How Can I Make More Sales Online Through Mobiles & Tablets?

With Black Friday looming, and the announcement that more websites are loaded globally on mobile devices than on desktops, it might be a good time to take another look at your mobile site. Although desktops still have the edge in the UK, it won't be long until smartphones and tablets are the first port of call for sourcing information.

According to the Office for National Statistics

• 76% of people turn to the web to find answers to their questions
• 63% of adults engage in social networking daily.

So what should businesses do to take advantage of this behaviour and increase sales?

Invest in your mobile site

I know that the idea of spending more money on your website might niggle, but ensuring that customers can immediately engage with your service is essential. Your website naturally needs to be responsive so that at least it works on smartphones and tablets, but there are other things that can be done to increase sales.

Usability. Take a look at your website on a mobile and see how easy it is to read, to navigate, to find information on, to fill in information, and to buy from. Are your forms responsive? What about your images? Do you have pop ups that you can't close on a mobile? Do you have filters to enable visitors to quickly find what they're looking for? What about your search? Does it actually work, or will your visitors lose the will to live trying to get the information that they are after?

Be ruthless, ask friends, family, colleagues, set up a focus group, do a survey, look at your web stats, but above all find out how easy it is to engage with your visitors and what can be done to improve this. If your products aren't easy to access and buy  then you will lose potential sales.

Consider your demographic. Ask yourself: "Who is my demographic and what will appeal to them?". Whatever your response will determine the design and content of your website. According to Adobe younger people prefer entertainment and humour, and older people want to feel that they can trust the brand, but above all imagery is essential with

• 66% of people preferring beautiful design to simple and plain
• 46% of people switching device if images take too long to load, and 39% leaving the site altogether
• 38% of people exiting a site if the content is unattractive and 35% switching devices.

Think too about your content and how it might need to differ on mobiles and tablets. Mobile users want instant information whereas tablet users are happy to scroll to find out more.

Getting imagery and content right is a must if you want to increase sales. It might be that you will need to invest in changes on your mobile site, but without this you may find that your visitors almost immediately exit on arrival at your home page.

Consider your call to action (CTA). The next thing to think about is: what will motivate my web visitor to click on my call to action and is it sitting above the fold on my mobile website? Your CTA is probably the most important part of your web page as it guides the user to engage directly with you. And although font size and colour are important, wording is as well. Try to make the CTA personal and avoid generic terms that are sterile and unengaging e.g. click here. Check your web stats to see if the CTA is successful, and if not change it.

Include a clickable phone number. Having a clickable phone number that can be seen on the mobile home screen is useful if you are a smaller business, but notwithstanding this your contact information must be readily accessible from your home page. This will help potential customers to get in touch, which can lead to sales.

Optimise your business for Google. We would strongly recommend that you set up a profile on Google for your business so that your business will appear in organic searches for your area on mobile devices. This is simple and free to do, but will add instant value to your business.

You might also wish to consider Google ads, not only for your business, but also for products. To do this you will need to set up a Google Merchant Center account. Google takes a feed from your website and by linking this with Google ad words you can enable your product listings to appear on Google Shopping. It is particularly useful for resellers selling brands because Google uses your product information to intelligently list your products alongside your competitors for relevant searches on all devices.

In conclusion

The mobile and tablet market is here to stay and hopefully now you have some ideas on how to increase your sales online. You may well need to invest in your mobile website, but you'll never know unless you take a look.

At iPages we aren't just about outstanding functionality that is affordable, we also want to ensure that your visitors have the best experience on your website. If we can help at all please call us on 01403 802000.

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