Why You Should Prepare For Mobile Ecommerce

Technology evolves at a phenomenal rate and in recent years we have seen the rise of mobile phones. With these advantages we have also seen a huge rise in people using their mobile phones for web browsing and even online shopping via their phones.

Why You Should Prepare

A recent study by IMRG showed that during the second quarter of 2011, around 7% of traffic to ecommerce websites came from a mobile device. As time progresses, this number will only grow higher.

Mobile phones offer a convenience that laptops and desktops cannot and as the larger websites move to take advantage of this, users will become more accepting of buying via the mobile and usage will increase. 

Software on mobile phones will also get more sophisticated and allow for more advancements that also will lead to increased usage. 

How Can You Prepare And Take Advantage

There are many ways you can take advantage of this shift in the market. The first and most important is to make sure that you website works on mobile devices. You can do this by creating a mobile friendly version of your site that displays correctly for the screen size and functionality available.

These mobile friendly designs don't force users to work hard to use your website but offer a tailored experience. 

If you're running Pay Per Click marketing then a mobile version of your site opens a whole new market to explore. It's likely that many of your competition don't target mobile users or don't have a mobile site and are not maximising their return on investment due to a poor user experience.

What To Bear In Mind

Like any website, you should always test and refine your site to ensure the highest return. Once you have made a mobile version of your site you should be monitoring its important stats such as bounce rate, conversions, navigation and so on.

If you think of your website as a one time design and build then you will be missing out as the web is an ever changing environment.

What Does The Future Look Like

The future looks bright for mobile usage. It will only grow bigger and bigger as users can browse and shop where ever they can get a signal. Soon it will count for a reasonable amount of your website traffic and to not have a mobile version may be costing you.

If you have an Analytics program running such as Google Analytics then you can check how much mobile traffic it receives, if you also have ecommerce tracking running then you can compare how well your mobile site performs against your standard site.