Tag: m-commerce

Though load time has improved, Keynote Systems points out the need for better successful loading.

Keynote Systems has released its most recent Mobile Commerce Index report, which has revealed that the Victoria’s Secret Direct homepage was only capable of loading successfully at a rate of 97.79 percent.

This has been holding the company back on the index despite its rapid load time.

Last week, the mobile commerce index granted Victoria’s Secret its last possible position out of 30 due to its poor performance. However, this most recent week, which ended on January 20, it rose by nine places to reach the 21 spot. This improvement was almost entirely because of the improvements that were made to the load time on its homepage. Though the percentage of time that the page was able to completely load successfully, it is still far below the average on the index.

Keynote believes that site could still make a number of considerable mobile commerce performance improvements.

In this, Keynote Systems stated that the retailer should focus its attention on improving the mobile commerce site’s ability to successfully load. It did, however, acknowledge the better results when compared to the week before.

The week that ended on January 13 showed that the load time for the Victoria’s Secret homepage was 7.64 seconds. Its success rate was 97.45 percent. When that data was combined into the mobile commerce index at Keynote, it generated a low 391 point score out of 1,000 possible points.

However, during the week ending on January 20, the load time improved to 7.36 seconds, and the successful load rate etched up slightly to 97.79 percent. The result from that data mix on the index gave Victoria’s Secret a mobile commerce score of 719, which was a vast improvement.

Equally, though, while the load time – which is considerably better than the index average of 9.19 seconds – was very positive, it was the percentage of successful loads that held the site back from a significantly higher potential score. Keynote considers 99 percent or better to be the optimal range. The most recent index average was 98.77 percent. This placed Victoria’s Secret’s website far below the mark that should be its mobile commerce site target.

Sephora finds promise in focus on mobile commerce

Mobile commerce has been a very strong boon to the retail industry. Beauty products specialist Sephora has seen major gains through its focus on mobile commerce and consumers with mobile devices. Sephroa director of mobile and digital store marketing Johnna Marcus notes that the company saw a significant increase in mobile orders over the past year, as well as an increase in mobile traffic. The company is expected to see similar results in 2013 as it continues its focus on mobile commerce.

Company sees 167% spike in mobile orders

According to Marcus, Sephora saw a 167% increase in mobile orders in 2012 and a 75% increase in online traffic from mobile devices. The company attributes these results to its ongoing campaign to engage consumers through a variety of mobile initiatives and services tailored for mobile commerce. One of the measures Sephora has taken to engage mobile consumers comes in the form of an application, which provides users with an array of “personal assistant” features that could be useful in shopping.

Retail mobile commerce expected to account for $37 billion in 2013

A recent report from eMarketer, a leading market research organization, predicts that consumers will purchase more than $37.44 billion in retail goods this year. All of these purchases will be done from either a smart phone or tablet, thanks to the growing variety of mobile commerce services being made available to consumers. Sephora expects to see a significant number of its sales come from the mobile space.

Sephora not alone in focus on mobile commerce

Sephora is not the only retail company that has high hopes hinging on mobile commerce. Indeed, mobile commerce seems to be all the rage within the retail industry, with many companies working on ways to directly engage mobile consumers and encourage mobile shopping and spending. Much of the interest surrounding mobile commerce in the retail industry may come from the strong results retailers saw during the 2012 holiday shopping season, when many of their most ambitious mobile commerce initiatives paid off.