These days, no one would blame you for being confused about the mobile-frenzy that’s going on. Understanding what the new smart phones are capable of is hard and it’s only getting more complicated.

A common misconception is that mobile shoppers are only after certain things. After all, who’s going to shop for office supplies on their mobile? Don’t count your business out; as more data is compiled we are learning that there are no set patterns for smart phone shopping habits.

Here are 6 reasons why a mobile cart should be on your shopping list for 2010:

1. A whopping 81% of smart phone users use them while out shopping; 24% are making purchases via their mobiles. What are they doing? Price comparisons and purchases.
2. Mobile web usage grew worldwide by 148% in 2009.
3. If mobile users increase at the rate we’ve been seeing, within 5 years mobile shopping will overtake desktop shopping.
4. Mobile shoppers are frustrated by non-optimized sites and won’t stay around very long before giving up. 6 to 10 seconds is about the average before moving on.
5. 40% of smart phone shoppers will seek a competitor site for the service or product if the site is too slow or not mobile-friendly.
6. More than 80% of smart phone users would shop more frequently on their mobile devices if performance was as quick and efficient as it is on a desktop.

Consumers use their smart phones to locate stores, get coupons and bargain hunt before purchasing. Online storefronts that don’t provide a mobile-friendly shopping experience may lose customers for good once they are presented with the desktop version and its teeny-tiny images on their mobile phone.

Don’t forget that Google Analytics captures mobile visitor information and will show what their browsing patterns are. If you don’t have it installed or you can’t make sense of the data, let us know.

The world is open for business; don’t lose sales because you don’t offer a mobile shopping cart for your smart phone shoppers!

Check out our Mobile Commerce Platform for AspDotNetStorefront.

                          

There are many steps to maintaining maximum website accessibility, some of which we’ll cover in future posts, but for now let’s start with arguably the most important one: Image ALT Text.

Image ALT text, contained in the ALT attribute of an image, is a written explanation of the image’s message. The text appears when that image cannot be displayed. In some browsers the text also appears as the tooltip. The HTML looks like this:

<img src=”images/vortxlogo.gif” alt=”Vortx” />

Why is ALT text important?

1. Visually impaired shoppers using screen reader devices depend on ALT text to explain images. So do users who browse the internet with the images turned off, with text-only browsers, or using technology that doesn’t support certain image types. This is a huge group of potential customers that you’re alienating by not implementing ALT text.
2. Web crawlers look at ALT attributes to determine the relevance and validity of your site’s content. If you want your site to be optimally indexed by the search engines, you need appropriate ALT text on your images.
3. Images with properly coded ALT attributes tend to rank higher in image searches.
4. The ALT text acts as anchor text if the image is clickable; anchor text is given significant weight in search engine ranking formulas.
5. Image ALT attributes are required for valid XHTML.

The primary purpose to implementing image ALT text is to increase your site’s accessibility. ALT text may or may not directly improve your site’s rankings, but it will allow users with limitations and impairments to shop on your site and it is a must for valid XHTML.

ALT text is not an opportunity to stuff a bunch of image-irrelevant keywords on your site in order to get more traffic. That actually makes your site less accessible to impaired users and you could be penalized for it by the search engines. If you use ALT text for the purpose of increasing accessibility, and you do so correctly, you will be rewarded.

Remember that EVERY image must have an ALT attribute, even if it is null (alt=”"), and that the text you use must present the content and function of the image. Here are a few tips on what to include in the attribute text:

• Product image ALT text should be the product name or a very brief description of the product, not a string of keywords. It needs to be readable.
• The ALT text of navigational images, such as arrows and menu tabs, should be the function of the image (“next” for a forward arrow) or the text that is in the image itself (“Customer Service” for a button that says Customer Service).
• Purely decorative images should have null ALT text (alt=”") because there is no content or function. Whenever possible you should use a CSS background image for decorative elements so that you don’t have to assign a null ALT attribute and you avoid disrupting the flow of the page to the screen reader.
• Don’t include “image of ___” or “picture of ___” in the ALT text. It’s just not necessary.

Good news for AspDotNetStorefront users.

The Version 8.0 release includes a fantastic new feature: Alt-text on product images. Prior to this release you had to do some complicated XML in order to put ALT text on your product images. Now the field is in the Product entry panel under the Search Engine tab. Thanks ADSNF!

Written by Tammy W.