Your mobile site probably sucks

70% of people shop on phones now. Most stores still treat mobile like an afterthought.

Desktop traffic keeps dropping. Mobile keeps growing. But when you look at conversion rates, mobile usually lags way behind desktop. That's not because people don't want to buy on phones. It's because most mobile shopping experiences are frustrating.

Speed matters more on mobile

People are impatient on phones. They're often on slower connections. They're distracted. They're doing three things at once. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, they're gone.

Images are usually the problem. Huge product photos that look great on desktop but take forever to load on mobile. Compress them. Use responsive images that serve smaller files to phones. Stop making people download 5MB to see your product.

Every app and plugin you add slows things down. Chat widgets, analytics, social proof popups, all of it adds load time. Ask yourself if each one is worth losing customers over.

Buttons need to be big enough to tap

This seems obvious but it's amazing how many stores get it wrong. Tiny buttons. Links too close together. People trying to tap one thing and hitting another.

Make tap targets at least 44x44 pixels. Give them space. People have different finger sizes and they're often using one hand. If someone has to zoom in to tap a button, your design failed.

Text size and readability

Small text is hard to read on phones. People shouldn't need to zoom in to read product descriptions or prices. Minimum 16px font size for body text. Bigger for important stuff like prices and calls to action.

Contrast matters too. Light gray text on white backgrounds might look sophisticated but it's hard to read, especially in sunlight. Make it easy on people's eyes.

Navigation needs rethinking for mobile

Desktop navigation with dropdown menus full of categories doesn't translate well to phones. It's clunky. People get lost. They can't find what they want.

Simplify for mobile. Fewer top-level categories. Search prominently placed. Let people find products through search more than navigation. Make it obvious how to get back to where they were.

Forms are painful on mobile

Checkout forms, contact forms, any form. They're worse on mobile because typing is harder and slower. Every field you can eliminate helps.

Use autocomplete. Let people's devices fill in their information. Support autofill for addresses and payment info. Make it as easy as possible.

The right keyboard matters. Email fields should show the email keyboard. Phone fields show the number pad. Credit card fields show numbers. These little things reduce friction.

Images need special handling

Product images on desktop can be big and detailed with zoom features. On mobile, people can't see that detail anyway. They pinch to zoom, which works but isn't great.

Show fewer images per product on mobile. Focus on the most important angles. Make images fit the screen without horizontal scrolling. Let people swipe through images easily.

Video works well on mobile if it's short and loads fast. Quick product demonstrations or unboxing videos give people information without walls of text.

Popups are more annoying on mobile

Newsletter signup popups. Exit intent popups. Discount offers. All of these are annoying on desktop but they're worse on mobile. They cover the whole screen. The close button is tiny. People just leave.

If you use popups on mobile, make them small. Make the close button huge and obvious. Time them better. Don't hit someone with a popup three seconds after they land on your site.

Payment options for mobile

Typing credit card numbers on a phone is tedious. Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal. These exist to make mobile checkout faster. Support them.

People will literally choose one store over another based on whether they can use their preferred mobile payment method. Don't lose sales because you only take credit cards.

Test on real devices

Your desktop browser's responsive mode isn't good enough. It doesn't show you how your site actually feels on a phone. Performance is different. Interactions are different. Touch targets that seem fine in a browser don't work with actual fingers.

Buy cheap Android phones and test on those too. Not everyone has the latest iPhone. Your site needs to work on older devices with less processing power and smaller screens.

Check your analytics

Look at mobile conversion rates compared to desktop. If mobile is way lower, you have problems to fix. Look at where people drop off. Where they bounce. What pages have high exit rates on mobile specifically.

This data tells you what's broken. Maybe your checkout doesn't work well on phones. Maybe product pages load too slowly. Maybe navigation is confusing. Fix the biggest problems first.