In today’s digital world, it’s more important than ever for small businesses to have an online presence. Shoppers, especially of younger ages, are beginning to prefer the convenience of shopping online over visiting a brick-and-mortar location, and many consumers are shopping on their mobile phones over desktop computers. In fact, a recent survey found that 80% of U.S. consumers shop on their mobile devices.
With that said, it’s important that your e-Commerce website is mobile-friendly. With a mobile-optimized website, you can improve your business’s search engine rankings, drive more website traffic, and capture more sales. In this post, we’ll discuss a few key tips to ensure your business on the Internet is ready for mobile shoppers.
1. Take Google’s mobile-friendly test and review the mobile usability report
To improve your website, you must first identify areas of improvement. Google's Mobile Test tool is a great place to start. With this tool, you can quickly understand ways you can improve the mobile experience of your small business website. To use the tool, simply type in your small business URL, click enter, and within seconds, you’ll have a full mobile usability report.
The tool scans for a long list of preliminary issues that a Googlebot may face when crawling your website. Common issues listed in the report may include small font size, touch elements that are too close together, and content that does not scale to the mobile viewport. This is an easy, effective way to quickly identify issues that you can focus on first.
2. Use a sticky navigation bar for your business on the Internet
As mobile devices have become more popular, scrolling and swiping have become second nature to many shoppers. Unfortunately, this type of interaction often causes mobile website users to quickly scroll past important content that may help influence their purchasing decision. To solve for this issue and get the right information in front of your users, you can integrate a fixed navigation bar into the mobile design of your business on the Internet.
A fixed navigation bar, also known as a “sticky” navigation bar, is a menu that stays locked in place at the top of a user’s screen even as they scroll. This tactic ensures website visitors always have access to important information. It also makes your website more user friendly by always giving users the ability to explore other pages, without having to scroll back to the top of a page.
3. Position your small business product photography front and center
The growing popularity of apps like Instagram show that visuals are key to the mobile experience. Product photography should be front and center on all pages of your mobile website design.
Fortunately, taking high-quality product photos has never been easier for small businesses. Before smartphones were the norm, taking professional photos was a labor-intensive process. Thanks to smartphone technology and mobile apps, we can now take great photos and edit them with the click of a few buttons. Check out this post for tips to take great photos for your small business with your mobile device.
4. Make sure your copy is concise
Unlike desktop computers, mobile devices have small screens. On mobile, you only have a limited amount of screen real estate to communicate your product’s differentiators and convince your visitors to convert to customers.
The copy on your website pages should be concise and only contain essential messages. Typically, this means only including your product or service name, pricing information, colors or other variant options, and a clear call-to-action button. If there is more important information, you can include it in a collapsible menu that’s hidden until a user clicks to expand. This will greatly improve the user’s visual experience while allowing them to focus on the most important elements of your product or service.
5. Encourage conversions with a sticky call-to-action (CTA) button
In the mobile browsing experience, you should ensure that users can easily click the most important CTA button, no matter where they are on your site. For an e-Commerce website, this is usually an Add to Cart button.
Make sure this button is noticeable and sticky on each product page for your business on the Internet. This small design tweak can drastically increase the likelihood of your visitors adding an item to their online shopping cart once they’re interested in your product or service.
Smartphones have redefined the e-Commerce shopping experience. These steps can you’re your optimize your small business for mobile shopping so visitors across all device types are engaged and encouraged to purchase your products or services online.
