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M-commerce, or mobile commerce, currently plays a large role in the success or failure of businesses. According to Goldman Sachs, 535 million consumers will make a purchase this year on a mobile device. The same report estimates that mobile sales worldwide are projected to be $626 billion by 2018. So why is it that even though 50% of Americans own a smartphone, only 20% of retailers have optimized their business to serve mobile customers?
There seems to be a pretty large gap between what customers want out of m-commerce and what businesses are actually supplying them, possibly because mobile retailers don’t understand what it takes to successfully make their business go mobile. According to searchenginewatch.com, “A retailer’s mobile presence shouldn’t just be a smaller, stripped-down and portable version of their desktop presence: to really succeed on mobile, retailers should be taking advantage of what makes mobile unique, and using it to create a fundamentally different experience.” Read below to find out everything you need to know about creating a successful mobile presence so that you don’t miss out on potential conversions in the future.
M-commerce is Growing
Image credit: pfsweb.com
As technology advances and people get busier, they expect more out of their mobile devices. Not everyone has the time, or desire, to go into a store every time they need to make a purchase. And with the advances in smartphones and tablets, they shouldn’t have to. In theory. Unfortunately, retailers are failing customers by not optimizing their mobile sites to meet the rising needs of consumers. However, even with this gap in supply and demand, mobile commerce transactions are supposed to top $142 billion in 2016. That’s a big number to ignore. So instead of following in the footsteps of competitors who are failing in this division, start your own trend by optimizing your mobile site and enjoy a big ROI in return.
Image credit: visionarymarketing.com
Understand that Customer Behavior is Different in Mobile
Consumers who use mobile want the easiest, most pain-free experience possible, and so the design and execution of the mobile app should reflect that. Customers who use mobile aren’t going to want to read lengthy product descriptions and they’re not going to want to search and click through a bunch of different pages to find what they want. They are, however, going to want to be able to pay through mobile, and they’re going to want that process to be as simple as possible; think Amazon’s one-click payment option. The easier the process, the more conversions your business will see. Just don’t expect consumers to act the same on a mobile app as they do on a website.
M-Commerce and Mobile Payment are Two Different Things, but Both are Important
M-commerce is the act of purchasing something through your mobile device, whereas mobile payment is the act of specifically paying for the purchase. It’s important to know the difference between the two, because you should be working to improve both separately. In order to increase your m-commerce, you should be optimizing your mobile application to meet the needs of your audience (see the paragraph above). Part of this process is making it easy and convenient for consumers to actually make a purchase on their mobile device after they’ve landed on your app. There are several ways to do this: utilizing Square, Apple pay, PayPal, Venmo, Google Wallet, etc. Your business needs to include one or more of these easy-to-use mobile payments or it won’t matter how good your mobile application is because users won’t take the time to figure out how to purchase something from it. Read this article or this one for more ideas on how to incorporate mobile payments into your business plan.
Keep M-Commerce Social, not Technical
Don’t forget that mobile commerce cuts out the face-to-face interactions you might normally have with customers at a physical store, and so you need to use your mobile application to make these personal connections with your customers. One way to quickly lose customers is to get too excited about designing your app and end up filling it with so much technical language and so many bells and whistles that your clients say “forget it” as soon as they get to the home page. Your mobile app is a way to connect with your target audience and with the community, so make sure you keep it social and accessible. Think in terms of the language you use, your page layouts, payment options (see above), etc. Believe it or not this can make a real difference in the end.
Mobile Sales Have the Potential to Increase Retail Sales
Image credit: Business Insider
In case you’re still not convinced that investing in M-commerce is in the best interest of your business, check out this report from Xad and Telemetrics; in short, it shows that mobile sales also help retail sales. Of all the consumers they surveyed, 53% of mobile users and 74% of smartphone users admitted that they are making their purchases offline/ in a store. Just think about Starbucks; I’m one of millions of people who use the Starbucks app to order and pay for my coffee, accumulate rewards points, accept birthday freebies, etc. And I do this regardless of the fact that I can’t actually get coffee from my phone; I have to visit a physical Starbucks. Create a business plan like that and maybe your business will get close to the $1 billion in sales that Starbucks enjoyed in 2013.
The point to all of this isn’t to say that traditional shopping and e-commerce is totally dead; business owners just need to understand that m-commerce is growing, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be stopping any time soon. So it’s probably worth it for your business to start optimizing your mobile site now and begin closing that gap instead of waiting for your competitors to do it first. Your customers will thank you for it, in conversions. So how are you going to get started? Is there anything else important to know about m-commerce that I’m missing? Comment in the section below!