Category: Mobile Commerce

New partnerships could give Facebook a foothold in mobile commerce

Facebook has shown some interest in mobile commerce recently, but has yet to take any aggressive action on this interest. The social network facilitates mobile payments, mostly through the variety of social games it supports, but does not boast of a major presence in the mobile commerce sector. That may soon change, however, as Facebook has announced its partnership with PayPal, Stripe, and Braintree. The partnership with these companies may help Facebook gain a foothold in the mobile commerce space.

New service designed to make payments more convenient

Through the partnerships it has made, Facebook intends to deploy its “Autofill With Facebook” service. The service is meant to enhance the payment experience, making purchasing items online more convenient for consumers. The service functions like typical autofill features for web browsers, but focuses on financial information. Using the Autofill service allows consumers to store their financial information with Facebook, which can access this information to fill out payment forms in a convenient manner.

Service is meant to supplement mobile commerce services

The service is not meant to compete with other mobile commerce services. Facebook intends for the Autofill service to be a supplement to mobile commerce, making payments less of a hassle for consumers on mobile devices. Facebook may eventually seek to compete in the mobile commerce space, but is currently content to provide auxiliary support for the wide variety of mobile commerce services that currently exist, all of which are vying for the attention of consumers.

Facebook focuses on marketing

Facebook currently has a strong focus on marketing rather than mobile commerce. The social network is working to become more attractive to marketers by improving its services relating to mobile advertisements. Last year, the social network introduced Facebook Graph Search, which is meant to give users a very deep insight into the various demographics that make use of the social networking platform. This search engine has been relatively well received by marketers.

Half of all smartphone shoppers in the U.K. are disappointed with the overall experience.

When it comes to mobile marketing and the smartphone commerce experience that is currently being offered, companies are finding themselves in a jam, as consumers appear to expect the usability of websites to be the equivalent of what they know from the standard web.

Unfortunately, these are two different technologies and the capabilities of smartphones aren’t there yet.

As businesses tinker with their mobile optimized websites, they are often either limiting them by too much of an extreme, or are weighing down each page too heavily with various objects, making it impossible to use for consumers who simply aren’t willing to wait the length of time that it takes to load. According to Eptica, a multi-channel consumer engagement firm, this is making mobile marketing and experience creation an extremely challenging process.

Companies are failing to meet the expectations of consumers in their mobile marketing and commerce.

More than ever before, consumers are receiving mobile marketing and are shopping over their smartphones but the latest survey from Eptica is showing that the majority of them don’t like the experience that they’re receiving. Feedback was received from 1,000 adults in the United Kingdom by way of this research, and what it determined was that 52 percent of those individuals felt that more than half of the websites that they visited using a smartphone or tablet had not been properly optimized for their preferred device.

The mobile marketing data was released in the 2013Mobile Customer Experience Study from Eptica. It also looked into the foundation issues that related to the unpleasant experience that consumers have said that they are having. The primary struggle was related to a lack of functionality both on the mobile web, as well as within apps that were designed for their devices (36 percent). Nearly as many people (34 percent) said that they were frustrated with the long loading times. Another 34 percent said that they disliked the websites that were not optimized to be viewed on the smaller screen of the smartphone or tablet gadgets.