This article provides considerations and best practices for making your website mobile ecommerce friendly.
Last Published: 10/20/2016


What happens when a website is not “mobile optimized"?

The site content is viewed as improperly or sloppily organized, content and product information may be missing, and browser errors could prevent the site from being viewed at all because of the differences in screen size of mobile devices compared with screen size of desktop devices.


Each ecommerce platform should offer some form of mobile applications or webpage “theme" options for your mobile-friendly website format.  It is recommended that you
check to make sure the application or theme you choose suits your mobile needs.

There are several ways to make your website mobile friendly:

  1. Use mobile plugins on your platform. If your ecommerce platform is hosted or uses templates or themes on an on-premise platform, making your website mobile friendly may require only a few clicks in the developer backend. The developer may simply need to transition the existing desktop website format and organize the content and sections in a mobile-friendly design pattern.

  2. Mobile-responsive website design. Have your website developer use a responsive design for your primary ecommerce platform. This approach means that your UX developer will use cascading style sheets (CSS) to style your website coding language and will reshuffle your HTML code to render the content on your website readable by mobile devices. Put into terms for the nontechnical crowd, this change means that your UX developer will structure your website coding language so it will be able to identify whether a desktop or a mobile device is viewing your site, and it will make necessary adjustments to the code so that the structure and viewable content on your site is compatible with the different screen sizes of mobile devices.

  3. Create a separate mobile version of your site. This method involves creating a mobile version of your desktop site using a conversion platform such as bMobilized or Duda Mobile. Although this method is quick and easy, it means that you will have two separate websites to maintain and update (one mobile, one desktop), and you may frustrate your site visitors if the content on either site isn’t up to date or if one is lacking information that the other has.​

FACT: Asia accounts for more than half of the current mobile commerce market of US$230 billion. It is forecast that by 2017 the total mobile commerce market will reach US$500 billion.

DISCLAIMER: Links to websites outside the U.S. Federal Government, or the use of trade, firm, or corporation names within the International Trade Administration websites (export.gov and trade.gov) are for the convenience of the user. Such use does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the U.S. Commerce Department of any private sector website, product, or service. When selecting links, be aware that you are subject to the privacy and security policies of the owners/sponsors of the outside website. Prepared by the International Trade Administration. With its network of 108 offices across the United States and in more than 75 countries, the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce utilizes its global presence and international marketing expertise to help U.S. companies sell their products and services worldwide. Locate the trade specialist in the U.S. nearest you by visiting http://export.gov/usoffices.