Experts say converting your online sales to mobile in 2020 can create record profits
It’s time to make mobile commerce your end game. Eighty-percent of Americans right now are shopping on their mobile devices, not on their desktops. So that’s where you need to be. Experts say businesses that create the best mobile check-out experience for shoppers will have a “massive advantage over their competitors” for years to come.
Consider this. E-commerce sales through mobile devices in 2019 smashed all records, earning U.S. retailers $167 billion. This year, Statista estimates mobile commerce will reach $336 billion. And here’s the kicker. The leading research firms predict next year more than half of all sales conducted online worldwide, or $659 billion, will be through mobile devices. While CBRE predicts 54% of E-commerce sales will be from mobile commerce, eMarketer says mobile will account for 73% of all online sales. Either way, any E-commerce retailers large and small that don’t get in the game today stand to lose significant revenue.
The rapid growth of mobile checkout has been driven by an increase in handheld devices’ computing power and the prevalence of mobile apps.
What is mobile checkout?
When someone places an order and completes the checkout with their cell phone, tablet, watch, or other mobile device on a website or mobile app, it’s called a mobile checkout. It allows people to buy whatever they want, whenever they want, at their convenience. Another definition refers to using a mobile device to shop inside brick and mortar stores. The best example is Apple retail. Employees help customers throughout the store pay from their handheld devices, instead of waiting in line at the register.
Buy now
The research company Comscore finds 69% of people use a mobile device to do research before making a purchase. They check for reviews, prices, discounts, and deals. Once they find what they want, they quickly buy. According to Mobile Marketer, 70% of mobile searches lead to an action within one hour. On the other hand, shoppers doing research on their desktop can take up to a month to make a purchase.
Conversion rates
While website visits are on the rise for smartphones and on the decline for desktops, mobile conversions are still less than half of desktop. Last year in the U.S., the conversion rate for mobile devices was 1.5% compared to 4.1% for desktops. That means customers are researching products on mobile, but only hitting the ‘Buy’ button on their home computers. In fact, 69% of E-commerce customers who start the buying process never finish. The reason? They want their shopping experience to be easy, seamless, and secure. But studies show many mobile checkout processes are no good. Even worse, 57% of consumers say they won’t recommend a retailer with a poorly designed mobile site. So mobile optimization and conversion are mission critical. Improve your check-out experience and improve your financial success.
Here are other benefits of M-commerce:
- Customers can make faster purchases from outside or within the store.
- You can give customers a better shopping experience. With analytics from mobile apps about the shopper’s age, location and buying history, you can show them products they really want.
- You can encourage shoppers to spread the word about your business by integrating social media platforms into your apps.
While the biggest benefit of M-commerce is explosive potential profits, there are some downsides:
- Businesses must stay up to date with mobile optimization, design, and best practices to convert shoppers.
- Your customers, even while physically in your store, can comparison shop. You’ll need to know your competitors’ prices and offer deals to compete.
- Retailers need to ensure check-out processes are secure and PCI compliant. When consumers worry about their information being stolen or used without their permission, they don’t shop with mobile devices.
Dial it in
Even though most shoppers are on smartphones, 52% of retailers do not optimize content for them. A large-scale Checkout study by Baymard found only 58% of the top grossing U.S. ecommerce sites have a “good” or “acceptable” checkout performance. Thirty-six percent of the sites are “mediocre,” and 6% have checkouts considered “poor.”
Dial-in your company’s M-commerce with these best practices:
Make sure the mobile pages load quickly. Consumers can be impatient and often demand instant gratification.
Strip down your mobile site to the basics. Use as few steps as possible between the landing and checkout pages. Studies show the more text, numbers and images on your site, the more your conversion rate drops. Bottom line; make it easy for them to spend money.
A higher screen resolution results in a $1.18 higher order, according to an Adobe Mobile First World report. The study found the mobile order value will increase for every extra 10,000 pixels on smartphones.
Include a one-click buying option. Amazon has been using it successfully since 1999.
Make it easy for people to fill out a form with one hand. It’s been shown to increase mobile conversion rates.
Using videos to demonstrate products are likely to generate more revenue.
Include trust marks, badges and/or certificates to make people feel safe. Since mobile E-commerce has risen, so have mobile security attacks, according to Mobile Business Insights. Sixty-three percent of smartphone users prefer to use a shopping app that requires them to sign in for secure access. Even better, protect your business and customers from credit card theft with Red Maple’s StagedPay™.
At Red Maple we can help with StagedPay.com™ , a revolutionary security system. It safeguards your customers’ credit card information whether you take orders over the phone, by M-commerce, online, or in person. When mobile customers choose to buy something, StagedPay™ will text or email them a link with the amount of the order. Instead of giving the retailer sensitive credit card and personal information in check-out, customers use their own devices and StagedPay.com to make the purchase. Since the businesses don’t collect customers’ private information, it can’t be stolen by employees or cybercriminals. For small businesses to restaurants to bars to international corporations, StagedPay™ means more sales and more profit.
To learn more about StagedPay™ by Red Maple, please visit StagedPay.com.
About StagedPay™
StagedPay™ is a hosted credit card solution that provided merchants with a range of services that allows them to accept credit cards and process credit cards without actually knowing the entire credit card number. With a proprietary patent-pending process, merchants can accept part of a credit card up front during an order, only to allow StagedPay™ to interact with their customer afterward to finish the order by retrieving the rest of the credit card.
StagedPay™ works by combining the parts of the credit card number taken like a combination lock in a secured hosted environment to create a “token”, a unique representation of the credit card between the merchant and their processor. So, while the merchant never has the entire credit card number, they can still process charges on the customer’s account, securely. Risks of theft, fraud and the cost of PCI compliance are minimized even for the largest companies.
StagedPay hosts an independent secure portal for businesses and customers to manage invoices 24/7. The portal:
- Allows businesses to send customers invoices so customers can pay at their convenience.
- Allows customers to update their billing address, zip code and account numbers at any time.
- Allows customers to store their tokenized credit card information into a company’s ERP system to use it securely for future transactions.