Moosejaw, the outdoor retailer known for its quirky marketing, recently surveyed over 19,000 visitors on their mobile shopping habits.
So what did they find out? Well, the first thing is that Moosejaw.com visitors are all over this mobile commerce thing — 86% said they’ve purchased at least one physical product (non-media) on their phone and 93% on their tablet. In fact, more than 50% of respondents had both 5+ items on mobile devices.
With mobile accounting for over a third of site traffic and growing, Moosejaw wanted to know why conversion rates for smartphones are typically 40% of desktop and tablet 80%. Is it the mobile experience or customer intent? The survey showed that 71% or phone visitors and 67% of tablet visitors were not planning on buying anything –they were “just checking stuff out.”
So how big of a factor is the speed of Moosejaw’s responsive mobile experience? Less than 6% of respondents cited site speed as the reason for not buying — less of an issue than not finding the right price, the right product or overall usability.
“Clearly speed and usability are still critical to the 30% of mobile visitors that are intending to buy,” said Eoin Comerford, Moosejaw’s CEO, “but just addressing these areas will not close the conversion rate gap with desktop. The mobile experience has to be viewed as part of the overall retail experience that frequently ends in a sale on a desktop or in a store.”
To support this point, even though 53% of respondents said they open the majority of Moosejaw emails on their phone, 51% said that they do not click through because they prefer to visit the site via a different device (laptop, desktop, etc.).
“Designing email for mobile users is clearly getting more and more critical,” added Dan Pingree, Moosejaw’s VP of Marketing. “Our results would show that a lower click through rate for mobile users may actually drive more direct traffic.”
Moosejaw has been a pioneer since the early days of mobile commerce, launching its WAP phone site, moosejaw.mobi, in 2006 and a smartphone optimized site, m.moosejaw.com, in 2009. In 2011, Moosejaw was the first major online retailer to use responsive design to customize the experience of its main site for mobile users.