7 Steps for Optimizing Your WooCommerce Site for Mobile
Mobile-friendliness has become one of the most important keys for an online business to become successful today.
As per Statista, over 52% of the total web traffic in 2018 was generated from mobile devices, increasing from 50.3% in 2017. This shows that people are increasingly visiting websites from smartphones and tablets.
The website traffic stats are more alarming when it comes to ecommerce sites. At the time of holiday shopping season last year, around 33% of things were purchased online from mobile devices. On Black Friday, 40% of sales revenue came from mobile devices.
You might have gone through mixed reviews of various hosting providers, designed a great website that works excellently and fast on desktops, but if it doesn’t work well on mobile devices, then it will increase your bounce rate and eventually impact your sales.
Not only does Google ranks you lower in search engine rankings, but also mobile users abandon your site if it is not mobile-friendly.
If you are building a website using WooCommerce or having an existing one, then you have to ensure that the site accommodates to mobile users. This can be done easily by following a number of steps, without makingmany changes to design.
Having said that, here is how to make your WooCommerce site mobile-friendly and keep more shoppers on your ecommerce store, plus increase the number of customers.
Optimize Content On Homepage
Most of the visitors land on your site at the homepage (not always) and this is the place that shows the impression of your site and what you sell. Many businesses choose to use a lot of information on homepage to make the visitors learn everything from it.
But that might be good only for desktop devices. On small screens, such large content will turn into a lot of scrolling from users which is bad for user experience.
Rather than stuffing too much information, try to optimize the content and use only mission-critical items on homepage. You have the options to redirect users to other pages using responsive sliders and graphics, and links to categories.
Use High-Quality And Optimized Product Images
People get impression of a product from the images they see. Even if the product is of good quality, a low-quality image wouldn’t able to drive engagement and make the product get purchases.
You have to use high-quality images that are relevant with products. Before uploading the images, always remember to optimize them for mobile. 79% of shoppers will leave the store if it isn’t optimized and loads slow.
Optimizing images is very crucial for ecommerce sites because you have to use multiple images for every product.
This means that you have to upload a massive number of images on your site. If you don’t compress your images well before uploading them, then the speed of your site will get affected.
According to HubSpot, even a delay of one second can reduce conversions by 7%. As an online marketer, you can’t afford that.
To address this challenge, finding the best integration for WooCommerce becomes imperative for optimizing image handling and ensuring your site remains fast and user-friendly.
Use Mobile-Friendly And Responsive Theme
You can’t sell much on mobile devices if you aren’t using a responsive theme that isn’t compatible on mobile.
Before installing a theme on your site, double-check whether it works well on mobile devices. Test it on your own smartphone so you get a better idea about it. Check whether the content fits on screen, images load properly, the buttons work as expected, and navigation is easier.
Make sure that all the call-to-actions (CTAs) such as ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Buy Now’ are visible for every product. The journey from product pages to checkout process should be seamless.
Reduce Or Remove Popups
Marketers consider popups a great way to generate more leads and gain more subscribers for newsletter. However, the popups are good only for desktops.
It is completely a different story on mobiles, because the screen size is smaller, and the popup might cover the desired content. This can sometimes be frustrating for users.
Even on desktops, you should use only necessary and minimum popups to avoid impact on usability. Google suggests that you should avoid showing a popup that covers the main content, and don’t show an interstitial which needs to be dismissed before visiting the main content.
Navigation And Search
The navigation should be simple and easy throughout the site, especially for the menu. You have to make it seamless in such a way that people don’t need to put efforts into finding what they are looking for. Prioritize the menu items and simplify their listing.
The search option should be visible on every page so that users can find things easily. It should show suggested items and recent searches for improved user experience.
Use Plugins For Mobile Optimization
There are several WordPress plugins that can be used to optimize your WooCommerce site for mobile. Use of such plugins can reduce the efforts you need to put for making the site mobile-friendly and provide responsive experience to users.
Some of such plugins include WPtouch, JetPack, and AMP for WP.
Going Further—Build A Mobile App
Following the above steps can make your WooCommerce site mobile-friendly, but if you want to offer the best UX to mobile users, then consider building a mobile app.
The customers who like purchasing from your site would love to download your app and browse from it rather than doing it from browser.
Also, you can show notifications about new offers and discounts via a mobile app, which can increase sales. Studies show that ecommerce sites can boost their sales significantly if they have both a mobile website and a mobile app.
Test you WooCommerce site for mobile-friendliness
If things aren’t fine, follow the steps above. After that, conduct the test again and know the difference. You can also refer to the WooCommerce setup checklist for additional guidance.
Wrapping up:
These are the best tips to make your WooCommerce site mobile-friendly. We hope this article will help you in the long-term for increasing conversions and generating more leads.
