The number of mobile purchases are growing rapidly and more online and offline retailers are changing their business strategy to incorporate mCommerce. Mobile Commerce should not be seen as just another sales channel; it is a way to improve product experience and brand presence. So, what can we expect to see in the future?
To give you an example of how quickly mobile commerce is growing, Paypal had to update their 2012 mobile estimates three times, going from £3.3 to £5.3 then finishing on £6.6 Billion. They also finished on a yearly mobile increase of 150%.
Paypal isn’t the only company showing significant mobile improvements. Amazon and eBay have reported that around 20% of their sales are coming from smartphones or tablets.
We see, on a daily basis how attached people are to their mobile phones. When I travel to work on the underground, around 60% of the people in my carriage are using their smartphone and it would be safe to say that nearly every single person would not travel without their mobile. We, as a country are attached to our phone for personal reasons but now, we like to shop on them too.
The line between the real world in which we live in and the online world is very thin indeed. The growth of interactive content and augmented reality is down to the hype of the online world.
When looking at the mobile customer journey, we will see a lot of businesses developing a separate strategy including the use of QR Codes and Location Based Marketing.
There has been a lot of research taking place on mobile commerce with a strong suggestion that the statistics are going to keep rising, in favour of mCommerce. 80% of smartphone owners use their devices to shop with Amazon being the most popular. 68% (male) and 58% (female) are likely to make a purchase based on mobile ads and by 2016, mobile influence for retailers will increase to £460 billion.
Unfortunately, it has been reported that 86% of sites on the web are not mobile and have received negative feedback on the mobile experience. With mobile online time growing 14x faster than desktop time, you need to optimise your website so that your customers can purchase smoothly when using their smartphone or tablet. A great way to do this is to build your website responsive.
Over the past year, Responsive design has become a hot topic in the web design community. A Responsive design allows you to view a website on your smartphone or tablet/iPad as you would on your desktop. Something that was once so bespoke that only one man could build it, has now gone global. Not only is it being used by millions of websites all over the world, you can now use it as a theme inside of WordPress. Speak to your web designer and optimise your site so that your users can have a smooth journey when purchasing on mobile.
There was an 80% growth in 2011, 105% growth in 2012 and the mCommerce market is expected to generate between £780 million to £665 billion in revenue, worldwide by 2014.
Are you ready for mCommerce to evolve?