Five key steps to preventing customers from leaving your mobile shopping cart

The last several years smartphones and tablets have taken over the mobile industry. As such, it has become more important than ever for your business to create a site that your customers can use on their smartphones and tablets. This includes being able to utilize your site’s shopping cart feature to purchase your products and services while on the go. Mobile shopping carts are specifically designed to conveniently address and fulfill the needs of your customers on the go. You more than likely already know about the increasing popularity of mobile eCommerce in general, which is why you are investing your time and money in a mobile cart in the first place. To drastically minimize the number of your customers who could be added to the average 65 percent shopping cart abandonment rate, there are several key steps for you to take to minimize the rate of shipping cart abandonment by your customers, according to Savvy Panda.

Match the Functionality of a Desktop Cart

As mentioned earlier, the convenience of mobile shopping carts is one of the main reasons why so many consumers enjoy using them. However, the last thing they want is to lose the performance and overall functionality of the standard desktop shopping cart just to gain that convenience. Your customers should be able to receive the same quality experience regardless of the device they use to access your website, according to the articulated vision of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as reported by eCommerce Bytes. Therefore, you need to focus on providing a comparable level of speed and efficiency overall in both your mobile and desktop carts.

Aim for a Simple Design

There is no need to overcomplicate your mobile shopping cart with multiple bells and whistles. Your customers will basically just want to get in and get out. Keep in mind they would’ve already spent a considerable amount of time just to make it to your mobile shopping cart in the first place, especially if they are purchasing multiple items.

Invite your customers to explore your site freely by not overwhelming them with options, and only display content that is the most important and relevant, according to Oracle. Your cart design needs to be creative and captivating without becoming cluttered and excessive, so that customers can easily access it on the go with absolute ease.

Place Your Call-to-Action Buttons in the Spotlight

Another important step when designing your mobile shopping cart is to make sure your call-to-action buttons and graphics are receiving the type of exposure they need to remain effective. Your customers don’t want to waste time searching and digging for your “Add-to-Cart” button or your “Checkout” link, for example. Two of the most valuable fundamentals of a mobile website in general are visibility and usability. If your social media buttons and graphics stand out more than your call-to-action shopping cart buttons, something is very wrong with that picture, according to Yahoo Small Business.

Break Down the Checkout Process

There could very well be certain elements of your standard desktop shopping cart that you would love to include within your mobile shopping cart as well. Perhaps you have implemented a variety of promotional advertisements and banners within your standard cart that connect either to other products within your own catalog or to one of your corporate partners. You may also have quite a few informative pages for your customers to explore as they work their way through your shopping cart towards the checkout page. While these pages might come in handy for shoppers using your standard desktop shopping cart, they need to be some of the first items to go when designing your mobile cart. The rule of thumb is that your customer should be able to make it from the product to the checkout page with just a few quick mouse clicks.

Test the Efficiency of Your Cart Frequently

Take the time to run through a few practice scenarios and sales simulations within your website and mobile shopping cart on a regular basis. Doing so will make it much easier for you to identify potential problems and issues with your mobile shopping cart that need to be resolved before your customers notice them as well. It also gives you the opportunity to see just how easy it is for your customers to purchase your products and services from their mobile devices.

Shopping from their mobile devices is a trend that customers will continue to follow. If you want to be able to retain the customers you have, as well as bring more customers to your site, it is important to understand the key concepts behind designing a site that works well on mobile devices. You don’t need to be a developer for this: keeping your customers happy and making it easy for them to purchase your products and services while they are on the go will go a long way in keeping your doors open. For more ecommerce platforms check out this comparison chart.