Mobile shoppers are on the rise and mobile device owners are fast becoming a lucrative shopping demographic. So why are mobile players still sentencing their customers to unnecessary friction at the checkout? 

Today’s mobile checkouts all too often result in dissatisfied customers, abandoned carts and millions in lost revenue. Much of the problem lies in the inherently frustrating and arduous task of entering credit card and billing credentials onto a small smartphone screen. 

Of course, this doesn't have to be the case. Knowing that shoppers primarily go the mobile route because they want to make a quick, on-the-spot purchase, many current solutions are tailored to speed the process. Offerings from companies like Braintree and ZooZ help streamline the checkout to simply a tap on the screen, resulting in meaningful impacts on the bottom line. To see the results, look no further than mobile-focused companies like Amazon, Hotel Tonight and Uber, which carefully considered mobile shopper behavior when developing their m-commerce platforms. 

Retailers and merchants interested in a similar significant uptick in sales and satisfaction should focus on improving their mobile checkout because: 

• Smartphone data entry is dissatisfying. The painstaking process of transcribing a credit card onto a smartphone creates a negative customer experience at a pivotal moment in the sale. 
• Lengthy checkouts breed second thoughts. Increased time entering card credentials means increased time considering if the purchase is truly necessary. Impulse buys, especially via smartphone, require speed.
• Seamless experiences produce repeat purchases. A quick and positive mobile checkout is satisfying, increasing the likelihood that a customer will look to replicate the experience by purchasing from that merchant in the future. 

A cumbersome mobile checkout is the virtual equivalent of waiting in a long line at a physical retail store: no one likes it. To fend off instances of dissatisfaction and abandoned carts, merchants must employ solutions that streamline the checkout to merely a few taps. Implementing such solutions will result in less effort and increased speed on the part of the user, helping to increase sales and satisfaction across the board.