Mobile Retail Growth Up 87%
In the past year, the number of Americans using smartphones and tablets to access online retail sites has increased 87% according to a new study released by comScore. But one of the biggest surprises in the study is the lack of access to complete the transaction on many websites.
People literally can’t make the transaction after they find something they want to buy. In the L2 digital digest blog, it states that this is particularly common among big-ticket buyers with large incomes, who ironically are much more likely to own smartphones and tablets and use them in an m-commerce capacity. Despite today’s connected, multi-platform Internet culture, one-third of luxury brands still don’t maintain mobile-optimized sites; and of the two-thirds that do, only one-third offer an m-commerce functionality.
What happens to these customers after this disappointment no one knows. But what is clear is that when a potential customer cannot purchase something on their iPad, it doesn’t matter why, it only matters that they can’t.
L2 suggests that with mobile sales projected to quintuple over the next five years, much of that growth will happen within the ‘better goods’ industry. Lagging companies are sure to suffer losses in revenue and ultimately brand loyalty.
Surprisingly, this small deficiency is not hard to fix. Yet so many companies fluff off the power of mobile. Many retailers and manufacturers do not consider it a viable platform for commerce. They are still too fixed on Legacy Media (newspaper, magazine et al) to do the selling job. Digital to them is new. Mobile? That’s way down the line in the future.
Flash! Mobile is today and both manufacturing and retail should use it now if it really wants to be part of the new commerce of today. With an 87% increase within the last year by people accessing online retail sites, the facts are clear: if you want to increase sales, get up to speed with mobile now.
We live in a new DNAge.
Think MOBILEFirst.
