Consumers spend hours attached to their phones each day. That means your existing and potential customers are more likely than ever to discover your ecommerce website on a small screen.
Perhaps you can snag a smartphone shopper through Instagram when your ad catches their eye, or maybe a TikTok influencer’s enthusiastic review prompts them to Google your product. Some customers might click through from your SMS promotional text messages to a mobile landing page. Others might respond to push notifications to take in-app surveys.
With so many pathways leading shoppers to your brand outside the traditional desktop experience, it’s essential to provide an excellent mobile customer experience. Read on for details on why a streamlined mobile user journey matters for ecommerce and strategies to go from clicks and swipes to cart additions and checkouts.
Why does mobile customer experience matter?
The mobile customer experience is the complete arc of how shoppers interact with your brand on smartphones and tablets—from browsing products and reading reviews to mobile checkout and order tracking. Throughout this customer journey, each interaction on mobile devices shapes how people explore and purchase from your online shop. Creating a better mobile customer experience means making it easy for people to shop on their smartphones and tablets, rather than prioritizing the desktop experience.
In 2023, shoppers on mobile devices, smartphones, and tablets made $2.2 trillion in online purchases. Mobile transactions now represent 60% of global digital sales. As mobile apps and websites become the primary way people shop, brands that get the mobile experience right can have a meaningful revenue opportunity.
10 strategies for improving your mobile customer experience
- Avoid immediate pop-ups
- Upgrade your main menu
- Use secondary sliding menus
- Make support prominent
- Simplify filtering and sorting
- Show recently viewed items
- Enable native sharing
- Show shipping details upfront
- Add video and zoom views
- Collect mobile feedback
A responsive website with easy navigation and lightning-fast loading is the baseline, but so much needs to go on top of that foundation. What sets winning mobile experiences apart are the thoughtful details—those small but powerful improvements that guide shoppers smoothly from browsing to buying. When you remove pain points, you make user sessions seamless and boost customer satisfaction. Here are some strategies to try if you want to transform casual mobile browsers into confident buyers:
1. Avoid immediate pop-ups
On desktop, it’s common for ecommerce sites to welcome buyers with a pop-up offering a discount in exchange for an email address. On mobile, these offers can be particularly frustrating due to limited screen space. They often take over the entire screen, are difficult to close, and derail a shopper’s first impression of your brand.
For a better user experience, give visitors time to explore before presenting an offer—ideally after they’ve viewed a few pages or spent at least 30 seconds browsing. In the early phases of user engagement, let them explore at their own pace.
The popular cookware brand Our Place nails this approach—its site-wide 36% discount offer appears only after shoppers have had a chance to browse the collection. When it does appear, it takes up about two-thirds of the screen and features a prominent “X” to dismiss it quickly.

2. Upgrade your main menu
The expanding hamburger menu of three horizontal lines has become a mobile shopping staple, and getting it right means striking the perfect balance of function and design. While keeping it condensed and thumb-friendly is important, don’t stop at basic text links—consider adding product photography, icons, or color to make browsing more engaging.
Brightland, a premium olive oil brand, makes its mobile navigation intuitive by pairing each menu item with product imagery. The six carefully curated categories feature elegant product photography with a subtle animation that reveals its signature bottles. This thoughtful attention to navigation design helps shoppers better understand the product range while browsing, turning a basic menu into a mini product showcase.

3. Use secondary sliding menus
Although mobile design typically emphasizes vertical scrolling, horizontal navigation can expand your screen real estate in clever ways. Secondary sliding menus keep your main hamburger menu concise while offering deeper category exploration through side-to-side swiping. Consider where your customers need quick filtering options—size, color, style—and turn these into swipeable horizontal menus to speed up product discovery. Add visuals like icons to these secondary menus to help shoppers quickly scan their options.
Ruggable, a washable rug company, executes this approach in its mobile navigation. After selecting “Shop Rugs” from the main menu, shoppers can swipe through a secondary menu with photos to quickly filter by size—from runners to large area rugs. This horizontal layout makes size selection more intuitive while preserving valuable vertical space for product browsing.

4. Make support prominent
When mobile shoppers hit a snag, they want help fast—and they’ll often abandon their cart if support isn’t readily available.
Position your chat widget in the bottom corner of your mobile screen where it’s always visible but never intrusive. Choose a widget that collapses to a small icon when not in use and loads quickly on mobile connections. Make your support hours clearly visible when customers tap to open the chat so they know exactly when to expect a response.
Brooklinen makes getting help effortless on mobile. Beyond the easily accessible chat widget, it offers customers the option to switch to text messaging for support—meeting mobile shoppers on their preferred distribution channels. This multichannel approach recognizes that mobile users may prefer native messaging over web-based chat.

5. Simplify filtering and sorting
As mobile shoppers move from casual browsing to serious consideration, they want to narrow their options quickly. Make filtering intuitive with clear categories, thumb-friendly buttons, and the ability to apply multiple filters at once. Consider adding visual cues and helpful descriptions to guide selection—especially for product-specific attributes like size or use case.
Allbirds, a sustainable footwear brand, shows this mobile filtering approach in action. A size selector features large, easy-to-tap buttons with helpful guidance about sizing, while a “Best For” filter helps shoppers quickly find shoes that match their needs—from everyday wear to wet weather conditions.

6. Show recently viewed items
Ecommerce personalization shapes how desktop shoppers experience your site, from custom homepages to product recommendations based on browsing history.
On mobile, where shoppers often browse in shorter bursts between other tasks, personalized elements help them pick up right where they left off. When screen space is limited as it is for mobile users, showing recently viewed items is particularly valuable. This feature lets shoppers quickly return to products they’re considering without endless scrolling or repeated searches.
Keep a compact row of recently viewed items visible as customers browse, letting them jump back to products they considered without scrolling through multiple pages. This is especially helpful for shoppers comparing similar items or returning to complete a purchase they started earlier.
7. Enable native sharing
Mobile phones are now central to modern word-of-mouth marketing, with shoppers sharing product finds across social media, group chats, and messaging apps. Make it easy to share directly from your mobile site, whether someone’s asking friends for opinions on Facebook Messenger, sharing gift ideas in a family group text, or emailing a wishlist to themselves.
Add prominent share buttons to product pages that connect with native mobile sharing options. This lets shoppers quickly send items through their preferred channels, from WhatsApp to email, without leaving your site. Place sharing buttons next to product images where they’re easy to spot and tap.
8. Show shipping details upfront
On desktop, shoppers might click through several pages to research shipping policies, but mobile users want immediate answers without leaving their current screen. When screen space is limited, prioritize displaying shipping information where customers naturally look—like product pages and shopping carts. This transparency helps shoppers make faster purchase decisions and reduces the chance they’ll abandon their cart to search for shipping details.
Brightland embeds shipping expectations directly in their cart with a clear “Usually Ships Within 48 Hours” message and progress bar toward free shipping.

Gymshark puts shipping details right on its athletic wear product pages, displaying “Standard Delivery (7–9 Working Days)” and the free shipping threshold before shoppers even start checking out.

9. Add video and zoom views
While desktop shoppers can hover over images to inspect details, mobile users need intuitive ways to examine products up close—especially for items where color and texture matter most.
Without the ability to physically test products, shoppers rely heavily on detailed product imagery and video content to make purchase decisions. Adding these visual elements directly on mobile product pages helps bridge the gap between online browsing and in-store shopping, giving customers the confidence to buy.
Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez’s cosmetics brand, uses swatches, zoom-enabled product shots, and short video clips throughout its makeup collection—from lip color application to blush on different skin tones. These detailed views help mobile shoppers assess the true color, finish, and product texture.

10. Collect mobile feedback
Mobile customer feedback is most valuable at three key touchpoints: right after purchase completion, when shoppers abandon their carts, and following product returns. Each moment offers unique insights—from understanding what drives successful purchases to identifying friction points that cause cart abandonment.
Ecommerce brands with apps tend to have more sophisticated feedback mechanisms for collecting and analyzing customer responses because shoppers have to input contact information to use the app effectively. For moments when app users have product quality concerns, allow shoppers to upload photos directly from their phone cameras. This creates greater opportunities to address their concerns and gather data.
Keep in mind that the most effective mobile customer surveys use short, tap-friendly questions that shoppers can answer in less than a minute while the experience is still fresh. Keep surveys focused on one aspect of the experience and make responses simple—think star ratings or 1–5 scales. Consider asking:
- How easy was it to find what you were looking for?
- Did you encounter any issues during checkout?
- Was product information easy to read on your phone?
Keep surveys brief enough that shoppers actually complete them, then shape your mobile experience around these insights.
Mobile customer experience FAQ
What is mobile customer experience?
The mobile customer experience is the complete journey of shoppers interacting with your brand through smartphones and tablets, from the first click to a purchase to customer service and follow-up.
What is a mobile-first mindset?
A mobile-first mindset means designing your site around customer data showing how people shop on phones as opposed to adapting desktop experiences for smaller screens.
What are ecommerce customers expecting from their mobile experience?
Mobile shoppers want rapid loading, intuitive navigation, and smooth interactions across every touchpoint. They want the mobile site to match or exceed what they experience on desktop.