Nowadays, we do almost everything on our smartphones. We use it to communicate with our friends, connect with colleagues, and even build new relationships. What is more, we use our mobile devices to accomplish our day-to-day chores such as banking, exercising, and most of all, shopping.
With the countless tasks you can accomplish with a click of a button, it’s hardly surprising that there are billions of mobile phone users across the globe. The figures are increasing at a much rapid pace each year.
As the worldwide usage of mobile devices continues, people rely on their smartphones when it comes to purchases. That’s why eCommerce sites must strive to become mobile-first.
Adapting Mobile-First Platform
So, what precisely is the idea of mobile-first? The term refers to designing websites prioritizing mobile devices and then scaling them up on laptops and desktops afterward. This strategy can guarantee that you have an attractive and functioning mobile site that provides your consumers with user-friendly payment and browsing options.
Best Practices for Mobile-First eCommerce
Before you take any step further, you need to be well-equipped with the necessary features about marketing and designing your mobile-first website. Here’s everything you need to know in building your eCommerce platform.
User Experience
When talking about mobile commerce, we cannot stress the importance of UX, otherwise known as user experience. You’ll promote recurring visits from consumers if you provide a user-friendly experience. Failure to deliver on this area costs a lot since it tends to drive away prospective customers, who will instead seek out your rivals.
Simple designs, easy-to-read fonts, engaging material, and mobile-friendly search capabilities are all good ways to enhance UX.
Visual Hierarchy
The technique of organizing design components according to their significance is known as visual organization. Designers should encourage visitors to utilize the website to its full potential and improve conversion rates by carefully placing graphic components and navigation symbols.
This strategy can be promoting a new deal or putting your brand’s social media channels front and center. Avoiding unwanted and annoying popups on your pages is another example. When online sites lack practical design, however, visitors get confused and lose interest fast.
Functionality
The essential thing is to maintain all critical components within easy reach, from the checkout page to the payment channels. Multitasking is a common practice among smartphone users. It’s for this reason that functionality is so crucial.
As a general guideline, significant features should be the most accessible on your mobile website, with secondary and tertiary actions placed around the margins.
Archiving
The impermanence of mobile communications challenges archiving. What happens after an employee deletes a phone conversation? This situation might happen intentionally or by accident. Fortunately, today’s advanced mobile features allow you to install various software that can help protect your data. Some offer text archiving services that make it simple to record important information.
Messages will automatically create a duplicate straight from the mobile device to the data cloud with this software. You can stay on track of your current transactions and even search for previous conversations with ease.
Testing your Website
There are many advantages when it comes to a mobile-first strategy. But, if you want to transition towards this approach, you must complete all the required testing before releasing your new page to paying consumers.
This step will guarantee that bugs do not hamper your platform’s customer satisfaction and operation. You can do testing in a variety of ways, including the following:
Agile Testing
Agile testing is a part of the development process. You’ll be able to resolve any faults or potential difficulties early on and carry your new platform ahead as fast and effectively if you perform agile testing.
Functional Testing
On the other hand, functional testing focuses on usefulness and will assist you in determining if your site performs as you planned. This test is important as this part will be crucial to the consumer experience.
Manual Testing
For manual testing, there are human testers that will inspect the quality of your platform. This area is ideal for improving your interface for actual consumers. Manual testing is critical as your new website approaches launch.
Wrapping Up
We live in an era where technology is on the rise. And with this innovation, our mobile devices are accounting more than half of our internet traffic. Despite these figures, many business owners continue to use desktop-compatible design with mobile responsiveness thrown as an afterthought.
If you want to make it big in the industry, your eCommerce design should be mobile-first. This approach is important since many prefer mobile devices. It is an emerging agreement among many business executives today.
