By Igor Faletski Add comments

Organic Search as a Mobile Commerce Driver

May 162010

Mobile marketing has always been a wild mix of technologies – from SMS, MMS and Bluetooth to branded iPhone apps. Choosing a tactic is often done based on a hunch, rather than hard data; ROI discussions are frequently limited to “X AppStore downloads” or “Y messages sent”. But, in a market where “brand awareness” is one of the major objectives, this seems to work year after year.

Enter mobile commerce, where metrics play a far greater role. The space is heating up – there is a lot of creative experiments going on (look at the variety of commerce-enabled iPad apps in the Nielsen usability study alone!). Consumers are getting more comfortable with buying from a mobile device (thanks to the many appstores), which was confirmed by Google reps at the recent EMetrics. Mobile checkouts themselves are more vibrant and faster than ever before. Suddenly there is a lot of very different technologies competing for the m-commerce crown.

First of all, there are iPhone/iPad apps that have purchasing functionality integrated through an advanced API – Gilt and Amazon are good examples of that. The buying process is smooth but native UI implementation is quite expensive and faces fragmentation issues just like other apps. Existing e-commerce platforms like Magento are adding mobile themes & plugins to their default packages. Mobile adaptation platforms like those of UsableNet, Digby or our own Mobify Enterprise take an existing checkout flow mobile; mobile-only commerce solutions are also starting to appear. As an online retailer, what should you pick?

The answer is in the ROI. Online retailers report that conversion rates for mobile users using web checkouts are 70-80% lower than on desktop. Mobile users are already arriving in droves – through organic and paid search, affiliate marketing portals, email newsletters and so forth. Making existing online stores mobile-friendly (without breaking the URLs) is the easiest way to enter the mobile space – with an ROI that’s guaranteed to increase over time. 300-500% conversion lift on mobile is there for anybody willing to invest in optimizing their web checkout for a small screen.

Whether it’s a mobile stylesheet, Magento or Mobify, mobile web remains the logical first step to a complete mobile commerce strategy.

  • http://www.ncix.com Dennis

    Browsing the WEB on your mobile is the latest and hippiest thing, out there today. What it means for an online merchant is that a hit from a mobile device is far more important than a regular web hit. Why? Well simply because the demographic using the mobile web is far more affluent than your regular computer user, just think of how much an iPhone costs. Also mobile WEB users are generally from a younger generation, which makes them more likely to engage in online shopping/transactions. The conclusion is that an aggressive mobile web strategy for your buisness will be far more profitable than anything else out there!

  • http://www.luddite2linked.com Ken Thompson

    The mobile web coupled with geolocation functionality is going to be critical to small locally owned businesses.