Mobile conversion: where mobile carts die
Most stores now get most of their traffic on phones but a fraction of the conversion rate they see on desktop. The gap hides in a handful of fixable friction points.
The move: measure the mobile funnel separately from desktop, then run a mobile-specific audit on the steps where phone shoppers actually bail.
Fastest path: one prompt, end to end
🤖 AI prompt — paste into ChatGPT / Claude
You are a mobile CRO specialist. Use only what I give you; do not invent numbers.
My split (last 30 days): mobile conversion rate [%], desktop conversion rate [%], % of sessions on mobile [%].
My checkout: guest checkout? [y/n] Apple Pay / Google Pay / Shop Pay enabled? [list] mobile LCP if I know it [seconds].
Do this:
1. Size the gap: how much revenue am I leaving on the table if mobile converted even halfway to desktop? Use MY numbers only.
2. Give me a mobile-specific audit checklist covering: form friction (too many fields, no autofill), keyboard types (numeric keypad for phone/zip, email keyboard for email), tap targets (buttons big enough for a thumb), speed (LCP under ~2.5s), and wallets (one-tap Apple/Google/Shop Pay).
3. Rank the checklist by likely impact for a store like mine and tell me the first two to fix.
4. Tell me to verify each fix on a real phone, not just a desktop browser resized.
Do not guess my numbers. If one is missing, ask.
Output: revenue gap + prioritized mobile audit checklist + first two fixes.
Don't average mobile and desktop together. Read them as two separate funnels using the funnel-leak-readout method, so a healthy desktop rate can't mask a broken mobile one.
Or do it in 5 steps
- Split the funnel by device first. In analytics, segment the sessions -> product-views -> add-to-cart -> checkout -> order funnel by mobile vs desktop and read them separately (the funnel-leak-readout method). A 3% blended rate can hide 1.5% mobile and 4.5% desktop, and the mobile step where they bail tells you what to fix.
- Kill form friction. Every extra field costs orders on a phone. Turn on address autofill, drop optional fields, offer guest checkout, and never make someone create an account to buy. The checkout form is the single most common place mobile carts die.
- Fix the keyboards and tap targets. Set the right input type so the phone opens the numeric keypad for phone and postal code and the email keyboard for email. Typing an email on a number pad makes people quit. Make buttons big enough for a thumb (about 44px) with space between them.
- Get LCP under 2.5 seconds. Mobile shoppers on cellular abandon slow pages before they even see the product. Compress hero images, lazy-load below the fold, and cut heavy scripts; largest-contentful-paint under ~2.5s on a mid-range phone is the target.
- Add one-tap wallets. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay skip the whole typed-out form. On mobile they are often the single biggest conversion lift available, because they remove the exact friction (typing card and address on glass) that kills phone checkouts.
Worked example (labeled): a store with 70% of sessions on mobile sees 1.6% mobile vs 4.2% desktop conversion. Reading the two funnels separately, the mobile drop is concentrated at checkout, not add-to-cart. So the product page is fine and the checkout form is the problem.
They enable guest checkout and Shop Pay and fix the email keyboard. Mobile checkout completion climbs and the blended rate follows. The desktop rate never told them any of this, because it was healthy the whole time.
Read mobile and desktop as separate funnels, then fix the phone-specific friction (forms, keyboards, tap targets, speed, one-tap wallets) and verify every change on a real device.