Introduction

When planning for your mobile commerce strategy, it is helpful to understand that tablets and smartphones differ in several ways. We present some best practices for mobile commerce from our experts.

Best Practices

To be considered mobile-friendly, your website should provide a good mobile user experience, with features and practices such as:

• Avoiding software that is not common on mobile devices.
• Using text that is readable without zooming.
• Sizing content to the screen so users do not have to scroll horizontally or zoom in.
• Placing links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

To stay mobile-friendly, you should be:

• Assessing how your user journey looks and feels on a mobile site.
• Looking at Google-optimized results in a Google search.
• Optimizing your search results to show off your mobile URLs.
• Landing your links on a mobile site when possible.
• Reviewing your website's current mobile performance in your analytics and reports.

Creative Needs

Having the correct kind of creative for your users is important. Review this list of ways to make sure your creative is serving your needs:

• Check your analytics to discover which type of device most often visits your site.
• Review your data for mobile and geo-location traffic data.
• If your mobile traffic is 40% or greater, request mobile creative such as High DPI (dots per inch) banners, rising star ads, and mobile-optimized text links from your advertisers.
• Ask for creative in multiple languages from advertisers, if necessary.
• Be innovative and use offline media and other mobile technologies.
  • Near Field Communication (NFC)
  • iBeacons
  • QR codes

Tracking

If your advertisers are not tracking on mobile devices, you are missing out on commissions.

• Check your advertisers to make sure they track mobile transactions.
• Speak to advertisers to encourage mobile tracking for those without it.
• Identify those who are mobile and add them to your site.