August 11, 2011

How to Create and Optimise a User-friendly M-Commerce Site

Streamline Search and Navigation to Deliver Optimal Usability and Higher Conversions

It’s widely reported that over the past year or two, consumers spend more time on their mobile devices doing tasks that they used to do primarily on their PC – for functions like banking, reading, shopping and social networking. The growing use of mobile devices for Web browsing is on a steep upward curve: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reports that mobile subscriptions surpassed 5 billion in 2010, and research firm IDC predicts that by 2013, the number of Internet-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones, will reach 1 billion.

The popularity of mobile devices means that your website needs to serve up content that’s easy for users of these small-screen (and often low-bandwidth) devices to navigate through. In particular, mobile commerce presents special challenges: How can you simplify your search and navigation processes to allow for the small screen real estate, tiny keyboards, and limited scrolling capability? How do you encourage mobile visitors to keep browsing? How do you adapt the best features of your full-sized website to the mobile world?

The easiest way to make your mobile website appealing to mobile users is to start with optimising site search for the mobile environment. In a recent survey we conducted of online retailers, 79% said that site search is important to a mobile website strategy, and 61% told us that they believe site search capabilities on a mobile site will generate additional conversions.

Start with the tips below to ensure that your mobile website’s search and navigation are as agile and user-friendly as possible.

Give the search box prominent placement on a mobile site
While site search boxes should always be easy to find, this is critical on a mobile site. If possible, place the search box right at the top of the mobile web page. For an example, look at the mobile home page for Amazon.com – essentially, it’s a search box with just a few other bits of text. You can also look at the mobile site for SLI client Motorcycle Superstore – it gives top billing to search to encourage shoppers to dive right in and look for products.

Streamline search results pages
Reduce picture sizes so that search results pages load quickly. The same goes for product descriptions – you don’t need much more than prices, colours and a few words about the item.

Offer expandable refinement options
Site search refinements on standard websites make it easy for site visitors to narrow down results and zero in on the products or content they’re looking for – and on a mobile site, refinements pay off even more. We suggest showing refinement options via a single “Refine Your Search” link that expands when users click on it. This means the refinement options don’t take up much screen real estate until they are clicked on, but they still provide the same functionality that users have during a regular search.

Add another search box at the bottom of the results page
If users scroll down to the bottom of the page and want to conduct another search, an additional search box makes it easy for them to do so without having to navigate back to the top of the results.

Blend social media content with mobile search results
Before mobile users get ready to head into a shop and make a purchase, they may want to know what their friends or other online people are saying about the product. Add links to tweets, Facebook posts, and blog posts that are relevant to the product or content.

Allow visitors to check local in-store availability from site search results
Since mobile users are presumably doing their searching while they are out and about, it helps if they can enter their postal code and find nearby locations that might have the item in stock.

Looking for more information about optimising your mobile site? Check out our video on best practices for mobile site search, or download our white paper “Site Search and the Mobile Commerce Revolution” at www.sli-systems.com.