Mobile shoppers are an impatient bunch. They want fast and easy ordering and paying from their smartphones. As the following article reports, there are still merchant websites that do not offer quick and frictionless checkout.
A colleague recently told me over lunch how much he loves pizza apps. “They’re just so easy.” When I asked him what was so easy, he said that while picking from the menu is part of the ease, the bigger part has to do with paying. It’s one touch.
Now before you run out and hire a team to create an app for your brand, let’s think about how to make paying easier – whether someone visits your website from a desktop or wants to take advantage of email offers directly from their mobile device.
We talk a lot about omnichannel and the customer experience – making sure the cart is available, regardless of device, and providing a seamless shopping experience. But simply making shopping easy is just step one. Making it easier to pay is the key to conversion.
According to eMarketer, 58% of mobile sales came from smartphones in 2016, and that number is expected to grow. Overall, mobile made up 29% of all ecommerce sales. But by 2021, it’s predicted that mobile will make up greater than half of all ecommerce sales.
Retailers need to consider what this means for their sales. When consumers are looking to purchase on their devices, they expect a frictionless experience. And what provides more friction than being asked to enter an endless stream of billing and shipping details, often moving manually from box to box, all while on a small mobile screen?
If your competitor offers a frictionless purchase experience and you do not, you may not only lose a sale now, but customers may remember this and bypass you altogether the next time they shop.
Single merchant pay apps have driven the fast online checkout process. Quick services restaurants have set the bar in streamlined checkout, whether from zero click pizza ordering or mobile order and pay features. Now, other categories such as traditional retail and big box stores, are looking to improve their checkout process and not all are succeeding. One-click checkout from providers such as Amazon, PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa are providing consumers with fast pay and exit, as well as enhanced security, given that the merchant is not storing any payment card data.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Associate Director, Research Services at Mercator Advisory Group
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