reader quickly and easily identify the key selling points.
Make the most of product images
The level of information contained within your product image deck also requires careful consideration. Call-out images — images with punchy accompanying segments of copy — combine the best of both text and visual elements as they work in tandem to highlight key product features.
On Amazon’s mobile app, the image and video deck appears first, with a maximum of seven and users need to scroll down past data fields such as price, delivery options and related products before reaching the A+ content that really helps to showcase the product!
With that in mind, it’s worth ensuring that your customers can make buying decisions based on the strength of your images alone.
Work on the assumption that people are viewing your product images and descriptions from a smaller screen, so your images should be close up and high quality. They will still look great when viewed on a desktop!
Enhance user experience (UX)
If you want to improve conversion rates for mobile devices on your website, rather than or in conjunction with a marketplace, you need to make sure you enhance the user experience (UX), so make it fast and simple to navigate!
Customers who can’t access your product content because your site takes too long to load probably won’t hang around long enough to make a purchase. In fact, research has shown that they are only likely to wait three seconds for a site to load before they click away!
It’s all about balance. You want to make your site appealing to visitors with eye-catching and engaging content, just don’t get carried away by overloading it and hampering the UX.
High bounce rates = missed opportunities
Singles Day, China’s bumper shopping bonanza, boasted bigger sales revenues than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined in 2019 — a whopping £29 billion — to claim the top spot as the biggest shopping event in the calendar!
90% of purchases were made via mobile but bounce rates of 42% show that product listings optimised for mobile would almost certainly take a larger slice of the pie. Food for thought!
Conclusion
Mobile conversions are growing faster than online shopping overall, so perhaps it won’t be long before smartphone purchases outweigh traditional e-commerce transactions via desktops and laptops.
Make the most of the space available, whichever website or marketplace you’re optimising your mobile content for. A solid combination of enhanced UX, imagery and copy will help you increase discoverability, visibility and sales!
How can we help?
marketplace amp is an experienced marketplace optimisation and social media services agency with the expertise to create, set up and enhance high-impact product listings and ad campaigns. We’re proud to have worked with national and international consumer brands. With our help, you can ensure that your return on investment (ROI) is maximised. Our team can advise, set-up or manage the whole process — it’s entirely up to you.
Let’s speak about your project
If you need support with trading on the world’s marketplaces, we can help. Contact us today to find out how we can amplify your sales. You can also send a message, tweet us or connect with us on LinkedIn.
