Monday, November 10, 2014

How mid-market retailers should tackle mCommerce

Despite the fact that retail tends to be the most dynamic and innovative industry, low mobile conversion rates have led mid-market retailers to disregard the mobile channel. As a result, many of these retailers have not developed a mobile friendly website and the bounce rates end up exceeding 80% due to complicated navigation and inefficient check-out processes.

Mobile domination: John Lewis reported in January 2014 that 70% of its online Christmas visitors arrived via a mobile device. The fact that mobile conversion rates are low compared to desktop doesn't matter. It is increasingly becoming a customer's first point of contact with a brand. While actual sales might take place in the store or on the desktop, a poorly designed mobile website will discourage a potential customer to even consider doing a purchase with that specific company.

Mobile customer journey: Research studies, conducted by companies like Forrester, Gartner and Compuware, indicate that a consumer will not accept that a page takes longer than three seconds to load. The key take-away for retailers is that a responsive (adapting desktop website to mobile) approach to designing the mobile experience is not sufficient. As a matter of fact, such a website can take up to 10 seconds to load depending on the amount of content available on it. The interface must be built from scratch and must reflect what the customer expects from a mobile website: a fast and efficient browse to purchase experience.

The solution: So how might a mid-market retailer develop a quick and qualitative response to this issue if its development team is focused on the responsive approach? While traffic is mainly mobile, the bulk of the revenues are still generated via the desktop website. It is therefore not realistic to divert the IT resources away from that platform. The SaaS model is the best way to go. This approach minimizes up-front investment while keeping the established web development team focused on improving the revenue driving desktop website. Also, the content from the desktop website can automatically populate a customised mobile store. Finally, the pay as you go model implies that costs is directly proportional to customers' mobile activity. Overall, the ROI story is compelling.

http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/mobile-digital-marketing/being-responsive-to-mobile-commerce-is-not-enough/1166

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