Nextopia: 6 Mobile Search and Merchandising Tips for the Holidays
Monday, November 28, 2016Lauren Macdonald
6 Tips to Help You Drive Mobile Search Results
Considering how much time consumers spend on their phones, it comes as no surprise that mobile shopping has quickly become one of the more popular ways to shop.
This holiday season, it’s expected that
mobile shopping spending will increase 25% from last year, as shoppers are now using their smartphones to scout out products and monitor deals to pay for products and track packages.
With the start of December just days away, retailers need to take advantage of this quickly growing industry. This year, give your shoppers the gift of mobile shopping by following these six search and merchandising tips. These tips will not only enhance the mobile shopping experience, but they will also help you boost sales and conversions this holiday season.
Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
This might seem like a given, but many retailers fail at making their website mobile friendly. If your mobile site doesn’t load properly, shoppers will likely go to a competitor whose site does. Ensure that your website is both mobile and holiday shopping friendly, by making your homepage festive and geared towards holiday shoppers on both desktop and mobile devices.
Center Your Search Bar
If your customers can’t find the search bar, how can you expect them to be able to follow through with their search? Make sure your search bar is front and center and can easily be found on every page of your mobile site.
Autocomplete Searches
Enabling autocomplete means your shoppers only have to type in a few keystrokes to find their desired item.
Nextopia’s autocomplete solution provides fast, accurate, and intelligent search results, which help retailers increase their conversions, average order value, sales, and most importantly, customer satisfaction.
Provide Search Refinements
While the search bar definitely improves the search experience, you can still interact with your shoppers by including search refinements. Refinements allow the search to be more focused and filtered down according to a number of factors. Factors include things like price range, color, style, brand, rating, or even sale items.
For example, let’s say one of your mobile shoppers knew that they wanted to buy a purse, but they didn’t want to spend time searching for purses. Instead, they could use a combination of search refinements to narrow down their search until they reached their desired item.
Always Provide Results
If you happen to be out of an item or you just don’t carry what someone is searching for, rather than sending them to the dreaded ‘no results found’ page, use this as your opportunity to promote similar products or brands to try and save the sale. Make sure to add your contact information so if your shoppers have any questions about an item that’s not in stock they can get in touch with you right away.
Implement an eCommerce-Accounting Integration Solution
Finally, another great way to improve the shopping experience this holiday season is by implementing an
eCommerce-accounting integration solution, as it can help e-retailers keep up with higher than normal order volumes, feel confident in their business if they go on holidays, and it will keep their customers happy. Nextopia partner
eBridge Connections delivers powerful, cloud-based ERP and accounting integration solutions that automate vital business processes and eliminate the need for manual data entry.
By investing in mobile search and an eCommerce-accounting integration solution like eBridge you’ll be able to keep your customers happy, which will result in more loyal customers who will help you increase sales and conversions for years to come.
- Article by Ainsley Smith, Junior Marketing Coordinator at Nextopia