Some Food for Thought on M-commerce
We’re getting content Web-ready for the June issue of Multichannel Merchant magazine. The cover story is on mobile commerce, and includes studies on what three merchants have done to get themselves ready for the m-commerce generation.
Before we publish it, I wanted to share this eye-opening sidebar about m-commerce and projected usage in the U.S.:
U.K-based Coda Research Consultancy forecast in April that m-commerce will reach $23.8 billion in the U.S. 2015. That would be about 8.5% of all e-commerce revenue in the U.S.
As for mobile’s impact on all U.S. sales, Coda says that will be just 0.5% of all retail revenue in the U.S. in 2015. The consultancy said it sees mobile devices being used to research products, compare prices and buy online — typically while the end-user is standing in a store.
The commerce piece of m-commerce has been a little slow: According to ComScore’s MobiLens survey for the three months ending in March, 64% of mobile subscribers said they used their phones to send a text message, but just 29% used the browser. About 28% downloaded an app, and 18% accessed a social networking site or a blog.
And of the top-10 Websites accessed over a mobile phone between January 2009 and September 2009, according to The Nielsen Co., four were e-mail browsers and three were news sites. No retailer made the cut.
Before you go and build a mobile-ready site and expect your sales to go off the charts, think about your own mobile usage patterns. Are you buying big-ticket items through your iPhone, or are you downloading free ringtones for your Blackberry?
I have a Nokia E71x smartphone (yes, it was a free upgrade from AT&T). I use it to text, I use it to take photos and post them to Facebook, I use it (shudder) to tweet and on occasion I check out ESPN.
If I’m in a store and I can’t find a customer service rep, I’ll try to look a product up online. I’ve had a fair amount of luck with Home Depot and Walmart, not as much with Target (though my wife was able to add things to our baby registry with her iPhone).
I did reserve a car once, this President’s Day, through carrentals.com while sitting in an airport. I couldn’t do it through, of all places, Orbitz. I did not have to whip a credit card out to make the reservation, so I actually felt pretty secure about the transaction.
Based on my habits and the above-mentioned surveys, I think your best bet is to optimize your m-commerce site as a research portal. Users like me are ready to access your site and learn about your items and locations, but they aren’t ready to make a purchase on the small screen.
