Mobile commerce has been touted as the next great sales channel for at least ten years now. Therefore, it is perhaps understandable that many merchants have been a little sceptical that the time is right for it to finally take off.
Ecommerce is a mature market; the IMRG predict online sales will hit £56bn during 2010 and will account for over half of total retail spend by 2020. Last year online sales grew by 13%, and that was during the worst economic downturn in living memory. However, while these figures sound impressive there is still room for significant growth as only 63% of UK homes are connected to broadband.
Mobile connectivity is almost the complete opposite. During 2008 there were over 76 million mobile phone subscriptions in the UK - that's 120% coverage. Globally there are 2.7 billion mobile phones currently in use; the closest consumer rival is the television set with a mere 1.5 billion units. Of this staggering amount of phones the 3G-enabled smartphone is the fastest growing device, led by Apple's iPhone. Many of the final barriers to mobile commerce are being eroded, yet only 1% of total retail is conducted via these devices. What is clear is that it's an opportunity, and it's fast growing. Japan is leading the field with a staggering 40% of all retail occurring via a mobile device. It's time for retailers closer to home to begin to capitalise.
Challenges
There are a number of significant challenges in providing your customers with a compelling mobile experience. These include:
- Making m-commerce user-friendly on smaller screens and for traditional mobiles
- Having a mobile-specific version of the website. A key issue is screen orientation. Most computer screens are landscape while mobiles are portrait, making it essential that the scroll function is appropriately applied
- Being able to recognise and divert mobile users to the m-commerce site
- Managing payments. This area is still in its infancy outside Japan
Options
Mobile technology is improving at a fast rate and not every mobile device is the same. Variants include screen size, input device and connectivity speed. Few retailers will have the resource or impetus to create standalone versions of their website for numerous screen sizes. But serving pages from the existing website is likely to make the mobile experience frustrating, slow and sometimes impossible. Conversely doing nothing and hoping your existing site is suitable is not a logical option.
Top tips
- Experience the medium yourself and shop around on your mobile as much as possible so you are aware of the issues and what to avoid
- Take a look at your own site stats. You probably already have people browsing your site via a mobile device: check your site analytics as mobile browsers show up separately
- Survey customers. Are visitors using their mobiles to check for store location, stock availability or to compare prices? If you know their preferences, the site can be tailored to the majority's needs
- Text appeal. Using text/SMS messages to attract consumers appears to be one way to convert users to the mobile arena. One book retailer has seen 70% opt-in for SMS vouchers that achieve twice the redemption rate of paper coupons. While a quirky UK outdoor retailer has seen a 65% engagement with its rock, paper, scissors game where the players win loyalty points if they are victorious with their text response
- A good option for now is to choose technology that will adapt the existing website for mobile users. This way, mobile users are detected and served a pared-down version when they connect
Having decided to ‘go mobile', first steps are to add basic functions such as ‘click to call', store locator and product search. The next level is to add order capture, order status via email, auto-detection of mobile users for highlighting their nearest store. Finally, add full ecommerce payment functionality and mobile marketing.
For two very different, but excellent mobile commerce examples, visit Amazon and eBay on your phone. They have both researched their user bases and the results are impeccable. Interestingly both report m-commerce as their biggest growth market.
Mobile commerce is on the move, and finally in the right direction. With a little understanding, now is the time to begin to capitalise on this growing sales channel. What are you waiting for?
For more information please visit www.actinic.co.uk [1]