Five Innovations Transforming How Consumers Shop on Mobile
The abandoned shopping cart rate for mobile shoppers approximates an astounding 97%, according to some estimates. Clearly, this hair-raising stat proves consumers’ deep disappointment with mobile commerce.
These cumbersome mobile shopping experiences only deliver a quarter of the conversion rates of e-commerce websites, and retailers are losing billions of dollars in potential sales every year. It’s what comScore refers to as the “M-Commerce Gap”: mobile devices account for almost 60 percent of digital shopping time, but only for 15% of e-commerce spending.
I believe this is often a result of issues associated with a retailer’s mobile site design, many of which are merely scaled down versions of their desktop sites. When traffic was limited, this was an efficient approach for serving mobile visitors. But with mobile devices now an integral part of our daily lives and mobile traffic greater than 60%, we need to raise the bar on mobile commerce experience.
For far too long, consumers have been left frustrated by mobile pages that take 4 - 6 seconds to load and tedious checkout processes with multiple forms that are a hassle to fill out on mobile devices. As consumers become increasingly accustomed to super fast and easy purchasing experiences like Instagram Pinterest, Amazon, Uber and Cole Haan, the bar for retailers inevitably rises.
But make no mistake: this is all about to change. 2016 is poised to be a transformative year for mobile shopping. From digital wallets and app indexing, to larger screens and buy buttons, a number of recent mobile innovations will be converting smartphone-armed shoppers from mobile browsers to mobile buyers.
1. Digital wallets
With new mobile payment services like Apple Pay and Android Pay, gone are the days when consumers had to fill in complex forms in small screens to complete transactions. Mobile shoppers can now complete purchases with a single taps on their screens, a quantum leap in convenience that will make buying from a smartphone an experience that’s not only faster but also more enjoyable.
2. Improved mobile app discovery
Discovering mobile apps hasn’t been intuitive for shoppers, but now, thanks to App Indexing and App Deep Linking efforts from major industry players, mobile commerce apps and their inventories are much easier to find. Consumers now have a clearer view of the universe of m-commerce apps available to them, opening up much better shopping options than going to mobile sites on their smartphones’ browsers.
Until recently, storage capacity in smartphones was limited, and users balked at downloading apps due to capacity concerns. Now, with smartphones that can pack 128 GB of storage, such as the iPhone 6s, this is no longer an issue, and consumers feel free to install as many shopping apps as they wish and need. The larger, better screens have boosted consumers’ capacity to evaluate product photos, read their descriptions, check out reviews and compare features and prices.
3. Phones with bigger screens and more storage
Until recently, storage capacity in smartphones was limited, and users balked at downloading apps due to capacity concerns. Now, with smartphones that can pack 128 GB of storage, such as the iPhone 6s, this is no longer an issue, and consumers feel free to install as many shopping apps as they wish and need.
The larger, better screens have boosted consumers’ capacity to evaluate product photos, read their descriptions, check out reviews and compare features and prices.
4. Social commerce: Buy buttons
Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Pinterest have added “buy” buttons to their apps, marrying social, search and shopping on smartphones and tablets. This development will benefit brands and consumers: a third of mobile shoppers say social media stores motivate them to buy online, according to a recent report from Global Web Index. Suddenly, consumers will be able to mix their online social interactions with commerce, acting on friend’s recommendations or personal discoveries right within the interface and context of their social app.
5. Native mobile apps that leverage core iPhone and Android features
Leading retailers and brands have realized that to deliver a top-notch mobile shopping experience they need native, dynamic m-commerce apps that, unlike mobile sites, can take advantage of the features of iOS and Android, such as Apple Pay, 3D Touch Visual Search, Barcode Scanning, Sending Push and Geo-Fence notifications, and TouchID.
Engagement on native mobile apps is 10 to 15 times higher than on mobile commerce sites, conversions on native mobile apps are three to four times higher than m-sites, studies show. A mobile web page takes six to eight seconds to load, glacial speed when compared with native mobile apps and their response times measured in hundreds of milliseconds.
And the trend-setting millennials love m-commerce apps. A recent survey from visual marketing firm Pixlee found that almost 50 percent of respondents had downloaded a mobile shopping app to their phones because they find them superior to mobile sites.
The time for m-commerce is now
Smartphones have been our constant companions for many years, but they have proven less than useful as shopping tools. This is the time when that changes. 2016 is the year of mobile commerce.
