Increasing sales on a mobile commerce (mCommerce) platform is often seen as synonymous with driving more traffic through mobile channels—whether through the mobile app, tablet or mobile site. Yet there are other ways for mCommerce startups to increase sales besides increasing app downloads. Chief among these methods is increasing conversion in the customer journey to levels that are on par or better than desktop conversion rates or any other benchmark a company is using.
Typically mCommerce platforms have customer journeys roughly similar to the desktop customer journey. Give or take a few steps depending on the product, industry, stored preferences, member vs. guest, etc. These customer journeys almost always (roughly) look something like this:
When scaled up to thousands if not millions of customers all going through this process, the customer journey in aggregate looks like a funnel. In early stages of the journey, the funnel is broad—there are many customers. Yet by the time the journey is at the “Confirmation” stage the funnel has narrowed, and there are very few customers remaining who actually convert into buyers. An example using Airbnb will help illustrate the concept of the funnel. All numbers are completely made up and used simply for illustrative purposes.
Let’s say there are 100 potentials customers who login to Airbnb’s iPhone app on Friday at noon. Of those 100, let’s say 80 proceed from the Login page to actually browsing the listings of sublets in the destination of their choice. Of those 80 who browse the listings, only 30 actually select a sublet that they are interested in. Of those 30 who select a sublet of interest, only 10 make it to the “Review” page where they review their listings and perhaps add any extra features they want. Of those 10, only 5 actually enter in their payment information. And of the 5 who enter their payment information, only 2 click submit and reach the “Confirmation” page. Thus of the original 100 who logged into the app, only 2 actually purchased, resulting in a final conversion rate of 2%.
There is clearly a big opportunity to increase conversion—particularly if Airbnb’s desktop conversion is higher than 2% or if their competition has superior conversion rates. Startups looking to increase conversion in the customer journey can target 2 different methods:
(1) The first method is to simply make it easier for customers by eliminating steps in the customer journey. A great example of this is how Uber has dealt with payments. By taking a photo of your credit card the first time a customer opens the app and then storing that information, they have effectively eliminated the payment step in the customer journey. Fewer steps in the journey, mean less opportunities to fall out and, ultimately, higher conversion rates.
(2) The second method is to simplify painpoints in the customer journey. In other words, increase the conversion rate of steps in the customer journey where customer fallout is particularly high. So if the conversion rate from “Browse Listings” to “Select Product” at Airbnb is currently 37.5% (30%/80%), focus on increasing that step’s conversion rate to 50% or 60%. This particular step in the journey has been mastered by many of the airlines and hotel companies (SPG and United in particular) with their unique mapping features, simplified browsing/sorting capabilities and sharp focus on UX. As can be imagined, increasing conversion early in the customer journey (when the funnel is still wide), should be prioritized as it has the potential to have the biggest impact on final conversion.
Allen Miller 