Retail giant John Lewis recently acknowledged that its online sales saw an increase in traffic in the early hours of the morning from 12pm and 6am, thanks to their mCommerce capabilities. Although a strange time to be shopping, it comes as no real surprise to retailers whose mobile sites have enabled consumers to shop anywhere, anytime. Christmas 2014 for example was the year of mobile, with sales of £3 billion coming via a mobile device, accounting for over 27 per cent of online sales. Smartphone traffic reached an all-time high last Christmas exceeding 34 per cent (Google UK market trends), truly integrating mobile into commerce like never before.
With this significant development within ecommerce, it was only a matter of time before m-commerce truly came into its own and mobile payments and wallets become the norm. Asda, Sainsbury’s and House of Fraser are just a few retailers that have begun to integrate mobile payments into their retail channels, and they won’t be the last. The question therefore lies around how retailers can begin to prepare themselves for the influx of m-commerce.
Check your hardware
Many retailers, although operating with omnichannel capabilities in mind, may not have considered the infrastructure to cope with the demands of m-commerce. For example, a retailer who has spent considerable amounts of money ensuring their site can run across multiple platforms may not have an infrastructure with the ability to incorporate new technologies. Trying to stick on the latest technology to an ageing site is not only a significant waste of money, but can also be a waste of time. Retailers need to first take a look at their existing eCommerce offerings, before even considering adding additional capabilities.
The first step within the mobile optimisation process is to ensure that the provider can cope with mobile traffic whilst providing a seamless online experience, from search to purchase. Consumers want information quickly and immediately (particularly where seasonal demand is concerned), so specific measures need to be implemented without directly affecting a consumer’s mobile experience or the quality of content. A quick loading mobile website and a strong infrastructure can also impact Google SEO ranking as well as a firm’s reputation and should be kept in mind by eCommerce professionals.
Security can’t be an afterthought either. One of the most important factors to consumers, payment security requires compliance with PCI DSS standards. This ensures that consumers are protected from fraudulent activity and allows retailers to avoid the irreparable reputational damage and financial costs associated with a breach in data security.
Keeping consumers happy
Recent research from Skrill found that 28 per cent of people abandon a purchase thanks to the lack of payment methods, a significant number when taking into consideration the budgets and efforts taken to get people onto the site in the first place. Consumer demands are evolving far quicker than anticipated; they expect to be able to trust a retailer and receive a premium experience every time they access the site. If retailers have found themselves under scrutiny because of a lack of compliance with PCI regulations thanks to their new payment options, or due to a clunky online experience, it becomes easy to abandon the purchase.
This is set in a retail landscape in which mobile sites have become more popular than apps, according to research conducted by Econsultancy. As such, keeping calls to action and design very simple is the key to an optimised mobile site, excluding unnecessary banner adverts or cryptic fonts. The most important thing is to keep the steps from initial search to purchase as simple and as unobtrusive as possible, as consumers generally don’t want to register or ‘make an account’ prior to registering their payment details.
The core function of any platform should be to simplify the customer experience. It’s worth ensuring that your website’s hosting provider has direct relationships with all of the UK’s main mobile networks, as this significantly reduces the page load times and reliability of signal across that method of connection.
Mobile optimisation is also the quickest route to the new generation of consumer, the digital natives, those who feel more comfortable with a smartphone than a pen and paper. This generation are often more than willing to interact with a brand and share their experiences with others within an online social environment. Today’s digital natives have to the power to build or break a reputation globally, within a matter of minutes – it is therefore extremely vital that retailers become attuned to the behaviours of these highly receptive mobile users.
With both a retailer’s existing infrastructure and focus on customer experience in mind, they face an onerous task of preparing for the upcoming influx of mobile payments. However, by taking it one step at a time and ensuring that they have ticked every box, transitioning to the mobile world should be easy and highly profitable.
