52.2% – this is how much online traffic comes from mobile. It’s no surprise that all new traffic sources are mobile first. But are existing eCommerce platforms prepared for the shift? The answer is “nope”.
As we have been working for eCommerce companies for 10 years now, we’ve faced many changes and trends. The last one – mobile-first – seems to be the most significant in the last decade.
We observe that the share of mobile traffic is high and still growing. In some industries it’s more visible than others – for example, mobile is the main source of new traffic for the fashion brands we work with.
Although it seems obvious to prepare for this mobile-first revolution, many eCommerce Managers still don’t realize this and/or struggle to convince the IT department.
When we analyze top eCommerce websites, we find that only 1% of them are mobile-first optimized PWA websites. This is just amazing how big the gap is!
This gap may cost you all your eCommerce potential in the coming years.
Social Media is mobile
The fastest growing Social Media destinations are mobile-first. WeChat, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat – all these traffic sources will bring mobile-first users to your website.
For some eCommerce companies, 70-80% of traffic comes from Instagram. And what is cool is that these apps are eCommerce friendly. 30% of Instagram users bought something that they had seen first on Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with Tech Crunch Disrupt, cited three strong reasons why mobile was Facebook’s future. “For one, there are more mobile users. Second, they’re spending more time on it… third, we can have better advertising on mobile, make more money,” Zuckerberg had said.
What’s more, according to a forecast by eMarketer, in 2017, mobile ads are way ahead in the digital ad spending space. Mobile will account for 63.3% of digital and 24.3% of total media ad spending. Also, the prediction indicates that by 2021, mobile ad spending will grow to a 77.1% share of digital and 37.1% of total media ad investments.
Also, 71% of smartphone users who watch an interesting ad on TV, newspaper or on mobile immediately search for the same on the smart device.
What do these figures mean? It means if your business adopts a mobile-first strategy, then you also get hold of a number of revenue channels.
Search is mobile
Even old, big boys shifted to mobile. Facebook was first but we can say that Google is also a mobile-first company now.
The company released Google Mobile-First Indexing which promotes mobile-friendly websites. So, today, mobile content is prioritized in indexing. If a website has desktop content and mobile content, then Google will index mobile content first.
Google also added the speed of the website as an important ranking factor to their search algorithm.
And this is only the beginning of the changes that will come.
Getting ready for mobile users
Facing all those changes, you should ask yourself a question – is my website ready for mobile users? If the answer is negative, you should seriously think about changing it.
If you ask how, then we will answer – Progressive Web Apps!
Why not native apps you may ask. There’s a couple of pros that tip the balance towards PWAs. They have easier user acquisition, are cheaper to develop and possible to release in a short time. Check our latest article PWA’s vs Mobile Apps – which is better for eCommerce for more details.
If you want to read the success stories of companies that have already tried a PWA, download our report.
Published October 11, 2018
