'Net Features : tablet adoption

Optimizing for Today’s Tablet Shoppers

Administrator — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:00:00 GMT

By Ken Burke, Founder and Executive Chairman, MarketLive

The numbers don’t lie. Tablets are taking over e-commerce.

The latest indicators of the tablet phenomenon surfaced over the 2012 holiday kick-off weekend. Data captured across several MarketLive merchants revealed the following statistics:

**Tablet traffic accounted for 8-19 percent of total shopping traffic from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

**Total sales from tablet devices ranged from 7-17 percent, with iPads representing a disproportionate 94 percent majority

**Tablet shoppers converted as much as 38 percent higher and average order sizes were up to 15 percent greater

Tablets also figure prominently in pre-sale consumer activities. More than half of tablet users have looked up product and price information, searched for store location, or read customer reviews at least once in the last month and 17 percent have done so almost daily. Unfortunately, with respect to their tablet experiences, more than 40 percent of tablet users report that they regularly experience problems such as site crashes, functionality breakdowns and formatting issues.

So if you’re looking to boost sales, optimizing your e-commerce site for tablet users could give you just the edge you need. Admittedly the tablet landscape continues to evolve rapidly and is not without a few challenges brought by the growing array of new devices. Still, deploying a few key optimizations to tailor your online shopping experience for tablet visitors, without committing to native app development or to a complete, responsive design influenced re-platform, is an efficient, winning approach. What follows is a few of the recommendations for tablet optimizations.

The Need for Speed

The bar is high. According to Compuware, more than two thirds of tablet users expect websites to load just as quickly, or quicker, than they would on a desktop computer – in two seconds or less. A challenge, since tablet access is often via 3G or slow, public Wi-Fi networks. However, following a few basic development guidelines can rev up your site’s performance across all devices and networks:

• Make sure all page images are highly optimized. Consider using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to help.

• Limit the number of animations on each individual page.

• Remove legacy/unused JavaScript, CSS and tags.

• Reduce the number of ‘Include’ files.

The Significance of Swipe

Tablet users expect to be able to use their fingers to swipe, zoom and pinch. If key areas of your site aren’t swipe-able these visitors are more likely to abandon out of frustration. Presenting a slightly modified, swipe-friendly experience to these visitors is one of the most important tablet optimizations you can make:

• Modify featured content. Swipe-friendly features keep users browsing and shopping. Replace static feature areas and button controlled sliders with scrolling, swipe-able content.

• Update product carousels. On the desktop, product carousels are a great way to showcase top-selling products and special product assortments using a minimal footprint. Detect tablet visitors and switch from button to swipe control for improved satisfaction and increased exposure.

• Adjust alternate views. On your product detail pages, make it easy for users to switch between alternate images with a simple swipe.

“Tap-Ability” and Finger-Friendly Design

Good gesture-based interface design recognizes that tablet users “tap.” The easy click precision of the mouse arrow is almost impossible with finger access, so some of the most effective tablet optimizations you can tackle are to make sure key areas are “tap-ready:”

• Be “fat-thumb” friendly. Make buttons large and bright. Replace tightly clustered, small text menus with well-spaced buttons or larger text links, separate long category lists into small groups, and always be sure to surround all clickable elements with ample white space. These tactics improve click accuracy and activity and are proving equally successful as desktop enhancements.

• Replace hover interactions. The hover states used in navigation drop-down menus, button designs and to bring up quick view and “more info” windows can be extremely effective on desktop sites but can be almost impossible to control on many tablets. Often completely unsupported, they can result in frustrating click errors as tablet visitors make repeat attempts to open and close hover content. Instead, use fixed place buttons and links to invoke drop-downs and modal windows. Tip: don’t forget to incorporate large, finger-friendly visual cues including large close buttons to facilitate easy, accurate window exits.

• Create “tap-ready” order options. Replace product configuration drop-downs, such as color, size and other order options with “tap-on, tap-off” design elements. Color swatches, boxes with sizes inside and other picture-based elements are efficient and effective.

• Eliminate Flash animation. The ubiquitous use of Flash in website design presents challenges unique to Apple devices since the technology is unsupported. Although the adoption of Android and Windows devices is on the rise, iPad ownership and shopping visits are disproportionately large. To eliminate the frustration caused by broken content displays, replace Flash functionality with JavaScript, HTML5 and in some cases, static content.

(Example: large, easy-tap buttons in a tablet-ready, accordion checkout.)

Save Typing, Save Sales

Consumers generally prefer to use tablets over mobile phones for online shopping, yet one in five finds tablets as cumbersome as phones when it comes to entering information (Forrester Research). The right adjustments to search and forms will mitigate many tablet abandons and directly impact conversion and sales. Prefill or suggest content to limit typing wherever possible, and when there is no alternative:

• Help site search users with predictive, “type ahead” search suggestions.

• Prefill forms anywhere possible.

• Always invoke the appropriate keyboard for each field, e.g. alpha for name fields, numeric for zip code fields, etc.

• Make form fields large enough and long enough for the text required.

• Deploy clickable plus/minus signs for quantity adjustments.

• Use drop downs when there’s no other alternative.

(Example: This merchant's leverages good site search, improving the customer experience.)

If You Build It, Will They Come?

What is your best option for implementing a tablet strategy? Should you modify your laptop/desktop website for tablet visitors? Re-platform using responsive design techniques? Build a special tablet application? At present, the prevailing approach seems to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude to gain a clearer understanding about the primary needs, expectations and behavior of tablet shoppers. Most consumers surveyed by Forrester within the last year still generally prefer the “traditional” site during their shopping experience.

One already proven certainty is that a modest, immediate investment in an improved tablet experience can have a measurable impact on satisfaction and sales, and many of the same optimizations even enhance your desktop site effectiveness. Whether not to you decide to ultimately invest in building a separate app for tablet users, or to update your platform around responsive design, it’s still vital to start optimizing for tablet traffic as quickly as possible.

About the Author:

Ken Burke is the Chairman, Founder, & Chief Evangelist of MarketLive, Inc. Ken founded MarketLive Inc. as Multimedia Live in 1995 with $500 in start-up money. Under his guidance it has grown into a leading provider of e-commerce software and related solutions. Ken is the developer of the MarketLive Intelligent Selling System, MarketLive's enterprise-class e-commerce application designed to optimize selling opportunities, build relationships with customers and give merchants control over their online merchandising. Ken is the author of "Intelligent Selling: The Art & Science of Selling Online."

Is Your Site Tablet-Optimized?

Allison Howen — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:15:00 GMT

Merchants that don’t want to be behind the competition optimize their websites for mobile, however, merchants that want to be ahead of the competition also optimize for tablets.

In fact, a recent study from multi-touch point retail technology provider Skava reveals that tablet shoppers are four times more likely to make an online purchase compared to those who shop on a smartphone. Moreover, the average order value (AOV) of a tablet purchase is $123 compared to $108 on a desktop.

That being said, the study also notes that only seven percent of the top 100 U.S. online retailers have optimized their websites for tablet devices. This means that merchants who put the time and resources into optimizing their sites for tablet devices, such as gifting retailer Harry & David, will surely be a step ahead of the competition.

“The number of customers accessing our website from tablets has grown exponentially in 2012 and a tablet shopper has a far higher conversion rate than a smartphone shopper - so we wanted to create a much more engaging and pleasing shopping experience for them,” said Sue Eagan, Director of Mobile and Tablet eCommerce, Harry & David. “Our tablet traffic has more than doubled over the last year and it continues to trends upwards. We want to create a visually rich, tablet optimized, seamless and engaging experience from start to checkout for our affluent tablet shoppers and Skava has been a terrific partner in helping us achieve these goals.”

Harry & David and Skava worked together to keep a consistent experience across platforms while also improving the overall website usability for tablet shoppers. The companies focused on building a tablet-optimized site that features better navigation and an easier checkout, as well as better leverages the high resolution capabilities for images on tablets.

“The vast majority of retailers are relying on their desktop website to serve as their tablet website and this can often become a frustrating experience for the tablet user who rely on fingers to navigate the site as opposed to a mouse,” said Dan Kowta, Creative Director at Skava. “Some frequent problems encountered by users are that certain links do not work, flash causes serious issues and checking-out can be a more difficult and time consuming experience. Tablet commerce is still in its infancy, but Harry & David is leading the way in creating an easy to use and more engaging tablet experience for their customers.”

Harry & David's Mobile Site:

Harry & David's Tablet Site:

Harry & David's Desktop Site:

Most Tablet Users Also Video Consumers

Linc Wonham — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:30:00 GMT

A new report from comScore has found that tablets have quickly reached a “critical mass” in the U.S., with 1 in every 4 smartphone owners using tablets during the three-month average period ending April 2012.

The study also found that tablet users were nearly three times more likely to watch video on their devices compared to smartphone users, with 1 in every 10 tablet users viewing video content almost daily.

“Tablets are one of the most rapidly adopted consumer technologies in history and are poised to fundamentally disrupt the way people engage with the digital world both on-the-go and, perhaps most notably, in the home,” says Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of Mobile. “It’s not surprising to see that once consumers get their hands on their first tablet, they are using them for any number of media habits including TV viewing.”

Adoption Jumps Nearly 12 Percent
In just two years since the launch of the iPad, the first tablet to reach a meaningful market penetration, tablet adoption has exploded, fueled by the introduction of new devices that appeal to various price and feature preferences. In April 2012, 16.5 percent of mobile phone subscribers used a tablet, representing an increase of 11.8 percentage points in the past year.

Growth in market penetration was even more apparent among the smartphone population with nearly 1 in 4 using a tablet device in April, an increase of 13.9 percentage points in the past year. A lower 10.4 percent of feature phone owners use a tablet, suggesting that smartphone ownership is highly predictive of tablet adoption in the current market.

Older Users on the Whole
A demographic analysis of mobile device audiences indicated that tablet and smartphone audiences closely resemble one another in terms of gender composition, with tablet users just slightly more likely to be female than smartphone users. However, the age composition of audiences showed that tablet users skewed noticeably older than smartphone users.

For both devices, the heaviest overall audience concentration was between the ages of 25-44. Compared to smartphone owners, tablet users were 28 percent more likely to be in the 65 and older age segment, and 27 percent less likely to be age 18-24.

Tablet users also skewed towards upper-income households, likely a function of the high price point of these devices still considered a luxury good to many consumers. Nearly 3 in 5 tablet users resided in households with income of $75,000 or greater, compared to 1 in every 2 smartphone users.

Video Content Consumers
A closer look at content consumption on tablets found that more than half of tablet users watched video and/or TV content on their device in April 2012, compared to just 20 percent of the smartphone audience, with larger screen sizes making tablets more conducive to video consumption than their smaller-screen cousins. Not only were tablet users more likely to watch video, but they were more likely to view video habitually, with 18.9 percent of tablet users watching video content at least once a week, and 9.5 percent watching video nearly every day on their devices.

Of those viewing video at least once during the month, 1 in 4 (26.7 percent) paid to watch content, highlighting the tremendous monetization potential this platform represents for content providers.

'Net Features : tablet adoption

Optimizing for Today’s Tablet Shoppers

Is Your Site Tablet-Optimized?

Harry & David's Mobile Site: Harry & David's Tablet Site: Harry & David's Desktop Site:

Most Tablet Users Also Video Consumers

Harry & David's Mobile Site:

Harry & David's Tablet Site:

Harry & David's Desktop Site: