By T.J. Gentle, Smartfurniture.com
In June 2013, mobile overtook desktop as the leading e-retail traffic source. More than half (55%) of users shopped the web from either a tablet or a smartphone. And it happened faster than most of us anticipated it would.
We had made a decision shortly before that time to devote more attention to mobile. We’d been watching our mobile traffic rise, but revenue from those users was flat. It was evident that our site really wasn’t an ideal experience for shoppers on tablets and smartphones. They expected the site to fit their devices, with no need to pinch-and-zoom to read the text and see the images. We needed to address mobile, fast.
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The question we had to answer was: “Should we create an app, or should we re-design the site to be completely responsive?”
On the face of things, it’s not an easy question. There are other furniture retailers that offer shopping apps. But as a furniture retailer, we’d be ahead of the curve with a fully responsive site.
Apps have some benefits. An app is native to the user’s device and tends to be a simpler interface. On the other hand, if we executed a responsive site well, we would end up with a seamless experience between mobile and desktop. Shoppers who browsed via smartphones and finished their purchases on laptops wouldn’t find the transition jarring. The site would be the same — just sized differently. And it wouldn’t take up valuable storage capacity on shoppers’ devices.
In the end, a responsive site redesign easily won out. We bring mass customization and a personalized shopping experience to everyone — and that just wouldn’t have worked in an app. We would have had to de-personalize our site, omit options, and take away many of the choices we offer our customers. Those are choices they can’t find anywhere else online.
In other words, it was really a question of customer service. What would serve our customers better? We were always going to go with the one that allowed us to help more people as individuals, rather than as a collective that fit in one box. As important as a good-looking site is, it means nothing if it doesn’t actually provide customers with a good experience.
And that brings us to another aspect of responsive design that is sometimes forgotten. It’s better for desktop users, too. Screens don’t just come in one size, no matter what kind of device you’re using. With responsive page elements, we’re able to make the most of whatever space users give us. And we’ve seen results.
Since we’ve rolled out our new, fully-responsive site, we’ve seen conversion rates rise for both desktop and mobile. Smartphone users have passed tablet users as a percentage of our traffic — and both are continuing to grow.
According to a November 2014 article, mobile shopping traffic is now 66% of the total — a jump of 11% in just 16 months (June 2013 through Sept. 2014). The time to go responsive is yesterday.
T. J. Gentle is the President and CEO of SmartFurniture.com, a venture backed Internet retailer and pioneer of Design on Demand®. SmartFurniture.com’s Design on Demand Platform empowers customers to design and customize furniture. Since becoming the CEO, SmartFurniture.com has developed SmartProfile a Prescriptive Personalization application that uses proprietary technology to match furniture products to each customer’s unique profile and characteristics; launched SmartSpace, an innovative web application that empowers customers to see how customized furniture will look like in the context of their homes before ordering; and the Company has won numerous awards and industry recognition while experiencing a five-fold increase in sales.
