Mobile devices have sur­passed desk­tops as the lead plat­form for con­sumers to inter­act with online retail­ers. Mobile trans­ac­tions have grown to 30 per­cent of total ecom­merce, and this num­ber increas­es every month. Mar­keters need to under­stand and respond to con­sumer behav­ior on these devices – pre­sent­ing expe­ri­ences that are inspir­ing, easy to nav­i­gate and shop, and tai­lored for peo­ple on the go.

Recent­ly I was brows­ing a trend guide of one of my favorite brand’s lat­est fall styles on my mobile device while wait­ing for an appoint­ment. I was inspired by one of the mod­els wear­ing a great com­bi­na­tion of pants, silk shirt, jack­et, pumps, hand­bag, and jew­el­ry. When I want­ed to actu­al­ly zoom in on the prod­uct images, view col­or options, price, and oth­er prod­uct details, I was able to do that with a one-click inter­ac­tion for each piece shown, instead of hav­ing to find and nav­i­gate back and forth through numer­ous prod­uct detail pages. I was able to make an impulse pur­chase deci­sion on the spot. We call this type of expe­ri­ence “shop­pable.” Shop­pable hotspots on prod­uct imagery take con­sumers to a quick-view over­lay of rel­e­vant prod­uct details, includ­ing zoom, alter­nate views, col­ors, size, price, and the all-impor­tant add to cart but­ton. In this way a shop­per could “shop” direct­ly from the image with­out scrolling or nav­i­gat­ing to anoth­er page. Data shows that this type of expe­ri­ence leads to high­er con­ver­sion, but we want­ed to go a step fur­ther and val­i­date that con­sumers actu­al­ly pre­ferred this type of shop­ping expe­ri­ence. To inves­ti­gate the effi­cien­cy of this approach, we sur­veyed a con­sumer pan­el that made tablet pur­chas­es in the last 12 months. Par­tic­i­pants shopped for a prod­uct fea­tured in the lifestyle image at the top of the cat­e­go­ry page, either via tra­di­tion­al cat­e­go­ry page nav­i­ga­tion (e.g. scrolling down the page to locate the prod­uct and click through to the prod­uct detail page) or a sim­i­lar ver­sion using “shop­pable hotspots.” The study uncov­ered a strong pref­er­ence for shop­pable expe­ri­ences over the tra­di­tion­al cat­e­go­ry page expe­ri­ence, includ­ing:

• Ease of nav­i­ga­tion.
• Abil­i­ty to find what’s need­ed to make a pur­chase.
• High lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion.

Let’s look at each ele­ment and then look at a suc­cess­ful exam­ple:

Ease Of Navigation

In our sur­vey, we found that 77 per­cent of con­sumers are more like­ly to per­ceive the site to be easy to nav­i­gate if shop­pable hotspots are present, a 29 per­cent increase over the non-shop­pable ver­sion, and 74 per­cent per­ceived the zoom func­tion to be eas­i­er to use in the shop­pable con­cept. Ease of nav­i­ga­tion is impor­tant to keep­ing mobile users on your site. The few­er page loads they have to wait for, the more like­ly they will engage in more of the pur­chas­ing cycle on their vis­its. Find­ing enough prod­uct infor­ma­tion can be a bar­ri­er to online con­ver­sion, espe­cial­ly on mobile where every page load adds to the time it takes to make a pur­chase. In addi­tion, we have seen that expe­ri­ences such as zoom can increase con­ver­sion by 3 times on aver­age. A more detailed look at a prod­uct helps con­sumers feel more con­fi­dent about what they will be get­ting.

Discovery Of Product Information Needed To Make A Purchase

Sev­en­ty-two per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents found it easy to find rel­e­vant prod­uct infor­ma­tion and 66 per­cent found enough infor­ma­tion to make a pur­chase deci­sion, a 25 per­cent increase from the non-shop­pable expe­ri­ence. In addi­tion, 79 per­cent of respon­dents who shopped via hotspots per­ceived the task of locat­ing the add to cart but­ton sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er to accom­plish. Improv­ing con­ver­sion is often focused on remov­ing bar­ri­ers to sale. Allow­ing cus­tomers to quick­ly and eas­i­ly find and inter­act with rel­e­vant prod­uct detail and add prod­ucts to their cart effi­cient­ly via a shop­pable quick-view can lead to high­er con­ver­sion. This is espe­cial­ly help­ful for the mobile shop­per who often has less time and who is on a device that per­forms more slow­ly than a desk­top.

Level Of Satisfaction For Shoppers?

Respon­dents who eval­u­at­ed the shop­pable hotspots con­cept report a high­er over­all sat­is­fac­tion with the site: 60 per­cent feel that shop­pable hotspots improve the shop­ping expe­ri­ence. Site sat­is­fac­tion dri­ves loy­al­ty and repeat pur­chas­es. If your cus­tomers are able to find new inspi­ra­tion and eas­i­ly shop those trends, they’ll come back again and again.

J.Crew & ‘Shopping The Look’

J.Crew’s “Shop this look” fea­ture is an exam­ple of emerg­ing quick-look gal­leries that give buy­ers an effi­cient, engag­ing shop­ping expe­ri­ence. Shop­pers select an out­fit in quick-view and then eas­i­ly scroll down the page to imme­di­ate­ly add pieces of the out­fit to their cart after choos­ing col­or or fab­ric where options are avail­able. This saves the time of going to the cat­e­go­ry page of an item of inter­est and try­ing to find it there to get details. The details for all of the items are eas­i­ly accessed direct­ly from the gallery. The shop­per can go from “that looks nice” to “add to cart” in two page views instead of three or more. “Shop this look” gal­leries give shop­pers an effi­cient, engag­ing expe­ri­ence. The study shows that ease of nav­i­ga­tion, dis­cov­ery of rel­e­vant prod­uct details, and over­all sat­is­fac­tion can be improved through incor­po­rat­ing shop­pable hotspots on lifestyle imagery, look­books, and trend guides that offer buy­ers an improved shop­ping expe­ri­ence.