Mobile Shopping in 2018: What’s Trending in the World of Mobile Commerce
by Ana Gotter • June 11, 2018
Ecommerce businesses are all about the sales and they work hard to get them across the board. Everything on their site is perfectly placed to entice users to click through, zooming in on product images and scanning reviews until they’re ready to head to the checkout.
All this time spent refining our ecommerce sites, though, can sometimes mean we forget that mobile shopping is definitely its own entity. Mobile commerce trends and buyer behaviors have been distinctly different for years—even if the trends have been evolving—and not accounting for that in your site design will absolutely isolate a huge part of your audience and cost you sales.
We don’t want that to happen, so in this post we’re going to take a look at what’s happening in the world of mobile shopping, including new trends and how your ecommerce business can adapt.
Why is Mobile Shopping So Important?
Do you use your mobile device differently from your desktop? Of course you do.
How you use your phone isn’t going to be even close to the same as the how you’d use a laptop, which has an easy-to-use keyboard, larger screens and allows you to view multiple tabs or sites at the same time.
So of course it’s no surprise that mobile shopping behavior won’t be the same as desktop shopping behavior. There is some overlap, but it’s definitely not identical by any means.
While the largest portion of sales are still happening on desktop sites, mobile is starting to catch up. Mobile conversions increased 30% YOY from 2015 to 2016, making mobile purchases account for 31% of all online purchases in 2016.
If you can afford to risk losing 30% of sales from your target audience, by all means, ignore mobile shopping. If you’re like most businesses, however, and don’t want to risk isolating big chunks of your target audience, keep reading to see how you can adapt for mobile commerce.
The Mobile Shopping Trends You Need to Know
Ready to rock the world of mobile commerce? Take a look at these five big mobile shopping trends that are happening right now and see how you can take advantage of them for your business.
1. Users Trust You More
Every time new technology comes out, users aren’t exactly jumping at the chance to trust it. That was true on mobile, which felt more susceptible to hacking and a little less secure all the way around.
This is a perception that’s starting to change and users are trusting mobile sites more, making them more willing to purchase from them. This isn’t all just perception, either. As mobile commerce has progressed, security capabilities have grown significantly.
While users learn to trust mobile shopping more, it’s still a good idea to use security badges on your site like those from McAfee to show users that their trust is well-earned.
2. Creating a True Omni-Channel Experience
Omni-channel commerce involves simultaneously selling across both offline and online channels. Think selling in store, on your website, Amazon and a mobile app. Ideally, a customer’s cart could be loaded on their desktop even if they’d added it on mobile.
Both mobile sites and mobile apps are important parts of the omni-channel experience, even if you just have one or the other. Sometimes, though, your best bet at selling more on mobile will be to take advantage of other mobile apps like Amazon. You can use tools to push your products to Amazon quickly, like Shopify’s Amazon Ecommerce app or WooCommerce’s Amazon Fulfillment plugin.
3. Offering Multiple Payment Options
Adding more payment options is a great way to improve your user experience, but the one-touch mobile checkout and digital wallet options have raised mobile conversions. This is thanks to several factors:
- It’s easier for them
- It speeds up the checkout process, which means less abandoned carts
- If they are having any reservations on trusting a mobile site, they don’t have to enter in their credit card information to complete the purchase.
Apple Pay, PayPal, and Amazon Pay are all great examples. If your site isn’t offering them yet for your mobile site, I’d change that as soon as possible.
4. Loading Speed is a Huge Factor
Site speed matters across the board, for both desktop and mobile. With mobile, though, you’ll have to take extra steps to make sure that your site is loading fast enough on the latest iPhones. Images and videos in particular may load fine on desktop but can drag down mobile loading speeds.
Make sure that your images are optimized for mobile. Use the smallest file sizes possible and take advantage of tools like Akamai Image Optimization to alter your images so that they stay beautiful without killing your loading speeds.
Not sure how your mobile site currently stands up? Test it here.
5. AR & VR
Both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies are becoming more popular and more accessible for businesses to invest in. And since both require specialized software or tools in order to engage in AR or VR, the easiest way to deliver this experience to potential customers is with the mobile device. This is particularly true for mobile apps.
Augmented reality is the best (and most accessible) choice for the majority of ecommerce businesses. It alters one aspect of reality, often overlaying something onto a pre-existing background. Examples include an app that lets you view how an outfit would look on you, or a site that lets users up set the dimensions of a new room and see how their furniture would fit to scale within it.
Virtual reality, on the other hand, is an entirely altered, virtual reality. Long-term, as true virtual devices become more common, ads that show what it’s like to go skiing at a certain resort could become powerful selling tools. In the meantime, while we wait for VR to really hit its stride, AR delivered through mobile devices is the way to go.
If you’re wondering how to incorporate augmented reality with your marketing in order to boost mobile shopping, take a look at these examples:
Using either AR or VR (or both) for your mobile commerce can absolutely be an expensive investment, but if you’re selling a great deal online, it can make a world of difference in the sales you get.
Conclusion
Mobile shopping is going to continue to become even more important year-over-year, so if you don’t have a strong mobile-optimized site, it’s time to change that. Once you do this, keep an eye on ground-breaking mobile commerce trends that excite users, like easy mobile pay and augmented reality tools to help you sell more.
By the way, if you’d like some help optimizing your website for mobile commerce, let me know here or in the comments. I’d love to help!
What do you think? Is your site optimized for mobile shopping? What mobile shopping trends are you most excited about? Share your thoughts, knowledge, and questions in the comments below!
