Mobile commerce expected to enhance the holiday season
Mobile commerce is expected to play a major role in the upcoming holiday season. Last year, consumers around the world made use of their smartphones and tablets to purchase gifts during the auspicious season. This lead to a spike in retail sales and helped prove the promise of mobile commerce to companies that had been on the fence concerning their engagement with mobile consumers in the past. In countries like Australia, mobile commerce may help make the upcoming holiday season one of the most profitable for retailers.
Consumers with little time to shop favor mobile commerce
Consumers are beginning to favor mobile commerce for a wide range of reasons. Many praise the convenience associated with mobile commerce platforms. Others favor these platforms because they have little personal time to go shopping for products. Through a smartphone and tablet, these people can shop online and make purchases at their leisure. While the mobile commerce field has been plagued with security issues over the past few years, these issues have not yet become enough to dissuade consumers from participating in this field.
Mobile traffic is on the rise
In a recent study released by Monetate, a marketing research firm, almost one-third of online traffic to retail sites on Christmas Day came from tablets and smartphones. Mobile traffic is continuing to rise, as well, even beyond the holiday season. IBM Smarter Commerce notes that more than 30% of online traffic to retail sites now comes from mobile devices as of the third quarter of this year.
Retailers begin taking matters into their own hands
In the wake of the 2012 holiday season, many retailers made efforts to make themselves more accommodating to mobile commerce in general. This meant improving their online infrastructure systems in order to better support traffic coming from mobile devices. Many retailers have also opted to develop their own mobile commerce platforms in order to better engage consumers.
An interview with Ralph Dangelmaier has revealed the critical importance of the smartphone experience.
While at the Money2020 event in Las Vegas, the editor of Mobile Commerce Press, Loreen Worden, had the opportunity to speak with Ralph Dangelmaier, the CEO of BlueSnap, a leading specialist in cart services, about mobile payments and optimization.
Within this interview, Dangelmaier revealed considerable insight into the essential nature of the smartphone channel.
At the moment, one of the largest struggles in mobile payments is the fact that many consumers are abandoning their shopping carts. According to many, including BlueSnap CEO Dangelmaier, this problem has a great deal to do with the fact that far too many retailers are failing to properly optimize their shopping cart experience. This causes consumers to feel that shopping over their smartphones and other small screen devices is inconvenient, difficult, and simply unattractive.
BlueSnap has presented a highly effective solution to this mobile payments struggle for businesses, large and small.
Within the interview with Dangelmaier, he revealed that BlueSnap is already managing to stand out in this highly competitive mobile payments marketplace with their optimized cart services. This is because they have taken the unique tack of partnering with a number of different banks and making their services available in approximately 180 different countries.
Therefore, BlueSnap has stepped away from the disconnected, confused nature of the mobile payments marketplace and has created an intelligent alternative that allows it to choose the bank that will provide the fastest and most convenient transaction for both the merchant and the consumer. For example, if a consumer in London is purchasing an intangible product – such as a digital item like a music file or an app – the best bank would be intelligently selected in order to ensure the transaction is completed at its fastest.
The company also goes above and beyond by consulting with each of its clients in order to discover which banks will provide the best mobile payments services for their specific products and needs. BlueSnap provides a seamless up-sell and consultation process with clients that makes certain that their shopping carts are always optimized for the best experience that is specific to their products. This is enhanced by a personal touch – which allows them to rise above the services provided by PayPal – and has allowed them to become experts in the best and fastest routing of transactions.
Having experienced the shopping cart and now mobile payments transaction optimization business for more than 8 years, BlueSnap has managed to keep ahead of the latest trends by observing and providing precisely what their clients want and need from the online and smartphone based experience. It is this type of strategy that will make the difference in keeping consumers from abandoning their carts and encouraging them to complete the process, giving conversions that much needed shot in the arm.
