Today Juniper Research issued an important new white paper stating that the number of consumers purchasing physical goods remotely via their mobile handsets is expected to increase by nearly 50% over the next two years.
The report goes on to state that numbers will go up to to 580 million purchasers by the end of 2014, up from 393 million this year, further stating that this is due to greater consumer confidence in the mobile device as both a browsing and payment tool. It also shows the increasing importance of mobile as an eCommerce channel, with a large up-shift in mobile as a proportion of online transactions.
The report also states that the average size of mobile purchases would continue to rise, driven by larger volumes of regular, high-value transactions.
Are businesses ready to capitalize on these trends?
According to Juniper Research in the same report, the growth in this area will be constrained by the fact that a majority of retailer sites are not properly optimized for mobile browsing or purchasing. According to Dr. Windsor Holden, “Consumers increasingly expect to be able to buy their products and services via their smartphones and tablets. Companies which do not offer this option face falling behind their competitors.”
There is clearly enormous opportunities for businesses that are willing to maximize there exposure to the market place with properly built mobile applications for both the iPhone and Android platforms as well as mobile web friendly web sites.
Other key numbers
Some of the other numbers that are mentioned in the report are simply staggering. The total annual transaction values from remotely purchased digital and physical goods will hit $730 billion within five years. And we are seeing a fast moving trend of eCommerce moving to smartphones and tablets where the average tablet transaction size already exceed those of desktop and laptop computers. Clearly the purchasing isn’t just a migration, but rather consumers are increasing in their level of confidence for purchasing remotely overall.
If you don’t have mobile applications or at a minimum a mobile friendly web site for your business, now it clearly the time to do so.
If you would like to read all the details in Juniper Research’s fascinating new report, you can download it here.
While no company wants to be know for selling products that are functional and unattractive, we are seeing strong evidence that aesthetics don’t affect a mobile app or web site’s perceived usability. But conversely, poor usability will negatively affect the application’s perceived allure.
In a recent study conducted by Google, they stated:
“The results showed that the beauty of the interface did not affect how users perceived the usability of the shops: Participants (or Users) were capable of distinguishing if a product was usable or not, no matter how nice it looked. However, the experiment showed that the usability of the shops influenced how users rated the products’ beauty. Participants using shops with bad usability rated the shops as less beautiful after using the shops. We showed that poor usability lead to frustration, which put the users in a bad mood and made them rate the product as less beautiful than before interacting with the shop.”
Often we see businesses acting counter to this with by placing aesthetics far ahead of usability. As they design, they often do everything to stand apart from other applications and focus too much on the surface level design factors while ignoring real usability issues that would help increase user satisfaction and repeat usage.
To counter this, we suggest users pursue design paths for mobile and web applications using aesthetic attributes such as “clean”, “tight” and “organized”. Applications generally gain traction from the ground up and add more users as positive word of mouth spreads, which means reputation is everything. The study suggests poor usability will lead to less than favorable word-of-mouth will good usability while help you see the growth you desire for your applications.
More and more businesses are building mobile applications and web sites to promote their businesses. But building an effective mobile application is more difficult than just pushing out your web content and shopping experience via a smartphone application. The differences start with the obvious, like the smaller form factor, but it doesn’t end there. There are other issues regarding consumer behavior and expectations that must be considered and addressed to get the most from your mobile application development project.
Mobile applications are currently a critical area that must be addressed by any business or organization that desires to stay relevant with their audience. Smartphone sales in 2012 are expected to be nearly 1.8 billion units and it is for this reason alone, it is important to strive to build an effective mobile application experience for your audience. But beyond just the numbers, mobile application development is a tremendous opportunity for your business.
With mobile applications and mobile commerce you can now go where your customers are rather than waiting for them to come to you. Mobile commerce truly enables customers to purchase products and services anytime and anywhere.
If you are like most people you have experienced the less than satisfactory user experience while accessing web content on a mobile device. Usually this is in the form of having to zoom and scroll left and right and up and down to fully view a page or image or even text. Clearly if you want to create an effective engagement with your audience, you will need to create build pages or applications perfectly optimized for the screen size of each device so users don’t need to zoom and scroll.
When preparing to create a mobile commerce experience, it’s important to keep in mind that mobile web sites and applications lend themselves to less complicated user experiences given the smaller form factor of the experience.
User expectations gravitate towards simple, easy-to-navigate user experiences. And it is simple to see why – the consumer is on the go, often busy or in the middle of a discussion and usually with a more limited keyboard experience. They obviously will want simplified user experience that can be completed quickly. Marketers should reduce the number of steps that users need to take to the essentials and present this in an easy to use format.
But mobile experiences are not just about limitations, there are several exciting opportunities created by the mobile environment. Geo-location is a powerful feature in improving user experiences. Merchants and advertisers are using geo-location to improve shopping experiences. Brands thinking about mobile should definitely include geo-targeting in their mobile user experiences if possible.Through this functionality merchants can provide value added information such as locations of the closest stores and even targeted merchandising based on local or regional preferences.
Mobile applications and web sites present exciting opportunities for manufacturers, retailers and marketers. Smartphone and tablet sales are just too big to ignore. But, you need to pay attention to both the limitations on the one hand and the expanded opportunities on the other to create an effective experience for your audience.