MobileWebsiteWatch

In a June press release by Cisco, the company talks about the results of its third annual e-commerce study.  The results?  Mobile commerce is charging to the forefront and is, in fact, already a large revenue driver with massive upside potential. Dick Cantwell, vice president of IBSG’s Retail / CPG Practice said of the findings

“Mobile presents a revenue opportunity for retailers and opens up a new era of multichannel retail.  Multichannel retailing has morphed into a web of shopper touchpoints across stores, catalogs, mobile devices, and the Internet. Retailers must start offering shoppers an ‘interconnected shop’ if they are to take advantage of the mobile opportunity.”

The study notes that companies that are already executing the basics of e-commerce well can gain the trust, and the repeat business, of customers who want a fast, reliable and hassle-free and seamless mobile experience. Adding a mobile channel will be a key aspect in allowing customers to execute their transactions whenever they are so inclined and wherever they may be.

What this means in practice

As retailers already well know, customer loyalty and product familiarity are key factors in driving sales.  Let’s consider a hypothetical example: a shrewd but longtime customer in the current economy will be comparing prices online and in brick and mortar stores across retailers.  Imagine a customer shopping for a kitchen table.  She looks at prices online.  Then goes to Store A to see the product up close.  She gets back into the car and drives to Store B to see if there is anything there that might be a better value or that she likes better.  While in Store B, she pulls out her mobile device and goes to the mobile web site of Store A and calls up the product information of the first table.  She decides the Store A’s table is superior, and now can complete the transaction right on the phone and either pick up the product or have it delivered.  If Store A did not have a mobile site, they would be betting that that customer would actually return to the store, or return home and order the product from the Web site.  But the time to close the sale may be lost.  When the shopper return home to the internet, she may look for another product before completing the purchase.  She may change her mind about buying a table at all.  The ability to allow the customer a transactional experience on demand is paramount.

Retailers that scored highest and made the most money online were among the 6% who offered full mobile experiences

This major revenue expanding opportunity is made evident in the study results.

Mobile access can help retailers provide a unique, satisfying e-commerce experience. Customers expect to use their mobile devices to find stores, research products, make purchases and manage their accounts. In anticipation of this market opportunity, retailers should allow customers to access retail product information anytime, from any device. In addition, with the rise of social networking, web-based multimedia, and mobile commerce, retailers can now select from a broad range of technologies to reach customers. Monitoring what innovative companies are doing in retail and in related industries will help retailers adapt best practices to their own circumstances and strategies.

Revenue is driven in multiple areas by mobile commerce channel

Let’s recall our previous scenario and consider it from a slightly different angle.  This time, our table buyer goes to her her favorite store, Store A.  She sees some tables and is close to deciding on one, but then thinks to herself, “Store B across town sells tables too, but do I want to go all the way over there, or is this one OK?”  She is not at home in front of the computer where she could check the retailers Web site and see what products they offered but she figures she still might be able to let her fingers do the walking by trying the retailer’s web site on her phone.  Store B has a mobile web site.  It loads up quickly and allows her to easily navigate to the product she is looking for.  Now our shopper sees a table she likes while standing in a competitors store.  Being the shrewd shopper she is, she is not going to buy it before seeing it in real life, so she goes to the store locator feature

on Store B’s mobile site and sees that a new location has opened up not so far away.  She drives to Store B, sees the table, likes it and buys it.

Conclusion: Simply by providing the customer access to your web site at their convenience, on the screen they look at the most, their mobile phone, traffic and and revenue in all areas: on the regular web site, on the mobile web site, and in brick and mortar locations will experience a positive lift.

The more your customer can interact with your brand, the more likely and often they are to purchase your products.

According to the 2008 Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluent Survey (formerly Monroe Mendelsohn), the affleunet not only spend more time online per week, but also lead the way in use of the mobile web.  The report found that heads of households of affluent familys (defined as making $100,000/year or more) went online 26 times a week on a computer and 17.6 times per week on the cellphone. Overall, the spend an average of almost 24 hours a week online, constrain that to only people who make $250,000 or more, and the number jumps to 27.4 hours per week.

The study also found that the same trend applies to mobile devices. “While 40 percent of affluent households use hand-held devices to access the Internet, the percentage rises to 57 percent among those in the $250,000-plus bracket from 34 percent for those at the $100,000-149,999 level.“

The implications of this for the mobile web market as a whole is that since many web producers do not provide optimized content for mobile viewers, they are missing out on a lucrative slice of the market and will have to work double time to catch up.  Furthermore, due to this lack of mobile content, companies and providers that get in the hadset of those people sooner will benefit even more as their market share multiplies as the size of the mobile web market expands to like the internet and cell phone markets did.

The survey also found that about 10 percent of the affluent make Internet purchases using their cells or mobiles.

Remember, the study defines “the affluent” as a head of household of a household making $100K/year or more. That’s about 20% of all US households!  From there the math is strightforward.

A new study released by research firm Juniper Research reveals that the market for gambling and betting via mobile internet is not only healthy, but growing faster than many other sectors when stacked up year over year.

The study, entitled “Mobile Gambling - a Good Bet for the Future” has highlighted sections on variou areas including casino style games, lotteries and sports betting.

Taking all kinds of mobile gambling service together, Juniper Research estimates that total wager in mobile gambling with total nearly $1.3bn in 2007, rising to more than $26bn in 2012. Gross wager in 2012 includes more than $3.6bn derived from the North American region and primarily in the US, where we are confident that existing legislation will be amended or replaced by 2010 at the latest, and that the increasing use of location-based application will allow state use of various gambling services.

Graph of the growth of mobile gambling market expected growth 2007-12

Like any growth market that is this explosive, getting loyal user involved right away and building a presence and market share now will have a big impact on the revenues in two years.  2012 is only 3.5 years away.  Those who implement a robust mobile web solution that allows them to take even a few points of market share today strand to see it pay off many many times over when you consider the market ballooning to $3,600,000,000+ in the US alone.

You can’t even get those odds at the tracks!

Our dedicated friends over at BerryReview.com just announced the results of their Blackberry use poll: “What Secondary Feature Do You Use Most” It should come as no surprise that, of the more than 500 users polled, mobile web browsing carried the day easily. With the Blackberry Bold on the way, the time for companies with heavy traffic from on the go business people should be considering implementing a mobile web solution more than ever.

A new study released by Juniper Research reveals that the global market for physical and digital goods purchased directly on mobile phones is growing at an alarming rate. The total value of mobile transaction is, at present, estimated to exceed $300 billion inside of 5 years. This represents an increase of more than 5 times the current volume.

Clearly, this points to some very large opportunities for companies. The study notes that by getting into the mobile game sooner rather than later, vendors can reap significant early bird rewards. Companies that can offer the features and functionality available on their websites to mobile users immediately will gain growing market share and avoid the rising barrier to entry as the market is complicated by multiple technologies and competitors that will sap loyal customers.

Some of the highlights of the paper include:

• Global annual gross transaction value will grow over 5 times by 2013

• The ticketing segment will be driven by consumer usage on rail, air and bus networks as well as sports and entertainment events This will represent over 40% of the global transaction value by 2013

Report author Howard Wilcox noted:

“Merchants in North America and Western Europe are just starting to realise the potential of a mobile web presence as a fourth channel to market. Retailers should be evaluating the benefits of the mobile web, and…they need to move quickly to exploit the opportunity presented, and ensure that they maintain ease of use for their customers who are already familiar with web shopping from their PCs.”

The full report is available on Juniper’s website for the low price of $3,440 for a single license.

In Nielsen’s recent study “Critical Mass: The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web” the numbers make it clear that mobile internet use has fully arrived in the US and its use is growing at an explosive rate. The paper is rich in statistics. Some of the highlights include:

• 254 million mobile phone subscribers in the US in May 2008.

  Mobile Web Users 2006-08

  

• Of those, 37% (95 million) pay for mobile internet access and use it at least once a month
• Of these, 40 million report using the mobile internet “actively”
• The number of US subscribers who paid for mobile Internet increased 28 percent between the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 (from 74 million to 95 million)

Ø 40% of U.S. companies with annual revenue of $50 million or more offer mobile web sites, and an additional 22% plan to do so in the next 12 months, according to “Mobile Web Sites: Designing for Mobility,” a new report from JupiterResearch.

For 200 leading websites accessed on both PCs and phones, Nielsen reports that mobile traffic provides an average 13 percent lift on total audience over home PC traffic alone. That is to say, if a website is able to attract 100 visitors over the home PC, the traffic from mobile phones can add, on average, another 13 unique visitors to the site’s total cross-platform audience.