Shopping from mobiles and tablets has increased significantly in recent years with 13.6 Billion being spent overseas Via Mobile and tablet. This change has meant that businesses need to invest in mobile friendly ecommerce stores that allow their customers to easily make purchases from these devices.
For many years, ecommerce stores have often been very heavy loading on computers and near impossible to use on mobiles. However with some of the latest web technologies now being used, even small businesses can make the most of mobile ecommerce.
Take a look at some top tips below to turn your dated ecommerce store into a mobile friendly mega-store.
Use a responsive web design
There is no such thing as one size fits all with web design but with responsive web design your websites theme will respond to any size of screen. Using this you do not need to have a separate theme for mobile devices and can use a consistent design across all devices.
Responsive web design works by detecting the size of the screen that you are using. It then responds to re-arrange the websites layout so that it all fits into your screen nicely and runs smoothly. Navigation bars are often shortened into combo-boxes and footers reduced.
Use a mobile friendly payment gateway
Your choice of payment options is going to be one of the first things that customer’s look for when buying from your website Customers often look for features such as how easy the system is to use and security. With more shoppers now buying products from overseas, security has become an increasing concern as customers want to know their money is in safe hands when buying from abroad.
One payment gateway that I would recommend is PayPal. PayPal is the most popular gateway to use when buying from overseas and benefits from many security features which make sure your money safe. Take a look at the video below which provides some great information about using PayPal to take your ecommerce store overseas.
Create a native mobile application
Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android systems are the two biggest mobile platforms on the market today. Both of these have millions of users which creates a great environment to develop a mobile application for your business. Creating a mobile application for these systems has many benefits including:
- The ability of sending notifications to customers. This means that you can direct market to them some of your latest offers direct to their mobile devices.
- Build up trust. Customers feel safer using official mobile applications instead of websites. An official and professional looking app alleviates the worry of viruses.
- Easier to purchase from mobiles. On mobile phones particularly, it can often be easier to purchase with a few steps of an application instead of going through a long payment process of a website.
Conclusion
Making your ecommerce store mobile friendly is crucial to stay competitive in today’s market and to keep in line with a fast moving environment. Customers often buy from mobile devices these days instead of a traditional computer and it is crucial to ensure you are providing the service for them to do this.
