The value of reaching purchasers on mobile can’t be overstated.
In 2015, mobile search traffic eclipsed desktop search traffic for the first time. 64% of U.S. adults own smartphones and on average spend nearly three hours per day on them. According to Latitude Research, 88% of people agree that having a mobile device with realtime information makes them more spontaneous with shopping and, in general, more open to discovering new things.
Mobile’s slice of digital commerce is growing, but given the proliferation of devices, there are still piles of money left on the table. In a past post, we suggested that apps add a voice interface to facilitate searching and browsing content on small screens. In addition to this, there are other ways companies are staking out the golden opportunities of m-commerce. It all starts with understanding the mentality of shoppers on a mobile device.
When a person decides they want to buy a product, it is the job of the vendor to make that process as easy as possible. Data from Amazon shows that every 100ms increase in load time decreases sales by 1%. When people are on-the-go or tied for time, a frictionless purchase process becomes very important.
This was the thinking that went into Nordstrom’s recent decision to let customers shop by text: “TextStyle is a way for our salespeople to provide a personalized styling experience and for customers to view and buy seamlessly with the convenience and simplicity of a text message, wherever and whenever they like.”
Similarly and famously, Amazon’s Dash was designed to offer a seamless experience that encourages spur-of-the-moment purchasing. Dash garnered strong reactions in the media–both positive and negative–but no matter what its success, its mere existence speaks to Amazon’s view of what the future of shopping holds.
And, of course, Fetch. With its backend sped up as much as 90% by MindMeld’s A.I., Fetch’s shopping assistant app is able to respond super quickly to a wide and complex array of requests. Industry experts across the web are predicting a surge of personalized shopping services like this in the years to come.
