How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for Mobile Devices

Why phones deserve their own attention

For many stores, a large share of visits comes from phones, though the exact share depends on the product, audience and traffic sources. Phone shoppers often browse more than they buy, and a poor experience can end a visit quickly. Mobile optimization means making sure that everything a shopper does on a desktop, they can also do on a small touchscreen without effort. The broader shift is discussed under mobile commerce; this article is about the practical steps.

Use a responsive layout

A responsive layout adapts to the width of the screen, so the same page rearranges itself for a phone, tablet or desktop. Most modern templates from a hosted store builder are responsive already, but check, because custom edits and added apps or widgets can break them.

Signs of a good responsive layout:

• Content fits the screen width with no sideways scrolling.
• Product grids drop from several columns to one or two.
• Menus collapse into a simple, clearly labeled button.
• Images scale down instead of being cropped awkwardly.
• Text reflows and stays readable without pinching and zooming.

Design the small-screen version deliberately. A good rule is to decide the most important content first, and let that come first in a single column.

Make controls thumb-friendly

People use phones with one hand, often while doing something else. Controls should be easy to hit.

• Size. Buttons and links should be large enough to tap without hitting a neighbor. A common guideline is a target of roughly 44 to 48 pixels on each side, though recommendations vary slightly between guidelines.
• Spacing. Leave room between tappable items, such as product options and menu links.
• Placement. The lower part of the screen is easiest to reach with a thumb. Primary actions, like adding to cart, benefit from being easy to find; some stores keep that button visible while the shopper scrolls product details.
• Clear states. Show which option is selected, and confirm when an item has been added to the cart.
• No hover-only features. Menus or information that appear only when a mouse hovers do not work on touchscreens.

Keep navigation simple

Small screens have little room, so every menu item competes for space. Keep the top-level menu short, use clear labels, and make sure the cart and search are always easy to reach. An on-site search box is especially useful on a phone, where browsing through long lists is tiring; how search and menus support finding things is covered under site search. Avoid pop-ups that fill the screen and are hard to close, since they frustrate users and can cause search engines to view the page negatively.

Streamline mobile checkout forms

Typing on a phone is slow and error-prone, so forms are where many mobile purchases are lost. Ways to ease it:

• Ask for less. Every field should be needed. See the discussion of checkout forms for what to include.
• Use the right keyboard. Set number keyboards for phone and card fields, and email keyboards for email addresses, using the proper input types.
• Enable autofill. Correctly labeled fields allow the phone to fill in names and addresses.
• Put labels above fields and keep them visible, rather than relying on placeholder text that disappears when typing starts.
• Show errors clearly, next to the field with a plain explanation, and keep what the shopper already typed.
• Offer guest checkout so shoppers do not have to create an account on a small screen.
• Support familiar payment methods, including wallets provided by the device, where your payment setup allows it. This reduces typing of card details.

Checkout design on a phone should show progress and totals without cluttering the screen.

Keep pages light

Mobile connections can be slow or unreliable, and phones have less processing power. Large images and many scripts hurt more on mobile. Compress images, avoid autoplaying video, and remove features that nobody uses. More is covered in the article on page speed. A page that loads quickly on a mid-range phone with an average connection is a better target than one that is fast only on your own device.

Mind the content

• Use short paragraphs and descriptive subheadings so product text can be scanned.
• Put key product facts, like price, options and delivery information, before long descriptions.
• Make size charts and spec tables readable without sideways scrolling; a simple stacked layout often works.
• Keep text at a comfortable size. Around 16 pixels for body text is a common baseline.
• Be careful with banners and text embedded in images, which shrink and become unreadable on small screens.

Test on real phones

Browser tools that simulate a small screen are useful, but they do not reproduce real touch, real network conditions or real keyboards. Test on actual devices:

1. Borrow a few phones if you can, including an older or cheaper model and both major operating systems if possible.
2. Try several browsers, since behavior can differ.
3. Walk through the whole journey: open the home page, search, filter, view a product, add to cart, begin checkout, fill in the form, and reach a test order. Placing test orders before you open is a good habit.
4. Try both portrait and landscape orientation.
5. Test on a slower connection, or turn on a throttling feature if your tools have one.
6. Ask someone else to repeat the journey while you observe silently.

Write down every point where you hesitate. Fix the serious ones first, such as buttons that cannot be tapped or fields that cannot be filled.

Check the data, too

Analytics can show how mobile visitors behave compared with desktop visitors: bounce rate, pages viewed and checkout completion. If mobile completion is much lower, that points to something to investigate. Keep in mind that phone shoppers often browse on mobile and buy later on another device, so a lower mobile conversion rate is not always a design failure.

Make it routine

Each time you add an app, banner, template section or product type, check it on a phone. Small, regular checks are far easier than fixing a store that has drifted into a poor mobile state.