When it comes to eCommerce, it’s usually recommended for merchants to offer more features and options for their customers. Retailers are constantly being encouraged to do more: sell through more channels, offer more payment options, create more unique content, and keep up with more of the changing trends. However, having too many options on your mobile site might end up causing more frustration for shoppers—and decreased sales for you.
Disadvantages of Offering Multiple Features
Researchers have noticed that although consumers like having plenty of choices, presenting them with an overwhelming number of choices can make it harder for them to make a decision. For example, one IT expert compared the options on a webpage to the flavors available in a soda machine. When there are a handful of flavors, customers can decide what they want in a matter of seconds and push a single button to get their drink.
When a restaurant upgraded their older soda machine with a new dispenser that offered over 100 flavors, customers were initially excited about all the possibilities. However, their enthusiasm quickly diminished when they realized how much longer it took people to make a decision. In addition, these machines could only serve one person at a time, and the new touchscreen interface was challenging for some people to navigate.
Similar to a soda dispenser, your website shouldn’t overwhelm mobile shoppers with distractions and features. As a WarmDevs article states, “Keeping the number of options at a reasonable level allows people to make decisions more easily and complete tasks faster.”
Optimization Strategies
If you’re not sure where to start, here a few of the top solutions that merchants in the Mobile Optimization Initiative have utilized on their own websites:
- Simplify the Cart Page Header. To minimize distractions for mobile users, retailers did a variety of experiments to reduce the amount of icons and options in the shopping cart header. Once they were able to find the right balance of usefulness and simplicity, the average RPV increased by over 6%.
- Collapse the Coupon and Promo Code Field. Allowing customers to collapse these fields reduces friction, increases RPV by over 8% on mobile devices, and it still allows shoppers to use their coupons without difficulty.
- Auto Cart Update. As the mobile shopper browses, their items are automatically added to the cart to reduce the number of steps they have to do manually. This experiment led to better experiences for over 95% of site visitors, and RPV increased for desktop and mobile devices.
Learn More About Mobile Optimization
For more experiment results and insightful tips, the Mobile Optimization Initiative can provide all the information you need to create an amazing mobile site!
