Commerce

36% of top UK advertisers don’t have a mobile site: report

A third of the UK’s top 100 advertisers (36%) still don’t have mobile optimised sites, according to a new report from the IAB.

However there has been a slight improvement since the survey was last carried out six month ago, when it found that 42% of the top advertisers did not have a mobile web presence.

The new study also includes European advertisers as a benchmark, revealing that just over half (54%) of sites across Italy, Spain, Germany and France are now mobile ready.

The UK is also apparently leading the way when it comes to responsive design, which is seen as one of the most effective methods of delivering an effective multichannel user experience.

Around a quarter (24%) of the UK’s top advertisers have a responsive site, including Disney, Chanel, Sky and Sainsbury’s. However the latter has only used responsive design for its banking business, not for the corporate or groceries sites.

Six tactics for reducing cart abandonment rates

Online retail is rapidly expanding and is expected to become a $1.5 trillion industry this year.

Cart abandonment is cutting into profits for retailers, as 68% of carts are left behind before the purchase is complete. 

While retailers can do little about some of the motives, they can ensure that the abandonment rates are kept to a minimum. 

Here’s how… 

Twitter Cards: in the right place at the right time to create a new kind of web

What’s the difference between a tweet and a blog post? What about a collection of tweets and a website?

You may start with a description of 140 characters, but while this famous limit still applies, it’s hardly the point anymore.

Twitter Cards (RIP ‘tweets’), are best thought of as ‘action+caption’ and may quickly become the smallest meaningful and shareable unit of the web.

Seven useful tips to help with your mobile copywriting

Among the many challenges businesses face while creating an optimised experience for smartphone users is how to deal with mobile copywriting.

It’s not simply the case that sales copy or product descriptions that were created for a desktop site can be copied and pasted onto a mobile site.

The context and use case is entirely different and the copywriting needs to reflect those conditions.

The situation is made more difficult for sites that use responsive design, as the copywriting has to be suitable for all screen sizes. However that’s something I’ll address in a future post.

At the moment I’m more interested in how to write for sites and apps built specifically for smartphone users.

Threadless launches gorgeous and user-friendly new iPhone app

Clothing retailer Threadless has unveiled a new iPhone app, giving its customers another way to shop and interact with the brand.

Threadless is a community website that specialises in unique designs for t-shirts, hoodies and other items. It is built around social media and allows users to follow their favourite designers, submit their own ideas, and vote for designs that they want the website to sell.

Alongside the standard ecommerce functions, the app includes a voting tool so users can rate new designs and a never-ending feed of original products.

Read on to find out what I thought of the app, or for more information on Threadless read our blog posts looking at how it uses welcome emails and online video…

How are automotive brands using social for sales?

Social media is still growing rapidly. I’m pointing out the obvious here but social networks are a dynamic medium for entertainment and interaction, including content discovery and product recommendation. 

As such, the auto industry seems almost uniquely suited to social.

While most consumers buy cars infrequently, their interest in them (based on price tag, necessity and if you indulge me, the embodiment of the American dream) often transcends the purchase event.

As such, social analytics has cause to mature in the automotive industry, where it surely stands to play a part in the sales funnel other than simply branding.

I’ve been reading a nice little CMO Council report on social analytics in the auto industry. Here are some thoughts on integrating social into automotive sales.

The home of the future, today. How smart is that?

Qualcomm has been busy diversifying beyond chips and they now have an impressive range of software and even a smart watch.

Its smart home demo was one of my Mobile World Congress highlights and shows how technology will make our lives even easier in the coming years.

Why aren’t restaurants taking advantage of mobile search?

More than any other industry, bars and restaurants are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the boom in smartphone use.

Decisions on dining are often made on the spur of the moment so by having a simple mobile site with a booking tool and click-to-call button restaurants will put themselves in the best position to attract some extra customers.

A new report form JiWire has found that consumers are twice as likely to use mobile than desktop as a source of information about where to eat.

To find out whether restaurants are making the most of this opportunity I searched for places to eat around the Econsultancy office in London’s Soho.

It’s a prime tourist spot that’s also home to thousands of office workers, so there’s plenty of money to be made keeping all those people fed.

Nine excellent retail apps that help to foster customer loyalty

Conversion rates from mobile commerce remain extremely low when compared with desktop and tablet, as people often prefer to use smartphones for research rather than purchases.

However, I’ve recently come across data which shows that smartphone apps are an exception to this rule, and in fact convert at a rate that’s closer to desktop than the mobile web.

Data from mobile commerce platform Poq Studio shows that in November and December 2013 conversion rates from smartphone apps was 1.8% compared to 2.4% on desktop and 0.73% on the mobile web. 

This is indicative of the fact that mobile apps are generally used by loyal customers, as the data also shows that 78% of apps users were return visitors, compared to 40% on mobile sites.

Furthermore, former ASOS director James Hart previously stated that the company’s apps saw a “much higher” conversion rate than the mobile web.

Responsive web design: five reasons why it may not be the right answer

I generally find myself in agreement with the authors on Econsultancy, but when I read Ben Davis’ article: 10 websites that aren’t responsive (and probably should be).

I didn’t agree with this, as I think those websites aren’t responsive because they don’t need to be.

Responsive design is a wonderful tool and is a great solution for quite a lot of sites. I have used responsive design to deliver many sites, but it’s not a magic bullet that will solve all pains around mobile. 

31% of UK shoppers research in-store before making purchase online: report

In order to thrive in the modern age of multichannel retailing brands have to be aware of the relationship between their offline and online sales channels.

Smart retailers such as John Lewis, B&Q and Marks & Spencer already partly attribute online sales to their brick-and-mortar stores as it’s naive to think that people buying through ecommerce haven’t been in-store for product research at some point.

A survey published by eBay gives a new insight into the relationship between offline and online retail by asking respondents about the channels they used to research a specific purchase.

In both the UK and Germany around a third of consumers used multiple channels during their purchase journey, including 31% of consumers who visited a store before buying online and 34% of consumers who did online research before a recent in-store purchase.

Checkout abandonment: mobile UX examples to help boost conversions

It’s no secret that in spite of the boom in mobile web traffic, conversion rates from smartphones remain far lower than on desktop.

This is largely due to the fact that people use mobiles for research and searching for product ideas, before making a purchase on their laptop or PC.

The low conversion rates are mirrored by high abandonment rates, with new data from remarketing firm Cloud.IQ showing that during January the abandonment rate for smartphone users on ecommerce sites was 84%, compared to 72% on tablet and 68% on desktop.

The question is, what can be done to reduce basket abandonment on mobile? In truth a large proportion will continue to drop out simply because they use mobile for product research, however there are still ways of shortening the purchase journey on mobile so shoppers are nudged towards a conversion rather than dropping out.

To give some inspiration for mobile designers, I’ve rounded up some of my favourite UX features from various mobile checkouts that might help to limit user frustration and abandonment rates.

Enjoy!

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