Creating A Mobile Friendly Shopping Website

Posted on Oct 14 2013 - 11:13am by Editorial Staff

Shopping

E-commerce was once treated as a fancy of a handful of merchants. It has now become not only widely accepted, it has also entering the world of the Smartphones. The future of mobile shopping is well established and businesses would be smart to keep up. The most important step is to set up a mobile website that is easy to navigate and user-friendly. You can do this by creating a mobile version of your existing website, using a mobile site building tool or by hiring a web designer who can help you develop one. Some important things to keep in mind are:

  1. Screen size is the most important difference between a PC and a Smartphone. This makes your layout very important- it should be clear and easy for the user to navigate. Your home page is the most crucial- it should comprise of clearly marked links to the rest of your site. Since your customers will be holding the device in their hand and could be using it in a crowd, it is important to make your font size comparatively larger so that content can be easily read despite the small screen.
  2. Keep it simple. Do not add too many subpages as mobile users find it harder to keep track of the pages they have navigated. Also make sure there is a link to get back to the home page.
  3. It is important to keep your checkout experience comfortable for the user, because they usually feel less secure with their credit card and personal information since they might be using their device in public. Use a professional checkout service that stores this data online for a better process.
  4. Even though usage is now cheaper, many customers are still cautious about the amount of data they use, so help limit the customer’s bandwidth usage by minimizing animation and video streaming on your site.
  5. You can go one step further in the world of mobile web by linking to other sites such as Foursquare of Justdial which can provide the customer with directions to your actual store. This also enables them to ‘check in’ to your store on sites like Facebook, telling their friends about it too.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Luca Diggelmann

About the Author

Editorial Staff at I2Mag is a team of subject experts.