Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Web Design

  • Mobile eCommerce by the Numbers

    Is your eCommerce platform optimized for mobile? It better be. With more smartphones in the hands of consumers, more people are finding and shopping from businesses on mobile browsers. Skeptical? Take a look at the numbers.

    Who Uses Smartphones?

    • 66% of Americans own a smartphone.
    • 15% of Americans say they have a limited ways to get online other than their mobile phone.
    • 10% of Americans do not have any other form of high-speed Internet access beyond a smartphone.

    What Are Mobile Users Doing on Their Devices?

    89% of time spent on smartphones is to access the Internet. So you know mobile users are most likely online when they’re on their smartphones.

    What Do People Do When They’re on the Internet?

    64% of all Internet usage is spent on making online purchases, and 86% of all Internet usage is spent doing general searches and browsing. What’s more, people expect responsive and high-speed websites on mobile: 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. 

    search

    It’s easy to be skeptical about loading speed—after all, how much difference does a few seconds really make? Think of it like this: Imagine you’re making $100,000 per day on your eCommerce site— a 1 second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.

    On Black Friday in 2015:

    36%

     57.2%

    Online Sales From Mobile Shopping Online Shopping-Related Traffic from Smartphones and Tablets

    Overall, smartphones were used 2x more this year on mobile shopping. In addition, people are also using smartphones to research and make purchases all year long. The lesson? Commerce happens everywhere and so should your business. Make sure you include mobile in your Magento eCommerce plans.

    What Can You Do to Engage Mobile Shoppers?

    To cater to mobile devices, follow these 3 simple steps:

    1) Check Your Analytics

    Make sure your site performs well on browsers for desktop and mobile. You can see that by looking at how long people are staying on your website and what they’re doing.

    2) Get a Responsive Theme

    Most major eCommerce platforms have a variety of responsive themes you can use for your store. If you’re personalizing a theme for your brand, make sure you keep the elements that make it responsive.

    3) Utilize Mobile Marketing

    So many people use their phones to find businesses near them. So for mobile, it’s necessary to to do local-based ads and make sure your address is registered with Google.

    shoping

    If you have questions or ideas on mobile eCommerce, feel free to share them in the comments section below and we’ll be quick to respond.

    Sources:

    https://www.looka.com/blog/website-design-trends/ (2023 update)

    http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/01/us-smartphone-use-in-2015/

    http://www.smartinsights.com/marketplace-analysis/customer-analysis/digital-communications-use-statistics-2014/

    http://www.newsweek.com/smartphones-save-black-friday-sale-2015-400058

  • Uncover Your Most Important Browser Rendering Issues in 6 Easy Steps

    Somewhere out there, someone can’t use your website. Believe it or not, there are dozens of bugs on your website right now. You may think that your site works perfectly and renders beautifully from the latest Chrome on your Thunderbolt display, but someone out there is bringing up your website using a device or a browser you didn’t know was still alive. You don’t want to know what they will see.

    That person might be a potential client who was directed to your website or landing page via a very well-orchestrated marketing campaign. Fine, so what’s the worst thing that could happen? They arrive at a destination that is not at all the beautifully designed website you intended for them to see and you have just kissed a potential client goodbye.

    The way I see it, whether you’re overspending on paid traffic or under-converting, you’re losing money. You can throw more money into your advertising pit, or you can chose to do more with the traffic you’ve already attracted. Most people don’t need help figuring out how to spend more money, so I’ll spend some time helping you with the latter here.

    The Testing Tools

    You can’t realistically account for each and every device and browser version on the planet. What you can do is come close enough to affect your bottom line without investing a ton of money. Two tools that will help you with your quest:

    1. CrossBrowserTesting
    2. BrowserStack

    Both of these tools let you see your website through the eyes of any visitor or potential client, even those who are loading your homepage from a Safari 7.0 browser on their iPhone 4s.
    BUT WAIT—before you launch down the rabbit hole of pulling up every possible browser/device combination, you’ll want to figure out which ones really matter.

    The Pre-Test

    So, which browsers and devices should you be testing? For this we turn to analytics. There are loads of analytics tools out there to get the job done, but for those of you who use Google Analytics, here are some instructions:

    1. Go to your Google Analytics Reporting Dashboard and set the timeframe for the past 30 days.
    2. Go to Audience and under Technology, select Browser & OS.
    3. Scroll down to the browser versions and make a list of the top converting browsers.
    4. Still in the Go To Audience category, select Technology under Mobile category.
    5. Make a separate list of the top converting devices.
    6. Repeat the steps for the past 60-day, 90-day, and 180-day timeframes to measure the consistency of your results.

    Here’s an example of a table that you could build to help you organize your data:

    Browser Version %Sessions Goal 1 CR Goal 2 CR
    I.E. 56.04%
    11.0 55.97% 96.41% 97.00%
    9.0 18.02% 0.64% 0.41%
    10.0 15.83% 2.94% 2.60%
    Chrome 26.86%
    44.0.2403.157 34.38% 46.75% 38.86%
    45.0.2454.85 15.28% 7.13% 22.91%
    45.0.2454.93 14.68% 21.59% 17.24%
    Safari 7.82%
    8.0 53.22% 33.33% 7.16%
    7.0 9.60% 33.33% 60.37%
    9.0 8.88% 0.00% 0.00%

    Make a separate list for mobile devices:

    Device %Sessions Goal 1 CR Goal 2 CR
    Apple iPhone 40.19% 9.09% 1.93%
    Apple iPad 13.52% 9.09% 16.30%
    Samsung Galaxy S5 11.1% 81.82% 81.76%
    Samsung Galaxy S4 1.32% 0.00% 0.00%

    Once you’ve got the data, you can raise some important questions. For example, why does your Goal 1 conversion rate drop significantly for I.E. 9 sessions? If a large percentage of sessions are taking place on that browser, it may be worth looking into. On mobile devices, maybe you’ll want to dig deeper into why Apple devices convert less than the Android devices. It could be a rendering problem.

    By the way, don’t judge—the issue isn’t whether or not people should be using an older browser or device, but how you can improve their experience with whatever technology your visitors are using. This is about data, not opinions. Don’t make assumptions about which browsers your visitors are using or how much they could be converting until you get the data.

    Now that you have your list of suspects, plug the browser and device info into the browser testing tools I mentioned earlier and see what comes out. If you notice any issues, they are probably related to:

    • JavaScript errors
    • Browser compatibility with vendor-specific CSS styles
    • HTML/CSS validation errors (the W3C Validation Service can help with this)

    Fix these issues or get a Front-End Developer to do it. Bottom line, don’t risk losing sales over fixable browser rendering issues. On the flip side, there is a pink elephant in the room: the performance of older browsers is inherently diminished, which also affects usability and conversions. To learn how to tackle this issue, check out my blog post on improving the speed of your website.

  • Is Your Business Ready for mCommerce?

    Recently, InternetRetailer.com released their annual “Internet Retailer Mobile 500” report which examines the trends impacting the top 500 online retailers. The study found that by the end of 2014, sales that take place on smartphone and tablet devices– known as mCommerce– will approach $84 billion and represent about 21% of all online sales for these 500 retailers. Not to be outdone, research firm Forrester is projecting mCommerce to total 4 billion in the U.S. by the end of this year.

    $84 billion or $114 billion: either way you slice it, that’s a lot of transactions and a tremendous amount of revenue. So the critical question to ask: is your business ready for mCommerce? In this post, we’ll show you what you need to do to get your business ready for an mCommerce environment.

    Is mCommerce Right for Your Business?

    Just because mCommerce is growing at a rapid rate doesn’t mean that you need to rush right out and get ready for mobile shoppers. In some instances, your customers may not be ready to make the jump to buying from you on mobile devices. If that’s the case, you’ll be better off applying your marketing and development dollars to other, more effective areas. But, you may ask, how can you tell if it is time to make the jump to mCommerce? Consider the following:

    How much mobile traffic do you get today? A great place to start is to open up your Web analytics and take a look at how much traffic your Web site currently receive from mobile sources such as tablets and smartphones. Tools such as Google Analytics do a good job of breaking out this data so you can easily answer this question. Look at that traffic. Is it growing over time? Has it risen to what you would consider a significant level? Just having mobile traffic isn’t enough, so you’ll need to go one step further. Segment your mobile traffic and look at it for sales to see if you have any visitors currently trying to purchase from you on mobile devices. Are you finding any attempts? Is it growing over time? If so, you may have an audience that is ready to buy from you on mobile devices.

    Are your products/services a good fit for mobile devices? Would a reasonable person expect to be able to make a purchase from you on a mobile device? I recommend taking a dispassionate look at what you sell and try to make a purchase on a mobile device. Does it work? Would it make sense to complete the transaction that way? There’s a big difference between purchasing a book on a mobile device and trying to complete the purchase of a car via your smartphone.

    What are your competitors doing? Like any good business, you probably have a handle on what your competitors are doing. Take a look at their site. Can you purchase from them on a mobile device? Do they use dedicated mobile apps? Do they have a responsive designed site that makes it easy to buy using a smartphone or tablet? If your competitors are already inching toward mCommerce, chances are you will need to also.

    3 Steps to Getting Started with mCommerce

    So, you’ve looked around, checked the data and it seems like mCommerce is a good fit with what you sell online. The next critical question: how do you get started with mCommerce? Let’s take a look at three key steps to getting started with mCommerce.

    1. Mobile app or responsive Web site? Mobile apps are great for specific types of purchases such as booking and paying for a hotel reservation. In this instance you’ll need to make certain that the app framework will work well with your eCommerce platform. On the other hand, if you have a large product catalog, a responsive Web site might be a better fit.

    2. Involve a good user experience (UX) designer to create a focused design. Good design is important to creating a buying experience that will lead to conversions (sales). Whether you create a mobile app or a responsive site design, working with a UX designer can help you eliminate unnecessary design elements and clutter from the overall design. This creates a more focused experience for the buyer and provides a clear path to purchase.

    3. Get ready to measure your efforts. One of the best things about digital marketing is that you can measure your efforts. MCommerce is no exception. Prior to going live with your mCommerce offerings, you’ll need to develop a marketing analytics strategy that is focused on what you need to measure to evaluate success. Your mCommerce analytics strategy should be able to help you identify what parts of the mobile environment create the best results (sales). This data can be used as part of an ongoing effort to fine tune your digital marketing efforts to drive more mCommerce sales.

    Take the Next Step with mCommerce

    As you can see, mCommerce is an area with a lot of potential. And while many of the traditional concepts of digital marketing are applicable to mCommerce, there are a few specific considerations you’ll want to pay attention to as you explore this for your business. Atlantic BT has helped many leading companies create and establish their eCommerce presence, including mCommerce. Contact our consulting team today to learn more about how we can help you capitalize on this growing avenue.

    About Jon Parks

    Jon Parks is Director of Marketing with Atlantic BT. In his work with Atlantic BT and through the digital marketing consultancy, Dijital Farm, Jon has experience helping companies develop digital marketing strategies to achieve their online marketing goals. You can follow Jon on Twitter (@jonparks), circle him on Google Plus or connect with him on LinkedIn.