Tag: mobile shopping

Mobile commerce may be more about technology for retailers

Mobile technology has begun to change the way consumers participate in retail and commerce as well as how they interact with one another and the world around them. As such, businesses have been forced to adapt to the changing interests of consumers and embrace mobile engagement strategies and focus more heavily on mobile commerce. Gartner analysts suggest that a focus on mobile commerce is beneficial for retailers, but companies should prioritize their use of mobile technology over commerce initiatives in order to optimize revenue generation.

Embracing technology could help boost revenue

Many technology firms around the world have taken a strong interest in mobile commerce. These firms are offering mobile commerce services to retailers and marketing these services as ways to boost revenue by engaging mobile consumers. Gartner analysts suggest that these services may have little impact on revenue if retailers themselves do not become more accommodating to mobile technology. Optimizing websites so they can be easily viewed on mobile devices and providing consumers with ways to find information with their smartphones and tablets while in physical stores is considered more important than actually having a mobile commerce platform.

Retailers have high hopes for mobile commerce

A recent Gartner survey suggests that the world’s leading retailers have high hopes for the mobile space as well as e-commerce. The survey shows that retailers expect the majority of their sales to continue coming from physical stores, but 14.6% will come from e-commerce and 6.5% will come from mobile commerce by 2017. If retailers do not focus more on accommodating mobile technology, however, they may miss out on potential revenue from consumers eager to spend money through their mobile devices.

Mobile sector continues to evolve

Return on investment can be a tricky subject in the world of mobile commerce. There are a wide range of platforms available to consumers, but none of these have yet established themselves as a leader. Moreover, mobile commerce itself is continuing to evolve. The sector is moving away from NFC technology, which has formed its backbone for the past few years. As mobile commerce changes, ways to generate revenue through this sector are becoming somewhat vague.

Confidence is growing among mobile shoppers and the gap between the use of the devices is closing.

One of the primary struggles that have been faced so far in the mobile shopping world is in consumer confidence, and tablet commerce has always had far greater results in this area than the smartphone channel.

Even veteran online shoppers often struggle with their confidence and comfort on the smaller screen.

For several years, tablet commerce has seen considerably greater conversions than those experienced over smartphones, as consumers using those devices are more receptive to shopping than they are on the much smaller screens. This has been especially true over the iPad, specifically, although all of the larger screened mobile devices do perform better than smartphones when it comes to shopping, overall.

It has never been determined specifically why tablet commerce has done so much better than smartphone shopping.

Smartphone conversions have traditionally lagged far behind those over tablet commerce. However, the most recent statistics are starting to show that the gap between the conversion over these two channels is starting to shrink. Though the latest Adyer platform data showed that mobile purchases grew to 52.6 percent in the May to August quarter when compared to the 46.8 percent over the quarter before.

Ayder has speculated that this could be a summer trend, but it is causing many to watch the smartphone and tablet commerce figures over the next quarter to see if they continue in the same direction.

It has been guessed that the numbers may be moving that way as people become more dependent on their smartphones than their tablets. However, it could also mean that the supremacy of tablet commerce is coming to an end and smartphone users are becoming as comfortable shopping over their devices as their larger screen cousins.

At the same time, in Asia and South America, where 10.8 percent of online transactions are from smartphones and 5.8 percent are from tablet commerce, those larger screen devices are becoming more popular in those markets. The sheer scale of those markets could shift things back to tablets yet again, though the penetration of smartphones does remain well in the lead and if consumers have become comfortable with those devices, it will help to define that sector.