Mobile Commerce Revenue to Top $6 Trillion in Three Years...Are You Ready?

Mobile Commerce Revenue to Top $6 Trillion in Three Years…Are You Ready?

Bryan Karas

June 1, 2018

Page load time is important when it comes to user experience and conversions – but it’s even more important on mobile.

Knowing that I had to go into the DMV and replace my driver’s license next week I used a Google Tool to run a test to see if the DMV’s mobile site loaded any faster than the torturous wait I expected to endure once I was actually there. The results were somewhat predictable…

DMV.ca.gov had a mobile page load time of 13 seconds – that’s “poor” and Google estimates a 31% chance of visitor loss. Warby Parker – one of our favorite ecommerce startups – had a lightning fast mobile page load time of 3 seconds – Google only estimated a 10% loss in visitors.

Bottom line: the DMV is run by sloths…and so is their website. But I digress…

Remembering my first mobile purchase

Think back to the days when you first started buying things from your phone. Was it tickets to a sold out concert, when you were on the go and couldn’t use a desktop?

Or, was it that one Saturday when the highly coveted new Jordan retros dropped? You just knew that they would sell out by 9:03 A.M. EST. The problem was, you lived on the West Coast so it’s 6:03 A.M., and you’re sitting in the back seat of a station wagon, driving for 70 minutes to a flea market – stuck listening to Nana tell you stories about how she walked to school barefoot in the snow for five miles uphill both ways. So, you reached for your phone and got to buying.

No? Just me…

The point is, back in the day people only made purchases on their mobile device if it was absolutely necessary. Loading times and unpredictable checkout processes scared people away. Nobody wants to put in their credit card info and have a website spaz out on them…hit back…redo it and hope they don’t get charged multiple times…

Lucky for us today is different. The tech is better and over 50% of all consumers are shopping on their mobile devices. Google says that 50% of all searches come from mobile devices. But, 20% of all customers still don’t purchase while on mobile. What the…

Are people still scared or does your mobile site suck?

There is so much evidence out there supporting the growth of mobile commerce and yes, most ecommerce businesses do have “mobile friendly” sites…then why do so many visitors fail to complete conversions when shopping on mobile?

Slow load times, crappy navigation, not having mobile optimized screens for viewing and comparing products, limited payment options, and too many form fields to complete a purchase top the list of gripes customers have when deciding NOT to buy.

So, here is a list of things to consider when optimizing your site for mobile commerce:

1. Don’t ever use hero sliders – sliders are the shiny ball when it comes to website homepages…CROs hate them and you should too.
2. Have super fast load times – 64% of users expect mobile pages to load in 4 seconds or less.
3. Use mobile first payment options – this helps customers complete conversions with one single click…helpful.
4. Promote and sell on social – enable social commerce channels like Facebook Shops, Shopping on Instagram and Buyable Pins…run ads to those shops.

We’ve gathered a list of resources to help familiarize yourself with mobile commerce and what actions you need to take to start killing it on mobile:

On a large scale, smartphones have been around for roughly 10 years – that’s really not a long time. Worldwide mobile commerce is forecasted to reach $6 trillion in three years…that’s almost a third of the entire U.S. National debt. Wowzers…

How Exxel Outdoors Saw a 272% Increase in Mobile Conversions and 193% Increase in Mobile Rev YoY

Exxel Outdoors, the parent company for 10 outdoors and sports sites, had issues with optimizing for mobile. They saw a boost of mobile traffic start coming in but no boost in conversions. They blamed it on development…among other issues.