Increase Mobile Revenue by Offering Consumers a Choice of Payments

Consumers expect enhanced brand experiences on mobile, including easy navigation and a seamless checkout where they can use preferred payment methods.

The growth of mobile commerce has been accelerating in the current dynamic market alongside a steady rise in consumer adoption of alternative payment methods. Understand the impact of these digital trends and steps you can take to stay improve your customer experiences.

Key findings

The growth of mobile commerce has been accelerating in the current dynamic market, alongside a steady rise in consumer adoption of alternative payment methods like digital wallets.3 In this context, firms can drive success by enabling consumer choice, optimizing the shopping experience, and acquiring the right tools to manage conversion rates and cart abandonment. We found that to serve consumers’ digital shopping needs and increase mobile conversion, merchants must enhance end-to-end mobile experiences – from browsing to checkout – and offer the right mix of payment choices.

Many consumers are not satisfied with merchants’ mobile checkout experiences

Though consumers are increasingly using mobile for shopping, merchants struggle with low conversion rates on mobile sites and apps. A significant number (42%)¹¹ of consumers are not satisfied with mobile checkout experiences, partly due to misalignment between consumer expectations on checkout pages and merchants’ features. Merchants struggle with checkout abandonment due to suboptimal user experiences.

Most merchants plan to expand digital wallet types to offer consumers payment choice and security

Payment choice is important to consumers; the availability of multiple digital payment options was the most important feature in checkout pages (70%). ¹¹ Over a third of consumers have abandoned a mobile purchase recently due to a lack of payment options. They prefer not to share financial details with merchants – the top reason being that over a quarter (27%) use digital wallets for mobile purchases. ¹¹ And merchants recognize this opportunity, with 73% of ecommerce leaders planning to expand digital wallets on mobile. ¹¹

Merchants can increase mobile conversion and revenue by providing a choice of payment options and digital wallets

By implementing digital wallets, merchants have increased mobile conversions (63%) and revenue (70%). ¹¹ Consumers are more likely to buy (71%) and feel positively toward the brand (62%) if they have a choice of payment options and digital wallets.11 Defaulting to a payment method causes negative sentiment toward brands (75%) and may risk abandonment (74%). ¹¹ A curated set of digital wallets enhances the brand, optimizes mobile experience, and increases reach across segments such as consumers under 25, who are among the most demanding consumers in Forrester’s Empowered Customer Segmentation.¹¹

Key recommendations

Consumers are shopping more online and via mobile devices. E-commerce represents a greater share of merchants’ total sales — sometimes double or even quadruple the share.¹⁰ As such, it’s more important than ever for retailers and brands to improve their digital checkout and payments experiences. Forrester’s in-depth survey of more than 2,000 mobile consumers and over 200 merchant decision makers yielded several important recommendations:

• Align mobile checkout experiences with consumer expectations.

• Merchants considering digital wallets on mobile should implement wallets from the top providers.

• Merchants looking to expand digital wallet types must avoid cluttering their mobile checkout experience.

• Remove auto-selection of digital wallets on mobile.