Conversion First Design. A guide to optimize mobile commerce with conversion first design.

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White Paper

Skava

Conversion First Design

A guide to optimize mobile commerce

with conversion first design.

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CONTENT

1 2 3 Fully Custom Mobile UI

Mobile Website De-Coupled from Desktop Website Rapid Iterations on Mobile Website

Five Considerations for Mobile Websites

Shallow Navigation

Prevent Early Exits Mobile Top Sellers Instant Gratification Promotions and Deals

Conversion First Design

Is Ecommerce Growth Masking Your Mobile Losses?

Principals of Conversion First Design

3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4

Five Considerations for Mobile Websites

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Conversion First Design

During the 2013 holiday season, smartphones accounted for 19.7% of all online traffic, but was responsible for only 5.5% of sales, according to an IBM Benchmark report. This indicates that mobile is now a serious source

of traffic and potential revenue for retailers.

1. IBM. (2013). IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark: Black Friday Report 2013. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/marketing-solutions/bench mark-reports/black-friday-report-2013.pdf.

2. Internet Retailer. (2014). Internet Retailer Mobile 500 Guide.

However, upon deeper analysis, what becomes apparent is that not all mobile websites are created equal.

In the 2013 Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Report, the gap between how retailers are successful at implementing their mobile strategies is clear and shows how some are clearly ahead of, or behind their competition in the mobile commerce race.

VERTICAL Apparel Department Stores Electronics Flash Sale Hardware Office Supplies Outdoor Books 84 % 0.73 % 9.14 % 1.26 % 29.95 % 0.44 % 65.02 % 7.89 % 13.51 % 1.3 % 4.47 % 1.45 % 30.75 % 1.38 % 11.89 % 5.75 %

LOW PERFORMERS HIGH PERFORMERS

Percent of Retail Revenue Coming from Mobile

Collected from Internet Retailer Mobile 500 Guide 2014

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When discussing the growth of mcommerce, it can be easy to forget that ecommerce is also continuing to grow at a rate of 16.4%. The increase in revenues retailers see coming from ecommerce as a whole could be masking the loss of revenue they are losing from their mobile websites. Despite the fact that 20% of all traffic comes from mobile, according to Forrester only 46% of eBusiness professionals have implemented a mobile analytics solution. This shows the extent to which many retailers are struggling to keep pace and are unaware of where their mobile customers are going. In a nationwide study undertaken by Skava and Harris, 49% of customers said they immediately deflect to a competitor if they have a challenging experience when shopping on mobile.

Is Ecommerce Growth Masking Your Mobile Losses?

Amazon’s one-click checkout makes mobile shopping a breeze. Any retailer, who offers the same products as Amazon and doesn’t take their mobile strategy seriously, faces a real threat of losing the ever-growing mobile consumer to the retailing giant.

2006

Pre-smartphone

$4,000,000

Revenue Revenue Revenue

2013

$3,400,000

$150k $250k

How Retailers Lose Revenue Through Poor Performing Mobile Websites 2014

2006 - Pre-smartphone 2013 2014

100%Traffic

4%Conversion

$3,200,000 Average Order Value = $100

15% of all traffic now comes from smartphone and converts much lower than desktop causing a $450k loss in revenue.

As mobile traffic increases to 20% but mobile conversion remains the same, the loss in revenue deepens. Before smartphone mass adaption

100% of retail traffic comes from desktop.

85%Traffic

4%Conversion 1%15%ConversionTraffic 4%80%Conversion Traffic 1%20%ConversionTraffic Sample data shows 10,000,000 unique visitors monthly

-$600,000 -$450,000 6 3 5 Amazon is 14% of all ecommerce in North America.

Did You Know?

3. eMarketer. (2013). Mobile Devices to Boost US Holiday Ecommerce Sales Growth. http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Devic es-Boost-US-Holiday-Ecommerce-Sales-Growth/1010189.

4. Forrester Research (2013). Forrester’s Shopping Guide To Mobile Analytics Vendors. 5. Skava and Harris Study (2013).

6. Smith, Cooper. BI Intelligence. (2014). The Future of Retail.

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While Conversion First is a journey rather than a destination, over the years Skava has come up with some guiding principles that we believe aid in coming up with a conversion-focused design.

Not all principles apply to each retailer as well as all other cases in the same way. The only way to validate and practice conversion-first design is to incorporate these principles at the beginning of the design project. Then iterate rapidly once the site goes live to fine-tune the site.

In order to practice conversion-first design, you need to have the following capabilities:

Principles of Conversion First Design

Fully Custom Mobile UI

Build a mobile website that best serves the needs of your customers on mobile devices. This means the UI has to be driven by usability and not by templates. You should not be constrained to use a few cookie-cutter designs or have limitations around what features you can put on various pages on your own mobile website. All the best mobile websites have a very unique design, specific to that brand and retailer.

Mobile Website De-Coupled From Desktop Website

The mobile website should have its own navigation stack and sitemap, and it should not be forced to be the same as the desktop sitemap. You are not looking to “mobilize” your desktop site and you should not be constrained to only doing a one-to-one mapping between your mobile site and desktop site. The usability and conversion principles should define your mobile website.

Rapid Iterations on Mobile Site

The launch of your mobile website is the beginning of your mcommerce journey. You need to continuously monitor and improve the site by adding and removing features in an agile manner. Your mcommerce platform and vendor has to be able to help you in this journey. If you are unable to make rapid updates and improvements post launch, you risk losing customers to your competitors.

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1. Shallow Navigation

Reduce depth in your navigation stack. On a mobile device the average number of steps back a user takes is 1. Very rarely does a user switch departments/categories by navigating multiple levels back.

2. Prevent Early Exits

Exit on PDP pages is much higher than site average – it is about 2x site average while the home page is less than the site average. Visitors try to find what they are looking for and after a few attempts, give up and move on. They do not continue to go back and look. Create an experience where will continue to search by moving forward and provide non linear ways to find products.

3. Mobile Top Sellers Are Different

The top mobile categories are not the same as top desktop categories since what sells on mobile is not what sells on desktop. Find your best mobile selling products and categories and promote them on mobile. Measure mobile analytics and top-sellers separately.

4. Instant Gratification

Keep things simple. Show products as quickly as possible instead of adding multiple layers of navigation.

• Average pages per visit on mobile: 3 to 5 • Average PDP page views on mobile: 18% • Average pages per visit on tablet: 7

• Average PDP page views on mobile: 33%

*Based on Skava studies.

5. Promotions and Deals

Price matters – deals and promotions drive traffic to pages and increase pages viewed in the session and hence overall conversion. Promote on header, homepage, and every page.

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Conclusion

As more and more consumers around the world shift from feature phone to smartphones and want to perform the same tasks they do on mobile as they do on desktop such as shopping, retailers must take their mobile strategy seriously. When mobile traffic was only 1%-3% a retailer could be forgiven for wanting to get a quick and easy mobile website launched. But the world of mobile moves fast and some retailers have raised the bar so much that if you don’t immediately respond to the impatient mobile custom-er’s demands and expectations they will quickly deflect to a competitor. If your competitor offers a much better mobile shopping experience the question now is:

How long will it take a retailer to win that hard earned

customer back?

For more information on mobile commerce, contact Skava at 877.554.2176 or [email protected].

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