Mobile commerce is really hitting its stride. It seems like every day I see new mobile commerce articles on Internet Retailer. Check back soon for an EasyAsk customer success story on mobile commerce with EasyAsk.
One of the big issues with mobile commerce is optimizing the user experience. EasyAsk’s partner in mobile commerce, Unbound Commerce, has tremendous experience with mobile user experience and has contributed greatly to EasyAsk eCommerce Mobile.
I was talking with the team from Unbound Commerce last week and told them of an experience I had with a mobile travel site (I’ll leave the site name out). The navigation on the mobile travel site made it so difficult to narrow my flight choices and find what I was looking for, that I became frustrated and gave up.
The Unbound Commerce team told me that navigation can often be overlooked in the mobile world. In some cases, navigation can be more important than search. That was a revelation to me. But in retrospect it makes perfect sense.
The screen real estate on a mobile browser is vastly smaller than that on a PC or Mac. This says that excellent search is critical. You need pinpoint search results because wading through pages of results in a mobile browser would frustrate a user and cause them to abandon.
But excellent navigation is also important due to the screen real estate constraints. Using richer, dynamic search criteria in the navigation, such as product attributes, rather than just the static categories, allows visitors to refine their choices faster and easier. More importantly, this allows visitors to find products in 1 to 2 clicks, rather than plowing through pages of categories – increasing the chances of conversion.
So, something to keep in mind when exploring mobile commerce solutions: you want to offer pinpoint search and rich, dynamic navigational attributes.