Mobile eCommerce Tips to Gain Brand Loyalty

Mobile eCommerce is growing at a fast pace, with global smartphone users currently sitting at around 2.3 billion, and global sales via mobile expected to hit $638 billion by 2018. With a growing number of mobile users, shoppers and industry in general, it makes it more clear than ever that merchants need a winning mobile strategy to seize this type of business opportunity. But, there are still a large number of people who don’t make purchases through their phones or tablets. There are many reasons for this, from difficult to navigate apps, to a lack of familiar payment methods. So think about the experience from the customer's perspective, with these mobile tips to gain brand loyalty.

Swipe versus lists

It may seem like an insignificant change to make, but allowing customers to swipe through page sized images rather than scroll through a list of small images can hugely increase their enjoyment of browsing through your site. While not everyone will love it, the majority of consumers prefer to see bigger images that they don’t have to fiddle with or click through to, just to be able to get a good sense of what it looks like. Enabling the swipe function will get customers closer to your products, faster.

Card scanning

Consumers like convenience, so by offering them a more convenient way to check out, that also offers a secure payment process, is a good way to win them over. Card scanning allows customers to scan their card when making a purchase, eliminating the process of filling in all their personal and card details, and possibly getting the details incorrect. This information will be saved automatically so that every time a customer checks out, their card details are already completed. This saves customers time and reduces the chances of other people seeing their information while it is being typed in.

Live chat

A large number of customers today prefer not to talk over the phone, but still expect an immediate response from a brand if they decide to get in touch with them. Enabling mobile chat provides customers with quick, real-time responses to their questions or concerns straight from your site or app. This eliminates the need for customers to email you, or send you a message via social media and possibly wait a day, or even a week before they get a reply. An immediate response ensures customers stay on your site, and can be the difference between a purchase being completed or discarded.

Rewards

Customers enjoy rewards but don’t want to go through a big effort to receive them, which is why rewards via mobile apps are fast becoming the loyalty programs of choice. Customers can either automatically accumulate rewards after purchases, or after a simple scan of a barcode. These rewards can then be tracked by customers via the app and used whenever they’d like to do so. An example of this would be to give customers points every time a purchase is made. The bigger their purchase, the more points they earn. Customers can then convert these points into money, and purchase products from you at anytime they wish to do so. Customers no longer have to make a certain amount of purchases before they get to spend their rewards.

Offer alternative payment methods

Offering your products via mobile means you are diversifying your selling channels, in a good way. But just as you diversify your channels, so too do you need to diversify your payment methods. If you open up your store to new customers via mobile, the new customers will most likely have different, preferred payment methods that you have to take into account.

Credit cards are no longer the only option out there, and if you are are a cross-border eCommerce merchant, you will most likely have customers from all over the world who expect to see their local payment offered to them. It makes their shopping experience easier, and makes your site more trustworthy. Partnering with a secure payment gateway like PayU, will offer your customers a number of different payment options through one easy-to-use portal.

With these few simple your steps, written in collaboration with PayU, you can start to build brand loyalty whether your mobile site or app has just begun, or even if it’s been running for some time. There is no better time to start enhancing your customer experience for users than the present, and with these cost-effective steps your brand will start to look and feel like you put their needs first. From simple image adjustments, payment processing upgrades and live chat offerings, to mobile rewards and alternative payment methods, your brand will be on its way to having a firm and loyal customer base.