Carin van Vuuren, chief marketing officer for Usablenet, explores how UX design can hamper conversion rates on mobile, and what developers and brands can do to drive these high abandonment rates down

Mobile has become ubiquitous to daily living, and is the shopping device of choice for many consumers. Because mobile is always at hand, it touches every stage of the purchase path from discovery all the way through to payment.

Friction in the purchase journey resulting from poor UX design or unnecessary barriers to easy task completion continues to drive up cart abandonment on mobile. Shipping costs, unnecessary fees and usability issues contribute to abandonment rates being higher than 68 per cent.

Making mobile shopping as easy and frictionless as possible requires that brands take into consideration ten important features when creating UX design for their mobile sites and apps.

Search: Arguably one of the most important features of a mobile site, brands should ensure that searches are productive and useful by adding in functions such as spelling auto correction, recognition of root words, predictive text, suggestions and saved search.

Effective search helps users to get what they’re looking for faster, and shortens the purchase journey. And for users who are not yet ready to buy, adding wishlist functionality or “save for later” will improve customer engagement.

Product Display: A true understanding of how a product looks, feels and operates is imperative to the buying process, especially on mobile. Shoppers want control of the ability to zoom and adjust image size. And they want to understand aspects that influence their decision such as saving, with original prices displayed next to discounted prices.

Free shipping or coupons should come up on each product page, so a user doesn’t have to search around for them and disrupt the shopping flow.

Adding to cart: UX design features should enhance the checkout process and make it easy for consumers to continue shopping after adding an item to their shopping cart. Good design should allow customers to easily edit items or quantity within their shopping cart.

Checkout: Brands should offer consumers the opportunity to checkout as a guest, as signing in is a barrier to conversion. Providing a progress indicator within checkout makes it easier for users to be aware of and complete the necessary steps. Shipping costs and delivery dates should be easily accessible.

Consumers want this upfront in order to make purchasing decisions. In fact, many consumers will not settle for anything less than free and fast shipping.

Forms: Users want to encounter forms that are easy to fill out and compatible with how they enter information. Lengthy or complicated checkout forms, such as entering shipping addresses or payment information, account for approximately 39 per cent of cart abandonments.

Therefore, brands need to design screens that interpret multiple input formats, rather than forcing the user to adapt. This includes features such as auto-populate, auto-capitalization and credit card scanning. In addition, form fields should not be obstructed from view by other mobile elements such as the keyboard.

Terminology: Brands need to make sure that the terminology used on the site to describe product is familiar to consumers in order to avoid confusion when they are doing a site search. Be aware of the risk in creating branded terms for expected functionality. Examples include using terms like “love list” instead of “wish list”.

Registration: Mobile apps or sites should avoid asking users to register too early in the process. Consumers are skeptical about giving up personal information if they can’t see the value proposition. So if a brand site wants to ask for more information or registration, this questioning should be reserved for the check-out process.

Chat or Call: Reaching out for customer service should be easily accessible. Users tend to look at the bottom of a site for help and contact information—such as email, phone number and live chat.

Login: While security is important, users will be annoyed if they have too many steps to set up or reset a password. Brands can avoid this mishap by designing a simplified authentication experience or use a different method such as a fingerprint or third-party login method.

Promotions: While brands should offer coupons and deal, these promotions should not take over the experience. In other words, don’t keep consumers from finding what they want and completing the task at hand by getting sidetracked by a promotion. And if a deal is created to pop up on the page, make sure that the banner is easily dismissible for disinterested shoppers.

More than 30 per cent of all online shopping purchases are already happening on mobile, so brands cannot afford to have this channel unoptimised. In order to win over shoppers, it is up to brands to make sure that the mobile experience is consistent and seamless throughout the entire purchasing process, from search to payment.

This sponsored article was written by Carin van Vuuren, chief marketing officer at Usablenet, and is editorially independent from Mobile Marketing Magazine