In advance of the launch of the holiday shopping season, iPhone and iPad users now have new ways to buy.
Before the holiday shopping season has had its official launch, Apple has just revealed a new strategy for taking part in this highly profitable time of year by adding mobile commerce apps as its own shopping category in its App Store.
The idea is to help to make it easier for consumers to more easily find the shopping apps they want to use.
Now, both iPhone and iPad users will see an entirely new Shopping app available in the category lists at the App Store, so they will be able to discover all the available mobile commerce applications. Before this change was made, shopping apps had been included as a part of the broader lifestyle section of the App Store. Now, they will have their own category, bringing the number of mobile application categories at Apple up to 25.
This new mobile commerce app channel will experience its official launch as of November 5.
This will ensure that the m-commerce category will be available to the Western world in time for the holiday shopping season, and that it will also be available for the start of China’s equivalent to Black Friday, which is called Singles Day and that lands on November 11, this year.
Apple has stated that launching this new channel, made a lot of sense for better serving its users, as mobile shopping has become quite popular among iPhone and iPad users and because this popularity is only growing. A great deal of the e-commerce traffic that is being experienced around the world is coming from mobile devices as opposed to being exclusively from personal computers. In fact, the Flurry app analytics service has said that there was a growth in the use of m-commerce apps by 174 percent throughout 2014.
That would make mobile commerce the fastest growing app category in 2014. Moreover, a recent survey conducted by Google has revealed that 54 percent of holiday shoppers intend to use their smartphones to do at least some of their holiday shopping this year.
Apple has introduced buy buttons in its digital store
Apple has made a change to its online store in order to foster growth in mobile shopping. For several years, Apple has kept product information separate from commerce. Those interested in purchasing products, such as an iPhone, would have to visit a different website, which served as Apple’s digital store. Now, however, Apple has introduced “buy” buttons, which will make e-commerce more streamlined and give Apple a way to provide convenient services to consumers.
Change will be more accommodating of mobile consumers with smartphones and tablets
The change comes as Apple becomes more aware that consumers want to explore, research, and shop for products in one place. Having to visit multiple different sites when trying to purchase and research products is seen as inconvenient, so Apple unified the process by including a buy button that will allow shoppers to make a purchase quickly. Streamlining the process could help Apple establish a stronger foothold in the e-commerce space, especially as the company continues to expand into the world of mobile payments.
Apple remains slow when updating its e-commerce store
Apple has been quite slow in redesigning its e-commerce platforms. The company’s digital store is one of the most frequently visited websites in the world, and a significant amount of this traffic comes from mobile shoppers. Despite, this, the company has seen little need to make any significant changes to the website, even when it debuted the Apple Watch, which was only available online.
Updated store will be more convenient for mobile consumers than its previous iteration as Apple begins to focus more on mobile payments
One of the reasons Apple has made a change to its online store is because it was not optimized for mobile viewing. This made it difficult for mobile consumers to use the store and purchase products that they found interesting. Now, the store is more capable of handling a mobile audience and Apple is likely to continue making adjustments to its approach on e-commerce in order to accommodate those using smartphones and tablets to shop online.
