Last Updated on Jan 28, 2013 by Jenna Scaglione
Smartphones, tablets, mobile devices—they have dominated the marketplace and their usage continues to increase at an exponential rate.
Hundreds of millions of people in America alone use mobile devices and this number skyrockets with every country added to the list. Mobile access is so popular because users want fast, portable solutions that only these devices can provide.
With so many mobile users, Ecommerce stores can capitalize on the opportunity and optimize their sites.
Unfortunately, a poorly designed mobile site does more harm than good. It frustrates the user and could harm your reputation. The competition is fierce; if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, your customers will take their business where the user experience is optimal…your competition.
A site not optimized for mobile is heavy, cluttered and confusing, which lends to a frustrating experience for your customers.
Are your customers concerned about mobile-friendly sites?
According to a Google study, 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site. And 61% of users said they would leave the site to visit another if they didn’t find what they needed quickly. Sadly, 96% of consumers have visited sites that, according to their opinions, were not designed for mobile devices.
Although these stats reflect poor decisions on the part of webmasters worldwide, it leaves a wide gap for Ecommerce owners to jump in and reap the profits. The Google study also revealed that 74% of users said they would return to a site if it was mobile-friendly and 67% of users said that they would be more likely to buy from a site that is mobile-friendly.
How do you access the millions of mobile customers using their devices to shop?
Your Ecommerce site must be optimized for the mobile audience…not just one device, but all of the screen sizes available. It doesn’t make sense to optimize for a 7” tablet only and leave out every mobile user accessing smaller and larger screen sizes. However, the sad statistic is that optimizing for each screen size can cost a lot of time and money.
Thankfully, there is a solution. And it is responsive design.
Responsive design is a technology that automatically adjusts a site’s layout depending on the resolution of the user’s screen, whether tablet, smartphone or desktop.
How does this benefit you?
Conversions and Sales
An optimized mobile experience increases conversions because it enhances the user experience. If you were to visit your current website on your mobile device, you would notice small font, cluttered screens and a poor UX because the site simply “shrinks” down in its current form, which is not ideal for the mobile audience. Imagine the behavior of a user visiting a website not optimized for mobile—there will be constant scrolling, zooming in and out, and overall frustration when he tries to access the material desired.
Budget
If you had to create a new mobile interface each time a new screen size hit the market, your budget would be swallowed up. When you take advantage of responsive design, your site will automatically adjust to whatever screen size the user is accessing so you will only need to design your website once, which will save you a lot of money in the long run.
Have you tried responsive design? If you want to learn more about how Numinix can help your site to be optimized for every mobile device, contact us today.