Posted by Tom Krengel
on 05/07/10
Consumers are already conducting research on mobile before they walk into the store. Amazon, in fact, is the biggest beneficiary of this behavior – consumers comparing prices in store with prices on Amazon and then ending up buying from the online retailer if the price is lower.
Every single retailer will need a mobile site or application within three years or they will risk losing business to their competitors. The trick is to develop a mobile presence that has several factors: intuitive navigation, accurate search capability, pleasing design, enticing merchandising and easy, frictionless checkout.
The growth of mobile commerce will spur an explosion in mobile advertising. After all, now the ads can link directly to the pertinent item on the mobile commerce site.
The debate between mobile site and mobile application is false. Retailers will need both. Consumers who have downloaded the retailer’s application on their handset are allocating valuable real estate on their most personal device – a sure badge of loyalty. And yet, the mobile Web’s ease of use will complement the application and other SMS-related pushes.
While numbers are hard to come by, mobile will have an oversize influence on ecommerce and store sales – kind of like the role that the wired Web played a decade ago.
Mobile commerce will revolutionize retail, even more than ecommerce. Combining ease of purchase with location-awareness and ready access to information is the true promise of mobile commerce.
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