Steely Eye Digital Media

A report by IBM shows how important mobile is this year for online retailers.

The countdown to Christmas has already started but only a few smart retailers are exploiting the rise of m-commerce.

The IBM-Coremetrics “2011 UK Christmas Season Readiness” report gives us clear statements about this phenomenon: “sales via mobile devices were at 6.1% of all UK sites sales as of May 2011” and “mobile usage is clearly rising and proving a channel that no online retailer can afford to ignore“.

“If you are not building and executing a mobile game plan, some clever and enterprising competitor is going to leave you in the dust during the 2011 Christmas season.”

Nowadays every retailer has a desktop website, and many of them may have already noticed a share of their visitors browsing from mobile devices. These potential customers may be redirected to a mobile-optimised website, or just have a terrible experience and bounce away.

As the study states, “high usage during the Christmas season can be expected as harried consumers utilise their devices as shopping tools – and then share their experiences on social media while sipping a coffee at a shopping mall“. A poor mobile website experience will not bring sales. Only professionals from the mobile industry can give you the best ideas and the technical know-how to provide your clients with a compelling mobile experience (for them and for your ROI).

Another key finding from the report is that “mobile visitors are less engaged than the overall population, with fewer page views, less time on site, lower conversion and higher bounce rates“. Did you know? Well, we did. That’s why we build amazing home pages for our clients’ mobile websites, and reduce the interaction to a few easy taps.

A clear interface means more customers. It’s really as simple as that.

But success depends on continuous optimisation and measurement. When your desktop website is slow, your clients turn to your competitors. What happens to those people using their smartphone to reach your website? Are you making the most of them? Asking a mobile agency for consultancy is the right way to go if you don’t have internal skilled resources.

Finding the best mobile agency for your brand is even more important when you consider that the trend is not stopping after the holiday season: according to another m-commerce study by Verdict Research (June 2011)”mobile internet sales could double in the next 3 years, reaching £275m by 2013” .

If you’re late on the mobile channel, here’s what IBM suggests you should do:

• Learn from customers’ browsing path
• Use historical behaviour data to optimise all online marketing efforts
• Deliver highly personalised and relevant experience
• Capitalise on the mobile channel
• Optimise the site for mobile usage
• Segment and cultivate your mobile audience
• Test and measure mobile marketing tactics
• Measure applications downloads and usage
• Continuously monitor patterns

Confused already? Don’t worry, this is exactly the job for Steely Eye – mobile specialists and full service digital agency.

Steely Eye will work with you to define your mobile strategy, to meet your objectives, maximise the e-commerce opportunities for your business, and give your customers an amazing mobile experience.

The team at Steely Eye has years of technical and development experience, award-winning designers and expertise in building mobile websites, apps and m-commerce solutions.

So, are you mobile-ready for Christmas? If not, contact hello@steelyeye.net for a free consultation.