Mobile Commerce Platform – Knowing the Basics

Nowadays, having a presence on the Internet is just not enough – you need to establish your presence on the mobile web too. With the drastic reduction in the prices of handsets, the usage of mobile phones has risen tremendously. People are using their phones for various purposes such as bill payment, purchasing of tickets, and so on. The mobile shopping application is one of the most popular apps being used today. That is why it is very important to have a suitable mobile commerce platform for a consumer that is time-saving and user-friendly.

But what can be defined as a “suitable mobile commerce platform” when it comes to retailers? Always remember that we have to consider facts from the SEO (search engine optimization) point of view – your website needs to appear within the first few results on the page of a search engine. Let go through the points one by one:

• While designing the platform, you should bear in mind that each year the SEO algorithms undergo a change so that search engines can rank websites in a more efficient way. That is why your in-house design team should master the basics of modifying the code base.
• Search engines are always inclined towards websites that provide useful and rich content. You can use microformats to give detailed specifications of a certain product. It will also help the search engines to index your website better during a search query.
• You might have a lot of tabs and drop-downs in your website, which might confuse a customer who has navigated deeper. That is why breadcrumbs should be present to direct users back to the homepage. It is also SEO friendly because it might be taken as secondary links and come up in page specific links.
• In order to help the search engine crawlers to index your website better, you need to build a sitemap. Including relevant photos and videos will be of great help. It acts a tie-breaker in numerous cases, when the search engines come across similar content in various websites.
•  The shopping cart is an important part of a mobile commerce application. The cart should be integrated on a secure server and the check-out process needs to be kept as simple as possible. No navigational distractions should be present when a customer is contemplating a sale.

There are various technicalities involved with the design of a mobile commerce platform. Make sure that your team is well-versed with all the “nuts and bolts” of managing the platform so that your website pops up in the first few results when a relevant search query is entered.