Alibaba is finding success despite China’s slowing economy

China’s economy may be slowing down, but that has not stopped Alibaba from seeing impressive gains throughout 2015. During the last quarter of 2015, Alibaba reported a total revenue increase of 32%. The company attributes this growth to the growing number of mobile users in China. Alibaba has been focusing more heavily on mobile commerce in recent years and has managed to find extreme success in this young but rapidly growing sector.

Number of active monthly users has skyrocketed for Alibaba

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang has noted that the company has added some 47 million active users on mobile devices. This brings the company’s total active monthly mobile users to 407 million. These people are using mobile shopping apps to purchase goods and services through Tmall and Taobao, two online marketplaces owned by Alibaba. Mobile commerce has proven to be quite lucrative for Aliaba and the company is likely to continue pursuing its efforts in the mobile space for the foreseeable future.

As mobile commerce grows, Alibaba is investing more heavily in effective marketing strategies focused on the mobile sector

Increasing its focus on mobile commerce also means that Alibaba is taking mobile marketing more seriously. With the number of mobile users on the rise, finding ways to effectively engage these consumers is becoming a major priority for several companies. As such, these companies have begun investing more in mobile marketing. Advertisements designed specifically for mobile devices, either on applications or on web browsers, have proven capable of connecting businesses and consumers, fostering more mobile commerce activity.

Mobile marketing is becoming more important for companies that want to engage a mobile audience

Mobile marketing has become a very important aspect of mobile business overall. In China’s slowing economy, people are becoming more cautious about how they spend their money. Consumers have been interacting with advertisements more frequently, however, as they are conducting research into products that they may be interested in. Effective marketing strategies could influence the way consumers spend money, especially in a mobile commerce environment.

A recent report has shown that retailers are struggling to boost site use among smartphone based shoppers.

Though it may seem quite easy to applaud the growth of mobile shopping and to feel that it is simple to hop on board and offer people a great m-commerce experience, provided that the site is smartphone-friendly, retailers are discovering that customer habits make things more challenging than anticipated.

Among the main problems is that shoppers are less likely to browse around when they use mobile devices.

A recent study, conducted by SimilarWeb, found that people using mobile shopping are viewing a smaller number of pages per site visit. Last year, the average online shopper using a desktop or a laptop viewed an average of 8.3 pages per site visit. That said, the average shopper using m-commerce channels such as smartphones and tablets saw only 5.8 pages. When it comes to trying to encourage people to add more to their carts, that represents a considerable reduction in opportunity for retailers.

The research also found that mobile shopping cuts down on the length of time of the visit, as well.

SimilarWeb determined that when shopping over desktop or laptop, people would browse around for an average of 6 minutes and 50 seconds on a retail site in 2015. However, when using mobile devices, that length of time fell considerably, plummeting to only 4 minutes and 29 seconds.

According to the firm’s digital insights manager, Pavel Tuchinsky, “Engagement and time on site has not been maintained in the transition toward mobile shopping.” That said, Tuchinsky also felt that there was a solution to this challenge. He explained that “Retailers must continue to embrace the rapid change towards mobile, including better checkout flows, and integration between desktop and mobile sites.”

It is no mystery that mobile shopping is becoming exceptionally important to shoppers. In the United States, it’s estimated that about 55.8 percent of all retail site visits came from users of smartphones and tablets in 2015. It will be up to retailers to try to keep on top of these trends and to better understand what their customers want if they intend to stay ahead in online sales.