Our 20th episode is extra special because we’ve published our first mobile insights case study where we audited the Top 100 most successful Shopify stores globally. We went through the entire shopping experience strictly on mobile. In this episode, we broke down our key findings, patterns and why we think these sites are successful.
Links in this episode:
- https://www.nohacksmarketing.com/blog/mobile-insights-shopify/
- https://linkshero.com/shopify-stores/
- https://www.shopistores.com/top-500-most-successful-shopify-stores/
In this special edition episode of No Hacks Marketing, we are launching our first case study. We audited the 100 most successful Shopify stores in the world and went through their mobile shopping experience on mobile.
Episode Notes
While auditing the successful Shopify stores in the world, we found out the following:
- Only 21% are still using sliders on the homepage
- 68% do not use product thumbnails (i.e., dots and arrows)
- 76% have slide-in cart modal
- 83% had express checkout
Keep on reading or listen to our podcast to learn more about what we discovered about the top 100 successful e-commerce stores on Shopify.
Methodology
The first thing we did is find the accurate and most recent listing of the top Shopify stores. Some stores can be inaccurate, not working, and some links can be misleading. After searching online, we found Link Hero’s top 100 list.
Just using our mobile device, we managed to go through every list and shop on the website.
Without buying anything, we just went through the entire shopping experience by just going to the homepage, clicking on a product, adding to the cart, then going through the checkout process.
Our insights were divided into four groups, and these are:
- Product’s homepage
- Add to cart
- Experience and cart page
- Checkout page
We recorded our findings in a spreadsheet and assessed how images were used and how easy it is to find relevant information.
Homepage Elements
The campaign or hero section of the homepage is probably the most discussed part of an e-commerce website.
Upon checking we noticed that 21% are still using sliders, and 66% use a single image on their website. And most successful stores don’t use sliders. To cut it short, sliders may be a string trend but it’s also dying.
The possible reason why sliders don’t work is that it can reduce visibility, it annoys users, and people just don’t care about the next image. They either must wait for the next slide before they click or they’d just do it manually. So rather than sliders, make them scroll vertically.
The next thing that we have noticed is that 72% of the stores are using announcement bars on their website. To those who don’t know what’s an announcement bar, it’s a small ribbon on top of the website which announces if they have a new product or a promo.
Since it’s on mobile the ribbon should be readable or it should take a lot of height.
Hidden Navigation and Hamburger Icon
There are two types of e-commerce customers: Those who want to find stuff on their own and those who search for a product right away. Either way, the search be helpful, especially when you’re on your mobile.
We have noticed that at least 40% of the stores have a search box on their website. This is a good thing because, unlike desktops, it makes it easy to search for products. Having a search box on the homepage can help users find what they’re looking for. You don’t have to look for an icon because the search bar is just there.
So, if you happen to have an e-commerce store with multiple products, and you don’t have a search bar on your homepage, we suggest that you get one.
Platform Defaults
The problem with defaults in the WooCommerce template on mobile is that they use a tiny thumbnail below the main product image. You must use the thumbnail to navigate but it’s too small.
It’s like a tiny asset that needs to be loaded but doesn’t give you anything.
We noticed that 69% of the websites we checked don’t use thumbnails. However, that doesn’t mean that they only have a single image product or a single image gallery. Instead, they had more products and plenty of images, but they don’t use thumbnails as a navigation tool. They just use dots which just indicates that there’s more.
We believe that the only reason 30% still had those thumbnails is that it works well on desktop. They don’t check it on their mobile devices. It just shows that they’re still making designs on desktop and then just squish it into a mobile screen.
Product Design
If you’re doing CRO for an e-commerce website, especially for mobile, you won’t see any button when you load a page on your screen. In a lot of cases, you don’t even see the prices because the description is going to be long.
The product page won’t look as such if there are no prices or a buy button. Still, a lot of websites suffer from that.
What you need to do is make it obvious that this is a product page. For that, you need a price and a call-to-action button. If it’s just a page with a thumbnail image and a wall of text, then people will leave and go somewhere else.
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