The trading has been known for thousands of years since people exchanged eggs for milk and vice versa. In today’s fast-paced world, where we all have at least one Internet device, commerce has moved to our computers. Now it enters our hands – it becomes mobile. As we change as a society, it changes with us. Now is the time to see how mobile devices change commerce.
These days, trade is constantly evolving. Influenced constantly by the digitalization of society, the change of customer satisfaction and the ever smaller screens. It is as if we are playing a race with technology. Who will win this battle – mobile devices or commerce? Let’s find the answer together.
Mobile commerce, the new world order
Mobile devices not only change customer expectations, but also fundamentally change CX. And once it changes, imagine what happens to UX / UI !
In the era of “nano design”, when people buy via smaller and smaller devices, designers (and businesses) need to be transformed, but not sell less. What is their task: to create value-added experiences as they look at the pixels. They should also focus on developing meaningful relationships from the mobile device to the customer. Mobile commerce is on the rise.
The one-size-fits-all design unfortunately no longer works. Design for various devices has become the new holy grail, especially after the very definition and scale of online stores has changed dramatically, they have become mobile.
For designers, programmers, online store owners and customers, the changing online environment means new design principles, new interfaces, but most importantly: new business models.
To adapt to this game, it is important to first analyze why mobile devices are changing online commerce. Lets analyze how they are influencing interface design on both a large scale and a nanoscale. Let’s start!
Shorter attention against higher expectations
Man keeps his attention shorter than a goldfish. We don’t know how true this is, but one thing is for sure: our technological dependence, combined with an endless array of possibilities, makes shopping an extremely volatile and complex experience.
The burden of simplifying the CX customer experience should fall on the shoulders of business and UX designers, not on the end user. Have you noticed how many companies expect us, as consumers, to change, not them? In fact, the best strategy is to understand what the customer wants and to transform the business to those needs, not the other way around.
However, there is another problem here: how can mobile commerce catch the customer’s attention, as the attention is our most valuable currency? Imagine that you are shopping online, via phone and suddenly someone calls you or you receive a message. Will you complete the order? Guess not!
It has never been harder for brands to gain and maintain the attention of their customers.
In this hyper competitive and fragmented world of online commerce, consumers have too many choices and services. As a result, they expect better offers, knowledge and personalization from the brands they buy from.
What is true about digital distribution, applies to retail and online commerce. Whether you sell T-shirts, hair accessories, breastfeeding pumps, motorcycles or something in between, we must follow the same rules; Тoday’s consumers expect speed, ease, convenience, availability and constant personalization.
What is mobile commerce?
Mobile commerce, also called m-commerce or mcommerce, includes any money transaction made using a mobile device.
This is the latest part of online commerce, allowing people to buy and sell goods or services anywhere, anytime. All that simply using a mobile phone or tablet. However, mobile commerce is much more than just an evolution in online commerce! It is a stimulus for the evolution of almost all industries and services, including:
- Mobile money transfers
- Electronic tickets and boarding cards
- Purchase and delivery of digital content
- Mobile banking
- Contactless payments
- Location-based services
- Mobile marketing, coupons and loyalty cards
Although m-commerce covers a wide variety of transactions, all of which can be categorized as one of these three types:
1. Mobile Commerce
Similar to online commerce, but accessible through a mobile device. Mobile shopping is now possible through mobile-optimized websites, specialized applications and even social media trading platforms.
2. Mobile banking
It is not very different from online banking. Although you may find that some types of transactions are restricted or unavailable on mobile devices. Mobile banking usually involves a special application. Although some banks have begun experimenting with the use of chatbots and messaging applications.
3. Mobile payments
The types of mobile payments can be a separate article, but we will not look at them in detail now. Let’s just tell you that if there are dozens of methods of payment over the phone. Some of the most famous are: Apple Pay, PayPal One-Touch, Visa Checkout, Amazon Pay.
How does mobile commerce change CX and UX and what can we do?
Smartphones are the new malls. With one swipe of the finger, consumers can go from store A to store B, to store C and never look back. It’s as if consumers now have a whole mall in their hands.
As corridors are replaced with countless pages and drop-down menus, the overall shopping experience is reduced. It’s no surprise that the average conversion rate in a physical retail store (usually over 20 percent) is 10 times higher than the conversion rate of the average store in Shopify (1.5 percent). The question is how to fix this?
Despite all its advantages, online commerce converts less because it still feels less personal and distant. Quite often, customers feel as if they are looking for a needle in a haystack – endless scrolling through a giant catalog of products on the small mobile screen.
This means it’s time for designers to rethink the basics of UX and come up with new innovative ways to fit everything on a 6-inch mobile screen.
The conclusion is clear: we need to rethink the way the customer searches for information on a mobile device to make it easier to find the product and make the customer experience as satisfying as possible regardless of the device.
From smarter search filters using artificial intelligence, to customizing the products a customer sees, to a virtual assistant to help with chat, there are many tactics that mobile store designers can use to increase satisfaction. from the customer experience and reduce the impact of the smaller screen on orders.
The ultimate goal is to enhance the strengths inherent in mobile devices (contextual, conversational, social, personal, etc.) in order to recreate the level of interactivity and the help that consumers typically receive in the store. Imagine shopping on a mobile device and talking to a coworker, won’t your level of satisfaction increase ?!
Data is at the heart of mobile commerce
In 2019, Google performed 4.5 million searches every minute. In this world of huge data sets, it is easy to lose our attention from the end user and without wanting to focus our design efforts on everyone.
As mentioned earlier, the current mobile user expects a more personalized face-to-face attitude, unlike previous trading models, which are not interested in the device they use.
So the challenge here is how to customize all this information so that each user sees only what they would like?
Small improvements in personalization can dramatically increase the conversion rate in Shopify mobile stores, especially if we can adapt the demand of each individual user.
Moreover, chat channels (such as webchat) and customer authentication (as options for joining a loyalty program) can help unlock a set of data provided directly by the user. Let’s not forget that cookies will soon disappear. This will become a lasting competitive advantage for brands that effectively work with direct channels to users and collect valuable personalized data directly from them.
Top trends in 2020
We’ve talked a lot about what needs to change or be discovered, but let’s not forget that mobile commerce is here and now. What to expect from her this year?
Here are the biggest trends in mobile commerce in 2020, based on data on how consumers shop online:
- Increased trustMore and more consumers feel comfortable shopping from their phone. The more time we witness m-commerce, the more we will get used to the process. Many frequent consumers, often shoppers over the phone, are part of a generation that has grown up with digital technology throughout their lives.These generations are more likely to use mobile commerce than older generations. They have confidence, which over time is transferred to people who have not grown up with technology and prefer standard processes.
- Faster payment Payment methods in a mobile store and products such as Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal One Touch improve mobile conversions by up to 10%.And this is no surprise – as more and more consumers prefer to shop from mobile devices, they affect also the mobile wallets. Don’t make the user enter a card number, you will lose sales. Allow them to pay quickly and easily.
- Easier to use sites. People optimize more and more sites for mobile use.As mentioned earlier, online shopping is not a new trend. It is a key element of modern retail. As a result, almost every company now sells online. The conclusion is that almost all sites are optimized for a mobile device. What’s more, many brands move to a completely separate mobile site or application. In this case, developers create a mobile store specifically for the mobile user. It is different from what the online store version looks like.Brands that do this often see an increase in mobile conversion due to easier site navigation and the specific experience built for unique browsing patterns and mobile shopping challenges.
The future is already here
Sorry to tell you, but you do not have the luxury of time to think about mobile commerce, it is here and now and it is time for UX and CX optimization.
Mobile commerce was the fastest growing segment for which we, the customers, used our phones last year. And Shopify Plus retailers are already seeing an increase in orders, so what are you waiting for? Think about the advice we gave you and change your online store so that it is as suitable as possible for a mobile device. Mobile trading with the new UX will not only convert more, but will also attract new customers. Don’t let yourself have a great online store that doesn’t work on the phone, but doesn’t lose customers.
