The Importance of UX Design for Boosting Your Mobile Ecommerce Conversions

The number of online orders made using a smartphone has been rising, meaning businesses who fail to optimise their site for mobile are missing out. Over a billion people now access the web from handheld devices, with 54% of online sales predicted to come from mobile in 2021.

While the trajectory of ecommerce is clear, and the stats surrounding mobile purchases and searches impossible to refute, there are various theories on how businesses should approach mobile optimisation. How much emphasis should be placed on metrics such as speed? What is the ideal mobile conversion rate? And which features characterise a strong mobile-friendly site?

One thing beyond argument is that User Experience (UX) has a significant bearing on conversions. Since consumers have grown more comfortable with the idea of making purchases using their smartphone, the onus is on companies to make purchases easier, presenting a pleasing mobile-optimised site or app that reduces friction at every touchpoint.

Which factors strengthen mobile UX?

So, which characteristics define a compelling mobile ecommerce site? The most obvious one is speed: research indicates that mobile users are much more impatient than their desktop counterparts. Mobile shoppers are also less tolerant of clutter, no surprise given the dimensions of a smartphone screen. Thus, while a desktop site may contain lengthy product descriptions, a mobile equivalent should be concise, perhaps even displaying bullet points rather than paragraphs.

Intuitive design is useful for all ecommerce businesses, but especially so for mobile sites. The page should be laid out in such a way that visitors are instinctively compelled to enter the “funnel”, whether that be by clicking on an appealing image that brings them onto a product page or by signing up for a newsletter that captures their details. Data-driven insights gleaned from Google Analytics should manifest in page layout, responsiveness and content.

Ask yourself: Am I giving the visitor all the information they need to complete a purchase? Is content easily accessible rather than buried beneath images and social roundels? Are the functions of buttons obvious, and is it easy to jump between homepage, product page and category page? You may answer Yes to all of these questions, but you are not a typical buyer. This is why many ecommerce platforms carry out detailed surveys of customers and integrate heat maps and session recordings to develop and test hypotheses related to UX and conversions. 

By doing so, it becomes easier to point visitors in the right direction and make on-page recommendations. It also becomes easier to maximise the appeal of products and services using psychological triggers, for example by emphasising urgency and scarcity. 

Simplifying the checkout

Of course, slick design, enticing images and persuasive copy will count for naught if the checkout process isn’t right. By rights, customers should be able to breeze through payment while doing as little work as possible. Ultimately, you need to make sure that completing checkout is as easy as handing cash over at the till. Nail the checkout flow and all that time you expended on optimising your UX will reap the reward it warrants.

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