This blog post is about how to get more eCommerce sales and conversions on mobile devices.

And yet it isn’t.

Many businesses are finding that their mobile conversions lag far behind their mobile traffic.  In fact, research shows that while 59% of traffic to eCommerce websites happens on mobile browsers, it only accounts for 38% of revenue.

Is all that traffic being lost?

The Multi-Device Online Shopper

Today, the average North American household has seven internet connected devices.  That same study shows that laptops and PCs account for only 25% of traffic.  Everyone in the house has a phone, throw in a tablet, and – still there – a laptop or PC.

However, there is an interesting twist when it comes to buying behavior.  Look at this report:

While people like to browse on mobile, they prefer to use a PC to actually make a purchase.   Higher-priced purchases like vacation travel are even more likely to convert on a desktop, making the revenue numbers skew further:

What’s happening is clear.  People search, browse, and research things they want to buy on their preferred mobile browser.  But they are concerned about security or find it difficult to complete transactions on phone screens, so they move to their desktops to convert.

Multi-Channel Data Tracking

A consideration to keep in mind here is how mobile user behavior will affect your conversion data.

It is now possible to track the buyer experience across devices in Google Analytics by setting up a user-id.  However, this process requires that you authenticate and generate unique ID’s:

To implement User-ID, you must be able to generate your own unique IDs, consistently assign IDs to users, and include these IDs wherever you send data to Analytics.

For example, you could send the unique IDs generated by your own authentication system to Analytics as values for User-ID. Any engagement, like link clicks and page or screen navigation, that happen while a unique ID is assigned can be sent to Analytics and connected via User-ID.

Basically, this means you can track traffic and actions on your website across devices for people you can create an ID for, such as recurring customers.  However, you still can’t track an initial or single conversion that happens across devices.

Data Analysis For Single Transaction Conversions on Multiple Devices

Look for a couple of trends.  One is that you’ll have a lot of mobile traffic, time on site, and engagement without a conversion.  As we are seeing, this doesn’t mean that traffic doesn’t convert, it just doesn’t happen during the mobile session.

Next, look for a lot of direct traffic and branded keyword searches.  When someone goes to their desktop to convert, they’ll often type in your URL directly or search for you by your brand name.

You’ll have to make estimations on how much of this traffic originated from organic search traffic, PPC, or other mobile channels.  For example, if you have a lot of organic mobile traffic that correlates with a lot of direct/brand conversions on desktops in the same time period, you can estimate that much of that traffic initially discovered you with organic search on mobile then went over to a PC to convert.

Create a Seamless Experience

One of the most important things eCommerce websites can do is make sure that the experience between mobile and desktop devices is seamless.

Provide excellent mobile UX, making it as easy to convert as possible.  However, be prepared for this not to happen; users will move over to a computer to convert.  With mobile responsive designs, your UX, navigation, and branding from mobile to desktop should be seamless, but run some tests to make sure there are no hang-ups.

Also, make sure your mobile search optimization is strong.  On mobile, you need to optimize more for voice searches, which tend to be long-tail and in the form of a question.  Make sure your mobile ads are ranking and have strong calls to action and click through rates.

If you miss the initial traffic on mobile, you may not get the chance to catch them again when they go to convert on desktop.

The chances are that in the coming years, this data will even out.  Mobile UX for conversion will improve, and consumers will get used to converting directly on their mobile devices.

But for the next few years, be prepared for this behavior to continue, and plan your conversion funnels accordingly.