How to Connect with the Mobile Customer

According to Retail Research, e-commerce is the fastest growing retail marketing in Europe and North America. And with mobile e-commerce, or m-commerce, steadily picking up pace over the past few years, as a retailer, you can’t afford to ignore the growing market of the mobile customer.

So in a world where our smartphones rarely leave our sides, why is it that retailers are failing to capitalise on the mobile e-commerce revolution?

Cross-channel and omnichannel marketing play an important part when delivering a successful mobile marketing strategy. Appealing to all of your buyer personas, offering a seamless experience regardless of device or channel, is certainly a tall order. And with growing competition from retailers who continue to raise the bar with faster and easier delivery and payment options, there isn’t time for your brand to stop and think about whether to invest in mobile. The simple answer is, you need to – if you don’t, you’ll struggle.

Research undertaken by the Centre for Retail Research (CRR), found that 66% of retailers said investment in mobile would help them drive growth and 88% said they believed they would get more visits in-store as a result of that investment. Therefore at Hit Search, we think it’s time you took your head out of the sand and started moulding your offering and customer experience around your mobile customers before you become so far behind the competition you struggle to catch up!

How does mobile fit into your wider strategy?

Mobile and the wider strategy

Mobile should be a primary focus for any e-commerce retailer; particularly within the fashion industry. With so many high fashion and high street retailers alike, adopting and harnessing the power of social media and mobile interaction, it’s important your fashion brand takes a leaf out of their book and becomes a creative hub for mobile customers.

Give the user confidence when shopping cross-channel

Confidence plays a large part in customer retention. As a customer, being able to research and shop across a variety of platforms and devices, helps create a seamless shopping experience.

Since 2014, browsing for products online using a smartphone or tablet device has been the default process for 33% of shoppers, even if they then purchase from a desktop, or from your physical store.

Make it easier for customers to purchase cross-channel by…

– Giving them the option to create an account, so they can effectively pick up where they left off, regardless of device.
– Offering the customer the chance to email their basket home. This way they can easily purchase whenever they have the time, or perhaps they want to talk through their purchase with a friend/family member before purchasing.
– Making your items easily searchable cross-device. If you can find an item easily on desktop but not on your mobile site, this will cause frustration amongst your audience.

Why build your strategy mobile-first?

A mobile-first strategy should be adopted cross-channel. The graph below clearly highlights the need for an integrated mobile/in-store experience. You shouldn’t be just limiting your mobile strategy to people who shop through their mobile devices. Your mobile users might research on mobile but purchase on desktop, or even in-store. With 43.3% of the total smartphone audience surveyed using their phones in a retail store; this could be an opportunity your brand could capitalise on.

Whether it’s the use of in-store Wi-Fi to push messages to your audience with timely offers, to QR codes strategically placed around your store to highlight special offers. Whatever your idea is for connecting your smartphone audience with your store, this creative brainstorming process should perhaps become one of your brand’s priorities.

Getting started with mobile conversion rate optimisation

1. Test, test and test some more! It’s important to remember that conversion optimisation is a cyclical process; you should always aim to better your user’s experience on mobile.

2. Get rid of distractions along with buyer’s journey. Making the checkout process as clean and as simple as possible is crucial for making the mobile user’s journey a pleasant one, whilst simultaneously increasing your chances of converting the customer.

3. Make your goal for the mobile user clear on each of your web pages. Creative and eye-catching call-to-actions will help bring attention to the actions you want to nudge your users into completing.

4. Have easily translatable icons between desktop and mobile. For example, the globally recognised icon for ‘checkout’ is usually the basket icon. Make sure your icons are large enough for the user to click on with their thumb, too!

source – http://bit.ly/2pN7DM3