Designing e-Commerce for the Tablet Market: Why Should You Think of Tablets First?

Designing e-commerce for a mobile audience is a vital part of business today, though do you really know which type of mobile device to focus the most on? Most businesses hone in on smartphones first because they assume most people are looking up information there. Devices like wearables or tablets usually get thought of as being secondary or third since it’s thought they aren’t commonly used for online shopping.

In truth, tablets get used more often for research and buying products. Further research in the above link additionally shows 47% of all mobile users are more apt to place an order for a product if viewed on a tablet.

This is probably eye-opening for you after spending so much time adapting your e-commerce design for smaller screens. It’s not really perplexing to see why tablets are so popular for shopping online. Because shoppers want to see more detail of products, the bigger tablet screen allows them to view more than they can on a smartphone.

Maybe this poses other problems in the realm of e-commerce for smartphones and smaller wearables. The important thing is to just design for all three formats, with tablets being your first focus based on the above statistics.

So if you’ve already created an e-commerce design for smartphones, what should you do to create a new design for tablets?

Fortunately, you have a slightly larger creative canvas to mimic something closer to your original desktop design.

Background Images on Your Home Page

Thanks to retina resolution on many tablets now, imagery typically looks stunning. This already gives you a great way to use full-screen imagery to convey your message without having to pare anything down. Because tablets have a screen shape closer to 16×9, you can still use any background image you originally intended for desktops.

To your benefit, you may want to consider using images of a product to take advantage of the higher resolution. Consumers want to see as much detail about a product as possible before buying to gain a feel of real shopping. By using full-screen backgrounds of a product (or numerous products), consumers can see detail while still on the go.

Some businesses do this on product pages as well rather than using a standard product image. Even if 360-degree imagery is always helpful as well, a full image of the product getting used by someone is one of the best instant marketing methods without using text.

Providing Methods for Product Comparison

The better imagery on tablets allows your customers to do comparison shopping as well, something you could provide while people shop in your brick and mortar store. You’re already starting to see real-time comparison shopping from Millennial shoppers who use various apps to instantly compare one price over another.

It’s worth creating an app doing the same to prove your prices are better than a nearby competitor’s. With the benefit of someone doing this while in your store, you can reach customers with special deals on the spot.

Better Browsing Capability

Using full-screen imagery of your products on product pages is perfect for seeing product detail. Regardless, you also want to provide an easy way to browse all products at once. A tablet screen allows you to reconfigure your browsing pages so they look closer to how you had it on your original desktop design.

No doubt you had to alter your browsing pages for smartphones over the last year or two to a point where you could only show one or two products per page. If you have themed products, you’re more apt to interest customers if they can see numerous product variations all at once.

Tablets allow you to put more of everything on one page, which is more important in the mobile culture where users want information in seconds.

Contact us here at Applied Innovations so we can help you with your e-commerce challenges through design and faster web hosting.

 

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