In today's four-screen marketing world, designing an ideal mobile site is becoming more important than ever for the e-retailer. In a recent panel conducted at the National Retail Federation's Mobile Boot Camp on the subject of creating a mobile site from a retail perspective, Mickey Alam Khan of Mobile Marketer Daily outlined five important things to keep in mind. Here is a basic rundown:
1) The search function is of major importance. Remember, customers using mobile service do not have the browse-and-click luxury of most web surfers. They need something quick and simple, along the lines of Amazon.com's mobile application.
2) Images must be easy to see. Naturally, the mobile screen is much smaller than any of the others, so product pictures need to be as large as possible. Customers should also have the ability to zoom in.
3) Link your mobile presence to your web presence, and/or brick and mortar presence. Mobile stores can lead customers to your store's other incarnations, so always make sure there is a store locator button, and/or link on every page.
4) Mobile site navigation should be simple. "Intuitive" is the name of the game. Major chain examples mentioned by Khan included Ralph Lauren, Steve Madden and Wet Seal.
5) Identify and rectify the obstacles to sales. If you have a website, any relationships established with customers there should be extended to the mobile site. For example, customers may be leery of entering credit card info via their phones, just as in the early days of the Internet. But if you already have that customer's information at hand from previous web transactions, it can be carried over to the mobile site, thereby putting the customer at ease.