How can ecommerce brands deliver best-in-class mobile and desktop experiences?
Ecommerce brands have been gearing-up for a mobile-first landscape for some time . All the signals in recent years have pointed to a tipping point and mobile accounted for more than 60% of global internet traffic in 2024, compared to desktop’s 37%.
Traffic alone shouldn’t dictate budget allocation. Decision makers need to see tangible value before making important calls on customer experience (CX) and optimisation investment. Bottom line: will optimisation spend on mobile provide an adequate return on investment (ROI)?
This is why Christmas 2023 proved a watershed moment. Mobile’s revenue share in the U.S. surpassed desktop for the first time (51% versus 49%, reaching 61% on Christmas Day). This should have been the start of a brand-new chapter in the ecommerce story. Unfortunately, fairytale endings are few-and-far between. In this case, despite mobile inching the biggest share, consumers remain drawn to the traditional desktop screen when it comes to completing high-value transactions.
Ecommerce brands need to prioritise designing a best-in-class digital experience that spans all touchpoints. And to deliver unrivalled performance and optimise your existing set-up, you must first get to grips with the different user experience (UX) and design expectations.
The role mobile plays best in the customer journey
Smartphones have always been synonymous with speed. But it’s not just fast-loading pages that keep users glued to their screens. They’re accustomed to gliding between apps with a swipe of their finger, messaging friends one moment and completing a purchase the next.
Catering to this demand for intuitive navigation should be one of the first points-of-call for any ecommerce brand trying to optimise their mobile market. But whilst working with a small screen should be straightforward, the limited space makes it harder to facilitate seamless touch interactions. Thankfully, mobile-specific features such as larger buttons and easily-tappable areas can help resolve this.
The challenges stemming from reduced screen real estate don’t end there. The smaller screen size has also been cited as a leading reason for mobile’s less-than-optimal conversion rate - at 1.8%, this languishes more than 2% less than desktop.
This doesn’t render mobile redundant. Rather, it provides an opportunity for ecommerce brands to play to its strengths - provided they recognise that the goalposts are different. Mobile can be a powerful tool for discovery, given consumers’ preference for using it to browse and research purchases before pulling the trigger.
Where size does matter - the advantages of larger screens
From a pure numbers perspective, mobile’s increase in traffic signals a changing of the guard. However, desktop remains an integral part of the overarching ecommerce channel mix, thanks in no small part to its bigger screen size.
Much of desktop’s higher conversion rate can be attributed to its enhanced suitability for complex transactions. The two-dimensional user interface (UI) lends itself to richer, more advanced page layouts, providing ecommerce brands with a licence to provide significantly more useful information on their websites.
From in-depth product details and comparisons to reviews from previous buyers - the additional horizontal space is crucial for any consumer looking to conduct detailed research prior to a more sophisticated and expensive purchase.
What’s more, desktop has proven itself to be better-equipped to handle tasks requiring more accuracy and attention, prime examples being delivery and payment information at checkout. This is also where mouse and keyboard trumps mobile’s use of the finger in the UX debate, with their enhanced precision helping to further reduce errors.
Responsive versus Adaptive design
Once you’re familiar with the nuances surrounding each channel, it’s time to optimise for maximum performance.
From a design standpoint, there are two avenues available to you. Responsive design is best-suited to ecommerce brands that want to get a website to market quickly whilst reducing future maintenance requirements. This option sees page layouts and images automatically reformat themselves to the screen, ensuring consistent usability across devices.
Alternatively, a mobile-first design allows you to create a clean user interface (UI) and efficiently scale it up - after all, it’s easier to design intricate layouts on a smaller screen and subsequently expand for desktop. Ensuring that navigation menus, call-to-action buttons and general content are easily accessible ensures that usability isn’t compromised, irrespective of the device.
Lucy Aitken, Designer at Booking.com, argues the case for adaptive design.
“Start with your smaller mobile screens and scale-up the experience to desktop. Focus on the most important needs for mobile users and ensure you have all of the features, experiences and content they want. As you scale up, you can add the additional details to the desktop designs as you increase the screen size. This could potentially leave a specific feature, such as the shopping cart, looking entirely different on a mobile device. Rather than it being a small version of the desktop layout, it may have a unique functionality - be it scrolling vertically or a new layout.”
In terms of optimising your existing set-up, loading speed should be prioritised by any ecommerce brand looking to rejuvenate their mobile offering. This will help keep users’ data usage to a minimum, a key factor when attempting to reduce bounce rate and increase engagement.
For desktop users, immersive experiences are a must-have. As such, don’t be afraid to tap into the device’s enhanced screen quality and robust computing power to consistently provide higher resolution images and detailed content structures.
However, there is a caveat. With peak shopping hours usually taking place during the standard working days, it’s important to ensure you have the necessary technical bandwidth to deal with increased traffic. And there’s more to optimisation than just technological considerations.
Jim O’Brien, UX & UI Designer at Eclipse, believes that you can’t overlook the convenience standpoint.
“It’s important to communicate with users and tell them what’s happening. Set expectations - if they’ve got to fill out a lengthy form, provide a time estimate.”
Understand your customer journey
The reality is that the modern ecommerce landscape doesn’t revolve around either mobile or desktop; they are intertwined. More than two-thirds of consumers start shopping on one device before transitioning to another. The trend usually sees the journey begin on mobile and finish on desktop.
The onus is on brands to identify their audiences’ unique preferences and expectations. This data should be the foundation for future design changes, with any experiments anchored by one key goal - leveraging consumer behaviours to deliver results.
