Once infamous for too much television consumption, Americans are now spending more time on their smartphones than watching TV.
According to digital analytics firm Flurry, “people with access to a smartphone are spending 2 hours and 57 minutes on them each day, compared to the daily average of 2 hours and 48 minutes people spend watching television.” With the spike in mobile phone use, it is no surprise for retailers and brands to see an increase in mobile commerce.
What is the surprise though, is what little percentage of conversion is actually happening via mobile. “Smartphone sales are only converting at one third the rate of traditional or tablet devices,” states Dave Chaffey from SmartInsights.
The current disconnect between increased mobile use and its low conversion rate is resulting in missed sales opportunities for retailers and brands. The low mobile conversion rates are attributed to the inability to turn smartphone browsing into a completed sales transaction (Criteo, State of Mobile Commerce, Q1 2015). So what is the hold up for mobile conversion?
The Last Mile: Transforming Commerce in Physical Stores reveals that the key reasons for the disparities between physical and digital commerce, for example, are “based in the legacy architectures, redundant data stores, and inertia of legacy POS environments, where payment processes are often embedded in the POS software itself.” Traditional e-commerce platforms were not designed for the mobile age.
The mobile commerce apps that are available now are focused on responsive design for desktop that is then shrunk into a mobile device. Legacy e-commerce platforms aren’t suited for mobile-first commerce—taking commerce from in-store to desktop to smartphone wasn’t part of the big picture future-proofing plans when implementing the commerce platforms a decade or so ago.
Completing a sales transaction on smartphones still requires the user to type in data on the small screen such as address, credit card, etc.: something people just do not want to do. It’s inconvenient, especially since most browsing is done with just a swipe of a thumb or finger. Today’s there is no ability for one-finger operations to browse AND purchase on mobile. Browsing may be easy, but buying is not as convenient as it should be… or as it can be.
Then there is the security concern. All too often you hear stories of identity theft via online shopping as well as big-name retailers being hacked, like Target in 2014. Shoppers have to worry about credit cards being breached when they shop solely in-store let alone on their desktop or phone. An mCommerce Gap study by comScore surveyed 2,400 U.S. internet users and found that “the biggest inhibitor for purchasing by smartphone is the lack of feeling secure giving payment information.”
However, modern technology is appearing to offer the solution, for instance touch ID or Apple Pay. Not only are these more convenient for the user, they are now more secure than traditional online credit card payment. For these new one-touch payment options, you only pass over an assigned token ID to the brand or retailer instead of full credit card number and personal information.
John Heggestuen from Business Insider recently wrote, “the sheer number of mobile wallets available [or in development] will drive mobile payment adoption. This will largely be the result of competitive pressure building between the companies and the bandwagon effect. Adoption will be self-reinforcing — the more consumers and retailers that use or offer mobile payments, the more the behavior will catch on among others.”
Today’s e-commerce paradigm has yet to fully embrace this mobile shift in commerce. Mobile enables a continuous brand experience, resulting in increased brand loyalty, satisfaction and purchases. Discontinuous islands of technology are not the future. A continuous, mobile omnipresence is. Don’t get stuck on the island!
