What is the Ideal B2B Mobile eCommerce Experience?

As your company thinks about creating the ideal B2B mobile eCommerce experience, it’s important to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. From a customer’s perspective, the ideal mobile eCommerce experience should be:

1. Easy on the eyes. It’s not just about creating a pretty mobile eCommerce site. It’s also about optimizing the experience for the mobile user. This means less clutter, bigger pictures and buttons, simplified navigation and content, and much more. You might be able to get away with a cluttered site on a website targeted at desktop users, but when it comes to mobile devices, you’ll need to clear away the clutter – excess content length, confusing navigation, etc. – to make it easy for mobile users to find the information they need and take the action you want.

2. Beyond responsive. Many companies think that creating a mobile responsive site is all they need to do to create the ideal B2B mobile eCommerce experience. Think again. Simply having a mobile responsive site is just the beginning. The ideal mobile eCommerce experience isn’t just a pared down version of your full-featured desktop site; it needs to be designed specifically for mobile users and their search and buying behavior. Mobile device users are making purchases and decisions on the go, and their activities are usually triggered by some need. It’s important to understand the factors that drive how, where and why they will use your site, and to let this guide what kind of mobile eCommerce solution you choose.

3. Acting like an app rather than website. A recent consumer survey indicated that 64% of mobile users prefer using an app rather than a mobile responsive website. Other surveys have put that number as high as 85%. Nearly 76% of purchases in the mobile marketplace as a whole are made via apps rather than regular websites. Make sure to offer a native mobile app to your customers––find a B2B mobile eCommerce solution that has this “mobile first” mentality in mind.

4. Seizing the “micro-moments.” According to Google, micro-moments are those moments, “when people reflexively turn to a device—increasingly a smartphone—to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something. They are intent-rich moments when decisions are made and preferences shaped.” The ideal B2B mobile eCommerce experience will allow customers to access the information they want quickly and easily and make a smooth transition into purchasing, preferably in as few steps as possible.

So that’s what the ideal mobile eCommerce experience should look like from the customer’s perspective. But what about from your perspective? Is your mobile eCommerce experience…

1. Simple to build and administer? Your mobile eCommerce solution needs to be easy and cost-effective to implement. Fortunately, there are solutions that can help you implement mobile eCommerce quickly and easily.

2. Integrated with back office systems? How are orders going to get from the buyer’s mobile device to you for processing? Integrating your mobile eCommerce platform with back office enterprise resource planning or accounting systems will allow you to receive orders instantaneously for processing.

3. Able to demonstrate measurable ROI? The ultimate test of any eCommerce site, mobile or not, is how well does it help you sell? If users have to leave your mobile site to make a purchase, it is going to be very difficult to prove any kind of ROI for the site. Yet, purchasing isn’t the only reason users might visit your site – sometimes they are looking to quickly gather information on past orders, or about products they may purchase in the future. So, for a mobile eCommerce site, ROI should be measured both in terms of sales, as well as how well it responds to the needs of your customers.

What do you think creates an ideal mobile eCommerce experience? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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