Tapping into mCommerce with a Mobile Website
Your customers are mobile. You can not ignore it!
Web Hosting and the Mobile Landscape
Why is it important for you and your customers?
Trends Toward Mobile Websites and Benefiting From the New Mobile Internet
- Their customers are mobile
- More people use their mobile phones than PC’s to get online
- Mobile searches have grown by 4x since 2010
- There will be one mobile device for every person on the earth in less than two years
- 935,000 Smart Phone subscriptions exist, and over 6 Billion Mobile phone subscriptions. 1/6 of the mobile phones out there are smart phones
In Asia, Mobile Traffic versus Desktop Traffic is converging. This is a little glimpse into our future here in the U.S. Across Asia this is prominent and this is the trend we are seeing in North America. Traffic is converging. In India last month, mobile traffic actually surpassed desktop traffic. This is just a glimpse of our future here in the United States.
Economic Trends towards Mobile Shopping
Why is this important? Because a mobile friendly site will help you to connect with all these users.
- 60% of users expect a mobile site to load in 3 seconds or less
- 71% of users expect a mobile site to load as fast as a desktop site
- 78% of users will retry a site two times or less if it does not load initially.
Users expect their mobile website experience to be as good if not better than a desktop website experience.
Functionality and Context of a Mobile Website
Functionality:
Other than load times, customers are expecting “click to call” functionality. The full website pulled up on your smart phone, the “click to call” will not work. Mobile sites even have e-commerce connected to a mobile payment processor. If you are placing an order on a mobile website, will that order actually go through? If the site was designed for mobile, then the answer is “yes”. Forms are even expected on a mobile website. A lot of forms use javascript, and most mobile phones can not handle javascript. It is important that you have functionality that will work for your mobile users. Content that is specifically designed to work on a smart phone is important for mobile visitors.
Context:
Users are looking for specific information right now.
- How much does it cost?
- Where are you located?
- Give me directions.
- Are there any tables available at 8:00?
- Where is the nearest restaurant?
Bank websites allow you to check your bank balance and lookup the most recent interest rates. But on a mobile phone when connecting to a bank you are most likely looking for information such as where is the nearest ATM machine, or how to transfer funds. Your are probably not going to apply for a home loan on your mobile phone. There is a clear distinction between the context of a desktop website and a mobile website.
Customers are connecting with the businesses in their local area via mobile.
Your customers are mobile and you cannot ignore it!
- 95% of smartphone users have searched for mobile information
- 61% of users call a business after searching and 59% visit the location
- 90% of these people act within 24 hours
We can see that the users are there, the traffic is there, we can see that mobile visitors are growing, but what is very important is that these users are very active. Current data today shows that mobile commerce makes up about 8% of overall e-commerce online business in the U.S. today. And the overall e-commerce in the U.S. is growing 17% year over year. So not only the percentage of mobile commerce, but overall the e-commerce is increasing. It is a sweet spot and a great time to get online with a mobile website.
Apps and Mobile Sites
Many people prefer mobile sites for shopping.
- 81% prefer mobile sites for researching products
- 79% prefer mobile sites for product reviews
- 90% prefer mobile sites for purchasing
Apps are great tools for customer retention, but they will not bring you in new customers and they will not help you to be found. For most small businesses, the objective is to be found, to be seen and to acquire new customers. If you do a mobile search, an app will not be listed on the top local results of Google, but your mobile website will. The priority of being found from the growing mobile traffic is essential. An app is nice, but being found with a mobile website is essential.
Bad mobile websites can cost you customers. We know these visitors are active visitors with high expectations. This makes for a huge opportunity for business owners looking to tap into a growing market.
