m-Commerce revolution

According to E-Commerce Times U.S. mobile commerce sales reached US$1.20 billion in 2009 and is forecast to increase to $2.4 billion in 2010.

You'd expect online retailers would be eager to embrace the m-commerce revolution. m-commerce providers huge potential for e-commerce providers to create new revenue streams for their existing e-commerce businesses by creating a beneficial shopping experience through web-enabled devices.

Yet statistics disclose that despite the huge expansion of mobile commerce or m-commerce, a staggering 62% of retailers havn't yet commenced planning their mobile strategies, whilst others are only in the embryonic phase of doing so.

This isn't a modest task given that online retailers need to consider preserving their existing customer relationships across other mediums, and carve out a strategy that takes into account their customer's buying behaviours and a satisfactory web to mobile search solution. The success of a m-commerce strategy is contingent on personalising the shopping experience and fine tuning web sites to achieve better conversion rates.

Savvy online retailers serious embarking upon a viable strategy will have to explore quick, relevant results that are able to yield outstanding mobile shopping experiences to their valued customers.

What are the key elements of a well devised m-commerce strategy?

Firstly, it is necessary for a retailer to identify relevant mobile site content and features. Delivering an online business for the mobile market necessarily involves evaluating one's existing website to see which features will be critical to customers in the mobile environment.

However it isn't just a matter of reviewing an existing website but really understanding how customers perceive and relate to the mobile shopping experience as a whole. Your m-commerce site should not just be a scaled down version of your regular website. You need to research your shoppers to investigate the manner in which they navigate in order to locate products to purchase via a mobile device. This process will enable you to ascertain what should be different between the website and mobile website environments. It's all about usability in mobile search.

The importance of search in the mobile users' browsing experience can't be underestimated. There isn't a lot of room for users to navigate from page to page or service to service due to space constraints. Slow page loading on networks means that pages means slim, lightweight solutions.

A search box is the best way for locating products and content on your site. If you don't have fast, relevant site search functionality, m-commerce will not be able to create the appropriate environment to encourage shoppers to visit shops and purchase products from their phones and other web-enabled gadgets.

Given the constraints, there are some factors to bear in mind in ensuring the site search feature on your mobile site is user friendly to shoppers. The search box needs to be positioned prominently on a mobile site, more so than on a conventional e-commerce site. Given the restrictions of space search results should be as relevant as possible, returning the most relevant results from a users' keyword search. Where users have to scroll through pages of results this just consumes time requiring additional page loads. Ideally relevant search results should be displayed on the first page of the screen.

Images should be light, small and not slow down page loads. Once again constraints of screen space mean there is no provision for voluminous produce descriptions or numerous site navigation links you might discover on normal websites.

Consumer engagement is more likely to be achieved through making a customer feel they are using an app rather than a conventional website, something which can be accomplished through good formatting of an m-commerce site.

Providing consumers with access to product reviews whilst shopping on location are an excellent way to entice a customer to make purchasing decision. Features that enable shoppers to discover local search results by keying in area codes to locate stores near then with stock inventory is seen as an important component of an m-commerce strategy. To perfect the experience retailers who want to persuade customers to make that online purchasing decision can provide a facility for them to reserve items so that they can pick items up at a later time after they have finished their shopping.

Check out this great video on the future of m-commerce: