Top 5 Best Practices For Optimizing your M-Commerce business

The majority of the consumers around the world now prefer to shop online rather than just visiting brick and mortar stores. This trend is only expected to surge exponentially in the coming years. Recent research reveals that four out of ten online purchases are made from a mobile device. Above all, rapid improvements in mobile technology now play a bigger role in influencing consumers’ buying habits, even if they are purchasing from a physical store. Consumers’ are now making the decision to buy a product by browsing product information via their smartphone. In this blog post, we will point out some of the top 5 best practices for optimizing mobile conversions via your eCommerce store.

What is M-commerce?

If you are doing a financial transaction using a mobile device, technically you are doing M-commerce aka mobile commerce. M-commerce is simply e-commerce done from a mobile device that enables you to trade from virtually anywhere from the world. The inception of m-commerce has brought disruptions in many businesses and fueled the growth of brand-new services & industries that includes in-app payments, mobile banking, location-based services, mobile tickets, digital content purchases, and much more.

Types of mobile commerce

M-commerce can be mainly classified into three categories:

1. Mobile shopping.

Mobile shopping is pretty much similar to e-commerce, the only difference is how customers access the e-commerce site. Your visitors are doing mobile shopping when they access your e-commerce site via their smartphone. You can deliver mobile shopping experiences to your customers by optimizing your e-commerce websites for mobile devices or publishing dedicated apps in the play store & app store.

2. Mobile banking.

Unlike online banking, Mobile banking is done only via a dedicated mobile app usually developed by a bank.

3. Mobile payments.

Mobile payments generally refer to payment services that are done via a mobile device. Mobile payments give customers freedom from paying with cash or cards.

5 best practices in mobile eCommerce app development:

• Ensure Your E-commerce Site is Responsive:

An e-commerce site that is not responsive on mobile devices can derail your mobile experience. Hence, It is highly important to make your e-commerce site responsive especially if you don’t have a dedicated mobile app. Responsive design adapts to your site’s content and adjusts automatically to fit the screen size of a variety of mobile devices. Having a responsive e-commerce site also gives you a financial advantage by eliminating the need to build a dedicated app for mobile users. If you lack e-commerce developers in your in-house team, it is highly important to partner up with an E-Commerce Website Development company that has solid experience in building responsive e-commerce sites for a wider customer base.

• Optimize your User Interface (UI):

A great UI is highly essential for e-commerce apps as more users access it from devices that have smaller screen sizes. Hence, it is important to keep your User Interface (UI) elements in a minimalistic manner. Especially on smaller smartphones, displaying too many UI elements can have a cluttered feel and will kill the user experience. Also, displaying too much content in your m-commerce app can negatively affect you.

• Consider one-handed input:

We all use smartphones in different ways. A recent study by UXMatters revealed that about half of the total mobile users use one hand to navigate mobile apps. And a quarter of them uses both of their hands while they use their smartphones. Your e-commerce app should be designed in such a way that it can be easily navigated with only one hand. The important layout elements of your m-commerce app must be placed in areas that are easy to reach. This is the main reason why important navigation elements are placed on the bottom of the screen on popular e-commerce apps.

• Offer Seamless, Secure Payment Options:

All of your optimization efforts will be in vain if your e-commerce app doesn’t provide users with a secure checkout process. The only way you can accelerate mobile conversions is by offering your customers a seamless and secure checkout system. Not only does it incite confidence in your customers, but it also allows you to significantly lower your cart abandonment rate.

Another important thing that you must do to optimize your checkout process is by integrating payment gateways that are more preferred by customers. To accomplish that, you need to figure out the most common credit cards or payment vendors they normally use and ensure your e-commerce site or app is compatible with those. Providing your users an added functionality to save their payment data will also contribute to a smoother payment experience.

• Leverage Automation Tools and Artificial Intelligence:

The e-commerce industry is dynamic and is constantly evolving to fulfill emerging customer needs. If you want to outpace your competitors, you need to adopt smart technologies that can run all of your sales, customer service, advertising, logistics, finance, and marketing needs. Fortunately, we live in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), which means there are plenty of opportunities for you to equip your e-commerce business to cater to their future needs. You can leverage AI systems to analyze the behavioral data of your customers to derive intelligent insights that help you target individual customers and deliver them with personalized needs. You can further enhance your e-commerce site by using Machine Learning algorithms to analyze customers’ purchasing patterns and recommend products likely to interest them.