Create an ecommerce mobile site

According to Forrester Research, m-commerce sales will grow from 10 billion dollars in 2012 to 32 billion dollars in 2016, which is more than 7% of total e-commerce sales. With the growing smartphones and tablets sales worldwide, that percentage could be even bigger.

There is a continuous debate about whether to develop an optimized website or an m-commerce application for mobile devices. All retailers should have a mobile-optimized e-commerce site. Many companies believe that with the adoption of CSS3 and HTML5, there is less need for mobile applications to create a pleasing customer experience.

How to set up ecommerce on mobile websites

There are several aspects to take into account when you set up a virtual store website on mobile devices:

• Usability. Make sure your mobile website works on mobile devices that use iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian or Windows Phone. Almost all of them depend on their touchscreen, which is one of the most important elements to take into consideration when you want to create a mobile version of your virtual store.

  Mobile phones have very limited space on their screens, that’s why you have to fully take advantage of it. Including a full navigation bar on all screens is a common mistake. Some retailers like BestBuy limit the navigation of their website into a unique drop-down menu. That way users can have access to all store’s categories in a single screen.

• Text. How many of you enjoy introducing text into your mobile phones? Nobody. That’s why you need to make navigation through categories easy and refine results in order for users to find what they need as fast as possible.

  Zappos has a ‘big’ navigation design, which allows users to easily select categories and instantly filter their search.

• Images. Limit the number of images on your mobile website. Consumers want to see pictures of the products, but try to use only the necessary ones and with the proper size and weight. This will improve the loading time of your mobile website, which is a very important aspect for mobile devices. Many times clients’ internet connection speed isn’t even close to fixed connections.

  LaRedoute, for example, lets customers visualize products using medium-sized pictures, which allows the website to load fast.

• Key elements location. There are plenty of studies that apply to usability of both desktop computers and mobile devices. Basically you have to place the key elements on top and to the left or right in order to follow users’ reading pattern. Take into account the color of browsers mobile devices use. You shouldn’t use the color that browser is already using for key elements.

  You can see how Amazon follows the key element location rules and places the main keys (deals, ish list and shopping cart icon) on the right. The Website uses mainly black font on white background, which makes it easy to read the text.