Just a few years ago, many considered mobile commerce to be just a fad. In the end, who’d like to shop for products without being able to touch them, using a screen that’s far smaller than that of a desktop computer or a laptop? Surprisingly, the skeptics could not be more wrong.
With mobile commerce being expected to overtake the revenue of eCommerce in the beginning of 2019, no serious business owner can afford to underestimate the power of mobile. And, considering how fast the technology is evolving, it’s critical to keep an eye on all the trends and needs of customers that are shaping the industry. What are some of the most important ones?
1. Websites Will Need to Get Even Faster
How much time does your mobile store have before your visitors get distracted and dissatisfied? 5 seconds? 3 seconds? 2 seconds? Unfortunately, while these numbers didn’t look that bad just a few years ago, the acceptable wait time got shortened once again.
Today, it is recommended that a mobile commerce store loads in as little as 1.6 seconds to avoid user loss over frustration. What’s worse, 70% of potential customers will simply leave the websites that they consider too slow. How to avoid that and keep them at your site?
One of the easiest ways of doing that is investing in fast web hosting, that’ll provide your visitors with the experience they deserve. Not to mention that getting a hosting package separate from the platform on which you built your store gives you a lot more freedom and control over it. Both of which are essential if you want to customize the store to stand out.
2. Security Will Become a Really Hot Topic
Over the past few years, customers all over the world got used to shopping online. The spectacular success of Amazon and hundreds of smaller e-commerce retailer is a great proof that, in general, customers have nothing against handing their payment details over the Internet. But the conversion rate statistics show that there’s still a huge gap between m-commerce and standard e-commerce stores.
In the second quarter of 2018, the estimated average conversion rate for online shoppers was as high as 3.91% – with less than half that, just 1.61% for mobile commerce. What makes mobile visitors so much less likely to shop?
It turns out, one in five shoppers has serious security concerns related to shopping with the use of a smartphone. How to minimize them and, at the same time, increase your revenue, conversion rate, and profit? One of the easiest ways is getting an affordable SSL certificate – which encrypts the data exchanged with your store. And, most importantly, it’s clearly visible that the store is protected:
3. Big-Finger UX
Another trend that’s already visible and will continue well into 2019 is the so-called “big-finger UX”. What’s it all about? As mobile customers shop from a much smaller screen compared to desktop users, they have different requirements when it comes to moving around your store.
For example, even though mobile screen offers a lot less space, all the call-to-action buttons have to be much bigger, as they’re to be tapped with a finger, as opposed to getting clicked using a mouse. Similarly, product photos need to be big and easy to scroll using a finger, and product pages themselves will need to have fewer distractions than they do now.
Instant Communication
One of things all mobile shoppers have in common is that they’re usually in a hurry. They want to know everything now – especially if they’re browsing store offer while commuting to work or waiting for their friends. Because of that, they neither can nor want to wait for someone from the store’s team to answer their email or phone call.
Additionally, as most of them are used to social media, they prefer the same form of communication with store representatives – online chats and messaging apps. Interestingly, for many of them, there’s no difference between communicating with a living person and a chatbot – as long as they get the answers to their questions. In fact, almost half of them prefer a chatbot to an actual customer rep.
It’s no surprise then that by 2020, as much as 85% of customer support will be performed by intelligent automation such as chatbots.
5. Voice Search
While Google has already been talking all about voice search for quite some time, there’s still a lot of room for growth. It is estimated that the value of voice search purchases will soon grow from just over $2 billion to a staggering $40 billion by 2022 – almost 20x the current value in less than 3 years! What’s the reason for the growth?
Customers have been already using voice for navigation, simple searches, and to communicate with their mobile assistant apps. And as they got used to it, it’s natural that they’ll choose convenience of voice search when shopping too. What does that mean for your store? To take a piece of the huge voice search pie, you’ll need to rethink your SEO efforts and focus on long-tail keywords that mobile customers are more likely to use.
6. The “Me” Experience
One other trend that’ll experience a fast growth is personalization of customer experience. As the competition keeps increasing, companies will need to offer more unique experiences to grab the attention of their users and make them stay on their websites. This is true especially for mobile commerce where customer shop in many different circumstances and locations.
Because of that, the most common personalization trends will include those based on traffic sources, location of the visitor, as well as the device.
The good news is, even small changes can already have a very positive impact on visitors, with 53% of them believing that personalization adds a lot of value to the service and 59% admitting that it’s easier to find an interesting product in a store that offers a personalized user experience.