These days, mobile devices are used for everything from email to games to making significant purchases. Consumers are increasingly turning to mobile as the answer to all their needs, including web surfing. According to Trinity Digital Marketing, more than 1.2 billion people access the internet from their mobile devices. A Nielsen study further highlights that mobile web adoption is growing 8 times faster than web adoption did in the 1990s and early 2000s. With this mobile adoption comes tremendous opportunity for sales: Deloitte claims that approximately 58% of customers who own a smartphone have used it for store-related shopping, while Latitude states that 63% of people expect to be shopping more on their mobile devices in the next couple of years. Here are five essential rules to follow for driving mobile customer engagement while prioritizing quality experiences.Make the mobile experience optimized and user-friendly. Mobile optimization should always be your brand’s top priority for driving mobile customer engagement. According to MoPowered, 30% of mobile shoppers abandon a transaction if they are not given an optimized mobile experience. Customers should find all the information they need with minimal effort: simple drop-down navigation menus, click-to-call or chat buttons, legible fonts and simple layouts, and simple buttons for checkout or social media channel access. The mobile version should complement the web version yet be simplified and optimized for a user-friendly experience.Never underestimate the need for speed. Customers always value their time, so your brand needs to do the same. Optimizing for mobile is one major aspect of saving time, as is delivering swift customer service. But what happens if your web pages do not load fast enough? Strangeloop Networks found that 57% of customers will abandon a brand’s site if they need to wait three seconds for a page to load. Slow page loading can frustrate customers, make them lose confidence in the mobile experience, and cost your company sales. Amazon notes that every 100-millisecond increase in load time decreases sales by one percent.Provide easy access to customer service. 24/7 live support is always ideal, and brands nowadays find this easier to achieve by employing remote agents around the world. Give customers easy service options such as click-to-call or click-to-chat buttons to ensure continuous access to support. Live chat pop-ups based on geolocation tracking are also ideal for supporting customers in-store. If your brand cannot offer live support 24/7, make sure the hours of service are clearly indicated and that self-service options such as FAQs are optimized to assist customers outside agent hours.Offer quick and easy checkout. Customers hesitate to make purchases when checkout is too complicated. Make the payment process quick and easy using limited and large text, virtual shopping carts, one-click features, and trustworthy payment options. Include payment option icons (such as Visa or PayPal) to reassure your customers that transactions are valid and secure. At the end of checkout, always be sure to notify the customer that the transaction is complete and provide a reference number.Make targeted marketing offers mobile-friendly. Targeted marketing offers tempt customers to make purchases based on their shopping preferences. When timed right, brands can boost sales dramatically and turn customers into long-term brand advocates. However, failing to optimize such offers for mobile can make them difficult to access and frustrate your customers. SMS offers should feature short texts with simple redemption codes or sale information that customers can easily apply when making a purchase. Another critical channel for marketing offers is email, and your brand should never underestimate its need for mobile optimization. Experian found that 45% of holiday season emails are opened on mobile, while Knotice discovered that 36% of emails from retail brands are opened exclusively on mobile devices. Emails should therefore be optimized with simple and informative text as well as scannable redemption codes whenever possible.Optimal mobile customer engagement means being sensitive to the limitations of mobile devices without compromising the customer experience. Customers should always feel they are getting an equivalent, if not better, customer experience as they would on other devices. With these five rules, your brand can offer quality experiences to your customers wherever they go, whenever they wish. Learn about Vocalcom contact center software solutions for excellent mobile customer service.
