Why are mobile conversion rates so low?

The average retailer stands to lose on 11 percent of potential revenue over the next 14 months because shoppers are shifting away from PCs, yet smartphone conversion remains woefully low, according to Adobe. Its “2016 Digital Insights Mobile Retail” report finds that smartphone traffic to retail sites jumped 33 percent year-over-year, but overall traffic for the average retailer remained flat, with desktop and tablet traffic falling by six and 10 percent, respectively. At the same time, while smartphones saw a 65 percent increase in revenue growth, overall online sales revenue increased only ten percent as desktop and tablet both declined two percent. Smartphone conversions were one percent versus two percent for tablet and 2.8 percent for desktop. The main reason shoppers make a purchase on desktops over smartphones is because of easier navigation of pages (cited by 30 percent) and seeing images better on a bigger screen (26 percent), according to an accompanying survey to Adobe’s report. A survey from Mapp Digital exploring what prevents people from making mobile purchases overall (whether smartphone or tablet) likewise found navigation to be a problem with smartphones. Over a third of respondents (36.7 percent) indicated that difficulties navigating prevented them from making a purchase on a mobile phone versus 25.7 percent citing a similar challenge on tablet. Other conversion challenges for smartphones from the Mapp survey included:

• Hard to type information (smartphone, 35.9 percent; tablets, 22.9 percent);
• Security concerns (smartphones, 35.2 percent; tablets 29.5 percent);
• Too many steps to complete purchase (smartphones, 16.4 percent, tablet 13.1 percent).

Adobe’s study also found:

• Revenue-per-visit (RPV) on smartphones is 3.6 times lower than on desktops;
• Twenty-six percent of carts result in an order on desktops versus 16 on smartphones;
• Forty-five percent of consumers use only one to two shopping apps on average.

• Adobe Data Shows Retailers Fail to Maximize Mobile Revenue – Adobe
• What Factors Are Preventing Consumers From Making Purchases on Mobile Devices? – MarketingCharts
• Email Marketing Benchmarks Every Marketer Should Know – Mapp Digital