Mobile applications have become popular among online store owners as more and more purchases are made from smartphones. Therefore, high-quality adaptation can, to put it mildly, justify the investment.

How to make the site more convenient so that users buy more often from mobile devices? A/B testing will help solve the problem. This is when options A and B are compared to find the best solution and achieve the highest ROI for campaigns.

A/B testing: improving the mobile version of the website

Google mobile experts have been working with the Italian company Calzedonia Group for over a year to find the best solutions for its sites. By the beginning of the cooperation, users had already visited the company's websites from mobile devices: they accounted for 70 to 80% of traffic, depending on the brand. However, the percentage of sales on mobile sites was significantly lower - from 30 to 60%.

The optimization started with Tezenis, the youngest brand of the company with the highest mobile traffic. Google analyzed how users interact with the site on mobile and tested the checkout options using the Google Optimization platform.

Five ways to improve your mobile version of the website

A/B testing is a good way to determine which changes will benefit your particular site and increase your mobile conversion rate. Google has identified patterns and prepared recommendations for mobile.

1. Place links to the main categories of goods on the main page

This makes it easier for customers to find the products they need. You can see an increase in mobile conversion rate and overall sales revenue. For Calzedonia websites, our experts have selected the most popular product categories based on Google Analytics data. This allowed us to get even more conversions.

They added the main product categories to the main page of the Italian site Tezenis, and the conversion rate increased by 8%, and the number of conversions by 7%.

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2. Add a search bar to your homepage

This provided the largest increase in the number of conversions and sales (in some countries by 11 and 15%, respectively).

This result was predictable. Experts knew that those who use the site's search function are more likely to make a purchase. The search bar on the main page should always be, especially if the site has a lot of products.

3. Add images to the main menu

Pictures in the familiar menu with three horizontal stripes help visitors navigate and make a purchase. Tests on websites of different brands have shown that this technique makes navigation easier and helps increase conversion rates. When they removed the images from the menu on the Calzedonia website, the conversion rate dropped by 5.45%.

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4. Display product descriptions prominently

On the Tezenis website, product photos took up most of the page, and the description could only be viewed at the click of a button.

Testing has shown that if the user always sees the product description, this has a positive effect on conversions. In our case, they increased by 3%.

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5. Make your checkout as easy as possible

Placing an order and paying is the most delicate part of the process. A study by Statista showed that in 82% of cases, users abandon a purchase at this stage. Someone is not satisfied with the cost of delivery, and someone adds products to the cart to compare prices.

In a 2015 study, it turned out that users refuse to buy because they doubt the security of the transaction. But data from the same study for 2019 suggests that this reason has ceased to be the main one.

On the Tezenis website, we tried to place a secure checkout icon in the cart - the number of conversions decreased. This suggests that each assumption needs to be tested, and the requests of site visitors change over time.

Targeting mobile users will allow you to initially develop a site that works optimally on mobile devices and simplify the optimization process.