Tag: mcommerce

Mobile commerce experts expect an increase of $14 billion this year

| January 25, 2013

Mobile Commerce Sephora

The example of Sephora has been used to support this claim about the channel.

Experts in mobile commerce and marketing have been looking at some of the larger players in the channel and have stated that they expect a positive future for shopping over smartphones.

Those in the industry are increasingly convinced that this environment has become vital to a company’s survival.

Johnna Marcus, an executive from Sephora, the beauty product retailer, explained that mobile commerce had been a highly positive experience for that company, and that it anticipates further gains in that sphere will present themselves in 2013. Based on last year’s numbers, that business is justified in feeling positive about the potential from smartphone shoppers.

When speaking at a conference, the executive revealed considerable mobile commerce growth data.

According to Marcus, Sephora saw an increase in orders over mobile commerce of 167 percent. Moreover, there was a spike of 75 percent in the traffic that the site saw from smartphones and tablets. Furthermore, over 50 percent of the emails that are sent by the company are opened using these devices, as opposed to laptops and desktop computers.

Sephora has developed a unique mobile commerce strategy which is attempting to make the smartphone or tablet into a type of digital personal shopper for consumers. The devices will allow them to keep track of the brands that they prefer, read reviews, and keep an eye on the very latest items.

The company has also placed a considerable amount of focus on the concept of a mobile wallet which will integrate with the gift cards that they sell. Beyond that, there is a handy feature in the company’s app, which allows consumers to scan the barcodes on the packages in-store, or on the items that have already been purchased. This provides immediate access to product information, reviews, and options for purchasing that item online.

Of course, this was only one example of mobile commerce successes over the last year. A recent eMarketer study has indicated that this year, consumers will be using their devices to purchase $37.44 billion worth of retail products. This is a massive increase over last year, when $23.72 billion was spent.

Mobile commerce optimized site from Victoria’s Secret slightly improves

| January 24, 2013

Mobile Commerce Victoria's SecretThough 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.