A staggering 17.8% conversion rate for tablets has been achieved by Scandinavian e-tailer Sjoppi following the introduction of a new touch-based interface for mobile shopping. The company uses three sites in different languages to complete transactions from its TV-shopping channels.
The touch-based interface is provided by the patented StoreFront system from Swedish company ShopLogiQ, offering a drag-and-drop method to move products to the shopping basket.
“The drag-and-drop technology offers a tactile experience that makes it easy to just slide the product to the basket. The experience is similar to shopping in an ordinary retail store.
”Our solution builds on the strengths of touch-based devices, instead of regarding these as platforms with limited capabilities,” says Stefan Deleuran Mumm, head of product development at ShopLogiQ.
“ShopLogiQ’s StoreFront interface for tablets and smartphones is a simple yet sophisticated way to make mobile e-shopping simpler and faster, while avoiding a large and complicated responsive design project. It also suits the behaviour of our target audience, where use of mobile devices is high and increasing,” says Henrik Haagen, founder of Sjoppi.
Viewers of the TV-shopping channel are encouraged to complete purchases online. Computer users see the standard interface while the ShopLogiQ StoreFront user interface is displayed to users of tablets and smartphones. Both interfaces use the same webshop.
“The tactile experience results in the customer feeling more control over the merchandise in the process. This results in a very high conversion rate and more products in the basket, findings that have been confirmed by recent research from Carroll School of Management, the business school of Boston College in Massachusetts,” says Mumm.
Sjoppi’s 17.8% conversion rate for tablets and 8% for smartphones has been calculated based on the number of visitors to the site and purchases completed since the sites went online in early February. According to figures from analytics service Coremetrics, the conversion rate from visit to sale on retail sites for PC is normally 4%.
The ecommerce site for Sjoppi is based on Magento Community 1.8.1. StoreFront can be integrated with all modern ecommerce platforms with the use of an API. Sjoppi’s sites have been developed in cooperation with Malmo based company EcomPartner.
This is the second installation for StoreFront. The interface was first used by UK retailer Digital Depot.
“The ease of use is vitally important for an ecommerce site and even more so on mobile devices with their limited feature set. As the use of mobile devices is rising by the day, the importance of easy use continues to increase. In a study by Google, 61% of users said they quickly move on to another site if they are unable to find what they look for straight away. If conversion rates on your company’s website for mobile platforms are low, this could indicate that customers have moved on elsewhere,” says Mumm.
“According to a survey conducted by Nielsen, 79% of US smartphone and tablet owners have used their mobile devices for shopping-related activities. However, only 28% of tablet users had used their device to make a payment. This suggests users are poorly served by current ecommerce sites,” Mumm concludes.
ShopLogiQ develops touchscreen interfaces for tablets and smartphones that give the user a much better, richer experience and lowers the threshold to buy, compared to a traditional ecommerce mouse and keyboard interfaces.