As 84 percent of consumers in Asia-Pacific use their phones to browse and purchase from m-commerce sites, purchase decisions are usually affective by technical issues or slow websites, results of a new study showed.
The research commissioned by cloud service provider Rackspace noted that as high as 78 percent of consumers in the region experience technical issues when browsing sites on their smartphones.
Across markets, over a quarter of consumers (28 percent) said they would not make purchases from an m-commerce site if they experience a technical issue and nearly all consumers (93 percent) said their perception of a brand is affected if its website consistently has problems.
The study polled 1,200 consumers aged 22-44 across Hong Kong, Singapore, and India.
"“E-commerce companies need to realize the severity of poorly managed m-commerce sites and the impact it’s having on consumers. Downtime or timed-out errors are not only causing consumer frustrations, but they’re also enabling consumers to forgo purchasing,” said Ajit Melarkode, managing director of Rackspace Asia Pacific. “A five-second delay in page loading can be the difference in a sale or not."
Among server-related technical problems that consumers’ experience, slow page loading ranked as the most prevalent issue in the region. On average, 61 percent of consumers cited this as the number one problem (73 percent in Hong Kong, 54 percent in India and 58 percent in Singapore).
This was followed by scaling issues with 39 percent of consumers on average saying that webpages do not look to scale on their smartphones (40 percent in Hong Kong, 31 percent in India and 46 percent in Singapore). Page freezing and glitches ranked as the third most prevalent technical problem.
Melarkode also shared e-commerce expert Bluecom’s tips on building a mobile commerce site for online retailers which include:
Design specifically for mobile
Mobile commerce user experience design should not simply be an adaption of the desktop user experience design. On mobile, the finger is the mouse. To ensure users can access the payment page consider click VS tap features.
Build for the responsive web
Responsive web design is becoming the standard user experience in Asia. By delivering a seamless experience to shoppers on devices of all sizes, changes to converting a sale increase.
Consider web app and native app separately
Web app and native app should be considered as complementary and separate approaches. Building both can lead to increased visibility and greater sales.
Think about performance before you build
Even more than in traditional desktop eCommerce sites, mCommerce demands peak performance in order to ensure a stable user experience. Consider technology integrations from early building days to keep the doors to your online store open.
"To retain customers on your m-commerce site, performance and support is key. Companies need to build a premium mobile experience for their customers that is built on speed, security and reliability while simultaneously fixing any IT issues that arise in real-time,” said Adam McCarthy, director and general manager of Rackspace Asia. “To do this, companies should look into partnering with an IT hosting partner that can manage, scale and support their site at all times, allowing online retailers to focus on their customers, sales strategy and long-term growth without worry."