Shopify Expert Insights

E-Com Advice from our experienced in-house team

Generally expect mobile conversion rates to be half of the desktop conversion rate.

Across our top five biggest clients the desktop conversion rate is averaged at 5.5% and the mobile conversion rate is 2%. Tablets were right in the middle at 3.6%. The number one type of traffic for all stores is mobile traffic, it blows desktop traffic out of the water every time. The problem is that mobile traffic is also the worst at converting. Why?

The psychology of the consumer:

Consumers are generally less willing to go through the purchase process on their phones, especially for larger purchases. Buyer intent is not as high. They’ll create drive by traffic and maybe purchase on their desktop later. Think about your own shopping habits, you are scrolling and something catches your eye, but you are out doing something else. You aren’t looking with an intent to purchase at that moment. Even if your store’s checkout is optimized for Apple Pay, Google Pay or Paypal the consumer might not have that set up. The trust of using your phone to make a purchase just isn’t quite there yet like sitting focused on your computer. Overall, don’t sweat it too much.

What you can control:

Understand your data. What are your conversion rates? Where are they coming from? Which browsers? Within Shopify there are Behavior Reports under “analytics” labeled “sales traffic by device type”. You can use these tools to know exactly where your customers are coming from.

Build a sales funnel with as many touch points as possible. You want a pop up to try and grab an email at welcome and exit. Get remarketing in place and then ideally, you’ve got email marketing automation behind all of that. An automated welcome series is a powerful converter. So, if I capture their attention on mobile and they don't buy that is completely fine and expected.