Tag: mobile commerce study

Report highlights consumer complaints regarding mobile commerce

Mobile commerce has been showing promising growth around the world, but not all consumers have been won over by the prospects of mobile payments. Those that do support mobile commerce praise it for the convenience and efficiency it brings to both online and offline shopping. There are a growing number of consumers that consider mobile commerce to be time consuming and more difficult than necessary, according to a new study from Harris Interactive.

Businesses eager to embrace mobile payments

The study highlights the growing problems that consumers in the U.S. are beginning to have with mobile commerce. U.S. retailers and other merchants have been aggressively supporting mobile commerce, hoping to tap into the growing market of consumers with smartphones and tablets. In the scramble to appeal to mobile consumers, the mobile commerce platforms that many retailers are putting to use have apparently failed to meet the standards of customers. The study suggests that consumers are growing more frustrated with faulty platforms that disturb their shopping experiences.

Technical issues drive consumers away from mobile commerce

The study shows that approximate 68% of mobile consumers have attempted to purchase products from their smartphones or tablets, but 66% of these consumers have failed to do so due to the obstacles they have encountered with mobile commerce platforms. Many of these problems come in the form of poor network support. A slow Internet connection can effectively ruin a mobile commerce platform as connection problems can halt or duplicate transaction. Other technical problems have also proven frustrating for consumers.

Faster transactions could reclaim the favor of consumers

According to the study, some 47% of mobile consumers claim to have abandoned mobile commerce simply because transactions take too long. Businesses embracing mobile payments may do well to ensure that transactions are not time consuming so as to placate the concerns of consumers. This may require some retailers to make use of new mobile commerce platforms that are more capable of facilitating transactions over a better Internet connection.

The mobile shopping experience is falling short of what people in the United Kingdom expect.

A recent study is showing that about half of all people in the United Kingdom who have tried m-commerce find that the shopping experience over that channel is falling short of their expectations.

Nearly 50 percent of the participants of a U.K. study said that their expectations are not being met.

The survey results showed that among people from the United Kingdom who use m-commerce for shopping, the ways in which the experience was falling short of their expectations were in the speed of use (49 percent) and in the failure to provide simple, functional and practical navigation on a site (48 percent).

The study determined that m-commerce may be able to do better if the experience was improved.

The study was called “Mobile Commerce: What consumers really want”. It was conducted by EPiServer and it also showed that among consumers in the United Kingdom, 54 percent will give up on an m-commerce website and leave if they find that they are experiencing any difficulties in using it.

According to the EPiServer product manager, David Bowen, “Our research shows that mobile devices are becoming the first choice for accessing a website or app, regardless of location.” He also went on to say that the result of this is that the m-commerce experience is growing in its importance for the web strategy of virtually any business.

Bowen pointed out that today’s consumer is mobile savvy and will not be as forgiving if m-commerce websites and apps fail to provide the functionality that they would expect to receive when using a website on their desktop computers. He stated that “mobile first” is quickly becoming the strategy to choose when it comes to any business that intends to use smartphones and tablets as a part of any element of its selling – from providing product information to business locators, or actually purchasing a product.

The m-commerce research indicated that nearly two out of every three participants accessed websites using their smartphones every day. However, at the same time 28 percent said that they would choose a competitor company if they experienced struggles using their first choice.