How Adairs turns mobile browsers into buyers.
Utadi Murphy, General Manager of Marketing and eCommerce at Adairs and Chris Ponton, Enterprise Business Development Manager at PayPal share how businesses can unlock that untapped potential and convert those browsers into buyers.
Offer multiple paths to purchase
Utadi Murphy says it’s important to offer multiple customer journeys that result in purchase. Integrating social media on their mobile site has helped create another path to purchase for customers and, with over 400,000 Instagram followers in a very inspirational and visual space, the move was a strategic one.“When you land on the home page if you’re coming from our Instagram, or even if you’re coming from other touchpoints, you can see those posts in a lifestyle setting. You’re then able to click on a specific product and go straight through from the Instagram image then add that directly to your cart.
“On mobile, some customers are looking for styling inspiration and will purchase that way. Others are looking for something very specific, for example white sheets with a high thread count and really good quality, so they’ll go straight to the sheets page. We’re trying to create different journeys on mobile that customers can flow through very easily, depending on what perspective they come from.”
Simplify the path to purchase
When it comes to the checkout process, the number of fields customers need to enter their information into can be a huge roadblock to converting sales. But how exactly can these be reduced?A good way is with a guest checkout experience. Forcing customers to create an account before purchase can have a negative impact on conversion. However, offering a guest checkout plus the ability to create an account after the sale means that “if the customer does want to create an account, it allows for a more seamless checkout the second time around,” explains Murphy.
Chris Ponton says there’s a lot of superfluous data businesses ask their customers for that isn’t actually required.
“As the customer goes through the process of checking out, they’re asked for billing address, shipping address, email, mobile. It might be required in some instances, but probably not in every one.
“Very few people know their credit card information by heart too, so having PayPal where it’s an email address and password can reduce a lot of that friction.”
Test, test, test
When it comes to UX, user testing and continual optimisation should be prioritised. Ponton suggests taking small sample sizes, testing ideas and seeing if they work, before implementing changes across the board to minimise costs. For large enterprises, this process can involve setting up small, independent teams to drive customer innovation.For Adairs, Murphy says it’s about listening to the customer and turning their feedback into part of the business strategy.
“We run a range of focus groups, both online and face-to-face, which are really important for getting those ideas coming through. When we launched a new store in Melbourne, we had a group of customers in there and sat down for an hour at a time with them, talking about where they lived and what they wanted to see more of on mobile and online, and how they could work together in an omnichannel strategy.”
Go beyond responsive design
In the enterprise space, most business websites are mobile optimised, says Ponton, but that isn’t enough. Mobile-optimised simply means code can tell what device a shopper is on and adjust text, layout and format to fit their screen size. But more than that, businesses should think about where and how their customers are shopping.“Mobile is a very different thing from a context perspective. ‘I’m out, I’m moving, I’m on the go. The information I need needs to be in smaller snippets and I need to get to it quickly.’ Taking the content built for a desktop experience and making it fill a mobile screen doesn’t mean you’re delivering a great mobile experience.”
The faster the better
For mobile, a fast page load time is crucial. Mobile shoppers list slow page loading as their top pain point and 40% of customers will abandon a site if a page takes 3 or more seconds to load. Visual elements are important, says Murphy, but speed must always be considered.“A lot of people spend time on the visual elements – particularly in our space, that visual impact is critical – but if you don’t combine that with strong site speeds across all your devices, it just doesn’t work. For every half second we’ve been able to improve, we’ve definitely seen conversion improvements and that’s made a big difference to us.”
Visit Adairs’ website
We'll use cookies to improve and customise your experience if you continue to browse. Is it OK if we also use cookies to show you personalised ads? Learn more and manage your cookies