How to Create a Mobile-Responsive BigCommerce Store

With the growing number of consumers shopping via mobile devices, having a mobile-responsive e-commerce store is no longer optional—it’s essential.

In fact, mobile commerce (m-commerce) is projected to account for nearly 72% of all e-commerce sales by 2024, making it critical for businesses to ensure their online stores are optimized for mobile users.

Fortunately, BigCommerce offers the tools and features you need to create a mobile-responsive store that delivers an excellent user experience across all devices.

Why Mobile Responsiveness Is Important for E-commerce

A mobile-responsive website automatically adjusts its layout, images, and functionality to fit the screen size of the device it’s being viewed on, whether that’s a smartphone, tablet, or desktop.

This ensures that customers can navigate and shop on your site easily, regardless of the device they use.

If your store isn’t mobile-optimized, you risk losing potential customers due to slow load times, poor navigation, or elements that don’t display correctly on smaller screens.

Here’s why mobile responsiveness is so important:

• Improved User Experience: A smooth, mobile-optimized browsing experience leads to higher customer satisfaction and reduces bounce rates.
• Better SEO Rankings: Google prioritizes mobile-responsive websites in search rankings, making it essential for improving your store’s visibility.
• Higher Conversion Rates: A seamless mobile shopping experience makes it easier for customers to complete purchases, increasing your overall conversion rates.

Now, let’s dive into how you can create a mobile-responsive BigCommerce store.

1. Choose a Mobile-Responsive Theme

The first and most crucial step in creating a mobile-responsive BigCommerce store is choosing the right theme.

BigCommerce offers a variety of mobile-responsive themes, both free and premium, designed to adjust automatically for different screen sizes.

These themes are optimized for speed and performance, ensuring your store loads quickly on all devices.

Steps to Choose a Responsive Theme:

• Go to the BigCommerce Theme Marketplace and filter for mobile-responsive themes.
• Preview how different themes look on mobile devices before making your selection.
• Choose a theme that fits your brand’s style and industry but also provides a great mobile experience out of the box.

Key Features to Look for in a Mobile-Responsive Theme:

• Fast loading speeds
• Easy navigation menus, including mobile-friendly dropdowns
• Touch-friendly elements, like buttons and product images
• Built-in responsiveness without requiring manual adjustments

Why This Helps:
Selecting a mobile-responsive theme from the start saves you time and ensures your site is fully optimized for mobile visitors.

It eliminates the need for custom coding or additional plugins to make your site mobile-friendly.

2. Optimize Product Pages for Mobile

Your product pages are the heart of your store, and they need to be optimized for mobile users. Mobile visitors want a fast, easy shopping experience where they can quickly view product details, images, and prices.

Steps to Optimize Product Pages:

• Use high-quality images that are optimized for mobile to ensure fast loading times. Include zoom functionality to allow customers to inspect product details closely.
• Simplify your product descriptions. Keep them concise but informative, ensuring they are easy to read on smaller screens.
• Ensure CTAs (call-to-action buttons) like “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” are large, prominent, and easy to tap on mobile devices.
• Use accordions or collapsible sections for additional information like product specifications, reviews, or FAQs to prevent overwhelming the user with too much content at once.

Why This Helps:
By optimizing your product pages for mobile devices, you enhance the user experience and reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment.

Simplified, fast-loading product pages allow users to browse and shop efficiently on their phones or tablets.

3. Simplify Your Mobile Checkout Process

A smooth and hassle-free checkout experience is crucial for mobile shoppers.

Complicated or lengthy checkout forms are one of the leading causes of cart abandonment on mobile devices.

BigCommerce offers features that can simplify your checkout process and improve conversions on mobile.

Steps to Optimize Mobile Checkout:

• Use BigCommerce’s one-page checkout option to reduce the number of steps needed to complete a purchase.
• Enable guest checkout to avoid forcing customers to create an account, which can be frustrating on mobile.
• Ensure that your checkout form uses auto-fill options and is mobile-friendly with large, easy-to-tap fields.
• Mobile payment options like Apple Pay and Google Pay should be included to make it easier for mobile users to complete their transactions without manually entering card details.

Why This Helps:
Mobile users want a quick and convenient checkout experience. By simplifying the process, you reduce friction and increase the likelihood that customers will complete their purchase rather than abandoning their cart.

4. Test Your Store’s Mobile Performance

Testing your BigCommerce store’s mobile performance is essential to ensuring that your mobile visitors have a seamless experience.

Regular testing helps you identify any issues with responsiveness, load times, or usability that could be affecting your conversion rates.

Steps to Test Mobile Performance:

• Use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check how well your site performs on mobile devices.
• Test your store on multiple devices and browsers to ensure it functions properly on iOS, Android, and different screen sizes.
• Pay attention to page load times. Ideally, your pages should load within 2-3 seconds on mobile to prevent high bounce rates.
• Check for broken elements like non-functional buttons, misaligned images, or hidden text on mobile devices.

Why This Helps:
Thorough testing allows you to catch and fix issues that could be negatively impacting the mobile user experience.

Regularly optimizing your store’s performance will improve customer satisfaction and encourage repeat visits.

5. Use Responsive Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool for engaging with customers and driving traffic back to your store, but your emails must be optimized for mobile as well.

More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, so creating responsive emails is crucial to ensuring your marketing messages are effective.

Steps to Create Mobile-Responsive Emails:

• Choose an email marketing platform that integrates with BigCommerce and offers responsive email templates, such as Mailchimp or Klaviyo.
• Use short subject lines that are easily viewable on mobile devices.
• Design emails with a single-column layout and large fonts to ensure readability on small screens.
• Keep the CTA buttons prominent and easy to tap.

Why This Helps:
By designing mobile-responsive emails, you ensure that your marketing efforts reach your audience in a format that is easy to engage with, no matter what device they are using. This helps drive traffic back to your store and boosts conversions from mobile users.

6. Optimize for Mobile SEO

Mobile SEO is another crucial aspect of creating a mobile-responsive BigCommerce store. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site to rank your pages.

Optimizing for mobile SEO ensures your site ranks well and remains visible to potential customers.

Steps to Optimize for Mobile SEO:

• Ensure fast page load speeds by compressing images, minimizing code, and using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
• Create mobile-friendly URLs that are short and descriptive.
• Use structured data (schema markup) to help search engines understand your content and enhance mobile search results with rich snippets.
• Optimize your meta tags and descriptions to appear well on mobile search results pages.

Why This Helps:
Mobile SEO helps improve your store’s visibility in search engine results, making it easier for mobile users to discover your products.

By optimizing for mobile-first indexing, you enhance both your store’s search rankings and the user experience.

Final Thoughts

Creating a mobile-responsive BigCommerce store is essential for meeting the needs of today’s shoppers.

With more consumers using mobile devices to browse and buy products online, having a seamless, optimized mobile experience can significantly impact your sales and customer satisfaction.

From choosing the right responsive theme to optimizing your checkout process and testing mobile performance, BigCommerce offers the tools you need to ensure your store is mobile-friendly and ready to convert visitors into buyers.

Investing in mobile responsiveness today will pay off in the form of higher traffic, improved user experience, and, most importantly, more sales for your business.