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For retailers, a mobile-ready website is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity. Mobile usage and mobile commerce in particular are growing remarkably fast, with a recent survey from Deloitte pointing toward nearly $1 trillion in holiday sales during the 2016 shopping season alone. Mobile commerce is growing so rapidly that many retailers – a majority of small businesses as well as large international companies – now think “mobile first” for all of their online sales. However, some online storefronts are still not 100% mobile ready.

 

It’s not just the holiday season that businesses can take advantage of – 45 percent of smartphone owners now use their phones to make purchases online.1 In many countries, including the U.S., more searches today take place on mobile devices than on computers. Eighty-two percent of smartphone users say they consult their phones on purchases they’re about to make in a store.2

 

Mobile commerce is growing so rapidly that many retailers – a majority of small businesses as well as large international companies – must think “mobile first” for all of their online sales. However, some online storefronts are still not 100 percent mobile ready. A common mistake some retailers make is to assume that because their website looks great on a desktop, that it will still have the same impact on a mobile device. This assumption could affect sales.

 

So what can business owners do to ensure they are mobile ready this holiday season? Below are six key tips:

 

1. Have a mobile-ready site: Today it is imperative that your website payments screen works well on a variety of mobile devices and screen sizes. To do that, PayPal recommends you build your website on a ‘responsive’ or ‘adaptive’ platform. A responsive or adaptive website is able to detect the device your customer is using and automatically resize your website to work best on that device.

 

2. Be your own shopper: Be your own mystery shopper, or observe someone else navigate your site on a mobile device who hasn’t shopped with you before. Pay close attention to the frustrations that would drive a paying customer somewhere else – in advance of the holidays. Where are the bottlenecks? What did they expect in a purchase path – and what did they experience instead? Just two or three testers can help you uncover some of the bigger issues with shopping and checkout on your website – ensuring you are mobile ready throughout the holiday season.

 

3. Simplify navigation and add pictures: Your goal should be to minimize data entry, clicking or zooming on your mobile site. Use big buttons, larger fonts, and a fixed navigation bar so customers can easily find what they are looking for. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words. Use simple, uncluttered and professional product images to sell your goods.

 

4. Include easy to find checkout buttons and your phone number: It’s a good practice to have sticky ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Checkout’ buttons on screen. This makes it easier for customers to purchase, particularly during peak shopping days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and others. Also, include your customer service phone number frequently, especially where users might experience problems on information pages and throughout the checkout process. This will help reduce the number of people leaving your site.

 

5. Perfect your mobile payment process: Another critical area of being mobile ready for the holidays is to streamline your payment process to reduce cart abandonment. Allow guest checkout, minimal text entry, and use of a payment solution that is mobile-optimized. One such tool is PayPal One Touch™, which allows customers to checkout with their PayPal account quickly from a merchant site without the need to enter credit cards or other additional information from their mobile phone. Simplifying this last mile is critical, but even more important on mobile to turn an ‘on-the-go browse’ into a sales conversion this holiday season.

 

PayPal’s payment solutions are designed for mobile payments. They simplify the payment process, helping to reduce errors and increase conversion rates. For example, in a recent study commissioned by PayPal, checkout conversion is up to 44 percent higher for PayPal versus non-PayPal (debit or credit card) transactions.3 PayPal saves your customers from the awkwardness (and possible danger) of entering credit and debit card information, and billing and shipping information – sometimes in a public place – on small screens.

 

6. Consider a mobile app for your loyal, repeat customers: Mobile apps can be particularly effective when used for building and rewarding customer loyalty, which is shopper catnip during the holidays. When well-designed, they provide a platform to establish and deepen customer connection. Consider building one well in advance of the holiday season so you can offer perks such as reduced shipping rates to loyal customers. The upside is you can use this app to communicate with your loyal customer base all year round as well.

 

Follow these simple tips to ensure you are mobile commerce ready for the upcoming holiday season, and beyond. To access more tips and resources on how to have a successful holiday for your business, head to PayPal’s merchant holiday resource site here: https://paypal.com/merchantholiday.  

 

 

1. Bizrate Insights: mCommerce Projected to Grow by 68% in 2016. Connexity, Inc. 2015.

2. Internet Retailer, “U.S. e-commerce grows 14.6% in 2015,” by Stefany Zaroban. February 17, 2016

3. As reported in Nielsen’s Online Panel research for activity occurring from July–November 2015, which compared PayPal transactions to non-PayPal transactions on sites that offer PayPal as a payment option. Nielsen measured 125,000 households’ online behavior across 10 SMB merchants