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Is Your Lack of M-Commerce Knowledge Costing Your business?

26th Jul 2013

You probably don’t need me to tell you that the last few years have seen an explosion in the number of Smartphone and Tablet users across the UK...

In fact, numbers are growing so rapidly that in figures recently released by IMRG, transactions through mobile devices are shown to be up 136% on the same period last year. With staggering statistics such as this, you’d be foolish not to spend time and money developing a clearly focussed mobile strategy, to ensure that you excel in M-Commerce and stay one step ahead of the game. 

 So, how can you improve your chances of benefitting from the boom in mobile browsing, and create an M-Commerce site that puts you in pole position to increase your market share?  First off, it’s a great idea to set out a long term plan to get an idea of where your company wants to be and how you’re going to get there. With the untapped potential of mobile still not entirely known, making a strategic plan will help you to hit the ground running and ensure that you have clearly visible and achievable goals to work towards.

With a strategy in mind, it’s time to consider your M-Commerce site, paying particular attention to ensuring that it is designed in a way that provides an optimised experience for all users, regardless of the type of smartphone or tablet being used to access it. Until recently, most companies have operated a separate standalone mobile site, which functions independently from the main E-Commerce site and requires separate maintenance. However, it’s increasingly apparent that as the use of tablets and smartphones increases, this approach will become more and more costly and outdated. 

Fortunately for your business however, there is a solution, in the form of ‘Responsive Design’. Put simply, this means that your website is designed so that you only need to run a single version of it because it will instantly recognise the type of device being used to access it and adapt to fit to the resolution of that screen. This eliminates the additional hassle and time involved with operating a separate M-Commerce site, provides a seamless browsing experience for your customers, and most importantly, creates better value for your business. 

It’s got to be said that this approach takes time to develop and get right and will involve a full redesign and rebuild of your original website, so it’s something that you should give some careful consideration. That said, the benefits far outweigh the costs, and it’s been shown time and again that it delivers results.

Once you’ve got the basics right, you can then start exploring the other benefits that M-Commerce can bring to your business. Developing your own app can be a good way to further build loyalty and provide a personalised service for your customers. In addition to this, location based services offer great potential. They recognise the geographical location of an individual based on their phones GPS signal and send out real time special offers which can be tailored to meet their needs. These can be a great way to target customers in specific areas and will ultimately increase brand awareness and drive footfall.

If you want to have a chat with us to find out how we can help you with your M-Commerce strategy, Contact us here or give us a call on 01618708194