Can you give our readers some background information on Moovweb and your relationship to the payments industry?
Moovweb’s mission is to drive improved mobile conversion rates. Moovweb has been instrumental in transforming the websites of leading brands including Macy’s, 1-800-Flowers, AIG and others into fast, engaging and intuitive mobile experiences that increase the customer lifetime value.
Customer retention hinges on delivering a frictionless and engaging shopping experience particularly when it comes to mobile checkout where most users abandon carts. MoovCheckout is a payment-agnostic mobile conversion product that applies checkout best practices based on data from over 300 mobile experiences as well as best practices research to optimize the mobile checkout flow and increase customer lifetime value.
Mobile checkout is broken? Why and what can be done to fix it?
More than two out of three shoppers abandon their online shopping carts. On mobile, where conversion rates are 70% lower than on desktop, it’s even worse. While some merchants have improved their mobile checkout, most have a long way towards meeting the expectations of customers who spend the majority of their time on mobile. Based on our years of experience in mobile commerce, Moovweb has defined some key areas that can make the checkout flow perform better including:
a)Use clear, direct language to help customers understand what information is needed and why. For example, explain why some data is required like a phone number — more than 60% of sites require a phone number without explaining why.
b)Provide auto-detect features so that user experiences match mobile contexts. For example, auto-detecting card type based on user card numbers and city and state based on ZIP codes are relatively easy implementations — yet 7 out of 10 top mobile websites fall short in terms of these optimizations.
c)Reinforce security and trust given that 17% of shoppers abandon their carts over concerns about payment security, foster a sense of trust worthiness by including credit card logos and secured seals from anti-virus software brands like Norton.
While these industry standard optimizations based on our own analysis of over 100 million mobile shoppers will drive immediate benefit to customers, some merchants may have unique checkout specifics. MoovCheckout provides marketing as well as e-commerce executives with the ability to modify their checkout through proven UX best practices. This is coupled with the power to run multiple split tests as well as real-time analytics to assess what is or isn’t working.
Why will Apple Pay for web be a significant factor in the retail payment landscape?
Simply put, Apple Pay for web is a game changer for mobile commerce because most consumers don’t have commerce apps on their phones. On average, consumers actually engage with and use less than 30 apps on their phones and merchants – save Amazon – don’t figure in that list. Mobile Web — not apps — drives far more revenue for all but the largest merchants but merchants are leaving easy money on the table by not optimizing their checkout experience.
For anyone that has tried Apple Pay in app, the experience is seamless – simply add to cart and use TouchID to checkout. No need to enter any payment information let alone billing or shipping addresses. Bringing this experience to mobile Web will not only improve cart abandonment but arguably increase impulse shopping for all but the most considerate shoppers. Merchants who invest the resources in mobile Web and Apple Pay will leapfrog their competitors as consumer spending on mobile exceeds desktop which is slated to occur in the next few years. Apple Pay for web accelerates this shift.
Do you have any projections on the conversion rates that retailers who implement Apple Pay for web might experience?
It’s hard to predict the increase in conversion rates but we do know that mobile conversion rates are on average 70% lower on mobile than on desktop. That’s a significant difference and if Apple Pay for Web were to decrease that number even by 10% thanks to an easier checkout flow that would move the needle significantly. For a large merchant like QVC, a slight increase in conversion rates results in increased sales of several millions of dollars if not more thanks to increased retention of loyal customers that come back to shop.
How do you see the payments industry evolving over the next five years?
The key question here is what happens to financial institutions like Chase, Visa and others when Apple or another consumer-facing product is what the consumer sees when they shop – and pay. These legacy brands are the backbone of the payment ecosystem but have less control over consumers. Apple or others can command a premium in the market – and arguably squeeze profits from other players – thanks to their brand and direct interaction with customers. This will likely not happen overnight or over the next several years but financial institutions should be worried about the potential widespread adoption of Apple Pay for Web by merchants in the coming short while.