Shopping on Smartphones: How to Fix the 24 Screens Problem

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The holiday shopping season of 2013 was a smashing year for mobile. All existing records for traffic and purchases were broken. But a yawning gap has emerged between tablet and smartphone conversion rates. Internet Retailer found that, among three large mobile merchants that supplied data, tablet traffic converted to sales anywhere from 75% to 300% more often smartphone traffic.

For publishers facing a rising tide of mobile users, the poor quality of mobile ecommerce sites means fewer conversions, which translates into more difficulty monetizing content on mobile devices. Which is why I took a detailed look at mobile sites to better understand the hurdles to getting people to click the "Buy" button.

It took me 24 screens and 26 required text inputs to buy a pair of khakis on a major etailer's mobile site. This was not including check-boxes. The site, like most ecommerce sites, required that I set up an account before it would allow me to pay for the item.

Recommendations for Retailers:

Do not interrupt the purchase to achieve loyalty. Do not force users to register prior to making a purchase. Likewise, do not encourage people to install an app if they want to buy something. Do not ask them to refer a friend or find a local store. Just let them buy.

Fewer, bigger input boxes. The people with the money in most of the world are not teenagers. They are middle aged (as in, 35-plus) and their vision isn't what it used to be. Make the boxes bigger and easier to recognize. And make sure there are fewer of them on any given page.

Cut the clutter. If a user comes directly to your mobile site, they are likely there to compare or to shop. Get them to the shopping cart as quickly as possible. Forget store lookups. Forget app-install screens.

Eliminate all redundant inputs. Get rid of duplicate fields for confirming an email address, for example, or duplicate pages for payment and shipping addresses.

Embrace 'card not present' transactions. Don't ask for a billing address, run the transaction as a CNP and pay the higher fees. The increase in conversion rates should offset the higher fees.

By making it really, really difficult for shoppers to complete a transaction on a smartphone, retailers are leaving billions of dollars on the table each year. That needs to change both for the good of the retailers who need to convert more smartphone visitors and for the good of content publishers who get paid referral fees based on how often people clicking on their product referral links actually buy something.