Tag: cyber monday

Burst Media has released the results of its annual holiday survey, indicating that consumers are prepped with their smartphones.

The latest annual holiday survey from Burst Media has revealed that consumers are already getting ready to start their shopping during the heaviest season of the year, and that while they plan to head to brick and mortar shopping malls and online shops, alike, they will be using mobile commerce in a number of different ways to help them throughout their purchasing journeys.

This year’s calendar has shaken up the pattern of events when compared to previous recent years.

For instance, this year, Hanukkah will be starting ahead of Thanksgiving, and for the first time since 2008, Cyber Monday will be occurring in December. This could be a defining pattern, particularly when it comes to mobile commerce, as it was barely in existence the last time this happened, so this year will present the first real data regarding what retailers can expect when online shopping kicks off when December has already started, and after Hanukkah is already in full swing.

The survey provided a considerable amount of online and mobile commerce insight for this year’s season.

Among the key findings of the holiday shopping and mobile commerce survey from Burst Media are the following:

• Marketers have time on their sides. Among the respondents of the survey, a large portion (40 percent) begin their holiday shopping following their Thanksgiving celebrations. Only 14.3 percent have already begun, and 11.8 percent started just after Halloween.
• Smartphones and tablets are playing an increasing role in the overall shopping process. Among the respondents, 45.7 percent use smartphones, and 41.3 percent use tablets for online browsing and shopping for holiday gifts and products. This is far greater than last year’s statistics.
• Mobile commerce apps will play an important part in the shopping this season, as 54.6 percent of women and 41.9 percent of men use shopping apps at least somewhat frequently – far more than in 2012.
• Smartphones are helping with shopping in brick and mortar shops, as 40.3 percent of the respondents use their devices while inside the stores to assist in their decision making.
• Parents are using mobile commerce to comparison shop for better prices while inside brick and mortar retail locations. This was the case among 64.5 percent of moms and 63.2 percent of dads.

Mobile traffic continue to grow and if you haven’t developed a mobile-friendly site be prepared to lose a large chunk of your annual revenue. eMarketer projects that mobile commerce sales will reach $41.68 billion by the end of 2013 and overall mobile commerce sales to climb to well over $100 billion by 2017.

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday slowly approaching, several retailers have already begun customizing a mobile marketing strategy to prepare for the holiday onslaught. This is crucial for any e-commerce business expecting to win over new customers during the holiday season.

However, here are 4 further reasons why your business can no longer go without investing a mobile strategy this holiday season:

1. A Better Mobile Presence

If you do not have a mobile-optimized website, than your mobile presence is not aesthetically appealing for holiday consumers. Online shops needs to be adapted for mobile devices especially since statistics show that consumers heavily rely on their mobile devices to help them make purchasing decisions. You should keep in mind that mobile screens are a lot smaller than desktop and laptop screens. Small product images and hard to read content encourage mobile viewers to stay clear of your website and search for holiday deals elsewhere.

In fact, 61% of respondents from a Google Survey said if they could not find what they were looking for right away they would move on to a competitor’s website and 74% confirmed that they were more likely to return to a website that was mobile-friendly. Even though you might have a successful online store website, if it does not appear right on a mobile device unique visitors via mobile will probably shop on a competitor’s website that is mobile-optimized just because it is easier. To make this a little clearer, here are to two examples of how a mobile-friendly and standard desktop website appear on a mobile device.

1-800-Flowers mobile-friendly website displays large images of their products, makes basic information such as store location and opening hours easy to find, and provides users with large navigation buttons that make browsing the site for gifts and products easy. If you compare 1-800-Flowers’ or Domino’s Pizza mobile-optimized websites to Domino’s Pizza standard website you see a major difference. The standard website looks overfilled, the images are too small, and it is hard to navigate. Any person visiting this site will surely give up after a few minutes or maybe a few seconds! These examples show that regardless of if a mobile user is on-the-go or shopping from the comfort of their home, the mobile site looks a lot better and is a lot easier to use on a small screen.

2. Lower Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

Agitated holiday shoppers are much more likely to opt out before continuing their battle with a complicated checkout process. This is detrimental for e-commerce businesses because poor user experience is strongly correlated to higher shopping cart abandonment rates. A recent study conducted by Harris Interactive showed that 47% of mobile shoppers did not complete a purchase because the checkout process took too long.

In fact, this is even more important during the holiday season. People are looking for the fastest and easiest solutions to cut gift shopping time in half. This is can be made a lot easier for your shoppers if you provide an easy 1-click or 3-step checkout process that does not require mobile shoppers to fill out unnecessary shipping and credit card information.

3. Picky Holiday Shoppers

With the added stress of finding perfect gifts for family and friends, consumers tend to be a lot picker during the holiday season. Make sure to capture mobile holiday shoppers by making it convenient to shop on your website. Many shoppers avoid in-store shopping altogether because mobile shopping can be done anywhere, anytime. However, this requires having a easy to use mobile-friendly website and not a downsized standard website with heavy coding. This usually causes your website to load incorrectly or very slowly on mobile devices.

4. Cater to the Omnishopper of Today

Traditional platforms no longer suffice the omnishopper of today. Consumers use several different platforms to interact with retailers before making purchasing decisions and the mobile platform has definitely become an integral part of society. In fact, in June 2013 interaction with online retailers via mobile devices actually exceeded interaction via desktops and laptops according to a report by comScore and Shop.org.

This behavior will be even more prevalent during the busy months leading up to Christmas, as consumers scramble to find holiday gifts and this can greatly affect your annual revenue. For some retailers, the holiday season can represent up to 40% of their annual sales according to the National Revenue Federation. In order to increase your customer engagement and annual sales include a mobile marketing strategy to your holiday season plan.

If you would like any further tips about how you can optimize your e-commerce website for the Christmas holiday season, read Shopgate’s eBook titled “2013 Holiday Guide for Online Retailers: Top 10 Practices & Monthly Checklist

” today.