Mobile conversion rates remain low for e-commerce
BII
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The latest edition of Monetate’s Ecommerce Quarterly Report indicates that, though they’re on the rise, mobile conversion rates are still relatively low.
Defined as the percentage of sessions with purchases on a website relative to that website’s total number of sessions, conversion rates are a good indicator of how frequently shoppers become buyers.
PC-based “traditional” conversion rates hit 4% in Q1 2016, up from 3.62% in the comparable 2015 period.
Smartphone conversion rates are at 1.3%, up from just 1.07% in Q1 2015.
Two factors could contribute to the discrepancy between mobile and desktop conversion rates:
Intent: Monetate found that the desktop still “dominates” online shopping — 90% of consumers in the study used a desktop to begin their online shopping, and 91% of that group completed their purchases on a desktop. This could indicate that, as of now, consumers shopping on mobile have more of an intent to browse than to buy, which might drive down conversion rates.
Friction: Small screens and slow connection speeds on mobile make it challenging for users to enter the information required to make a purchase — like payment and shipping details. That often leads to cart abandonment, which drives down conversion rates.
However, mobile conversion rates will likely rise as retailers invest in new checkout options. As mobile becomes the primary computing device for consumers, it’s likely that more users will be looking to shop via phone rather than PC.
This gives retailers an incentive to offer their customers simpler mobile checkout solutions — like buy buttons — to monetize growing mobile traffic. One-click checkout options could solve some of shoppers’ pain points, converting more mobile traffic into purchases. Higher conversion rates will help m-commerce grow significantly — BI Intelligence forecasts that by 2020, mobile will comprise 45% of US e-commerce, up from 11.6% in 2014.
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