MartMobi official blog

E-commerce is one of the fastest if not the fastest growing industries in the world. Before SaaS businesses announced themselves onto the bigstage, starting an e-commerce business involved a tedious amount of work and energy. It’s not like you can start selling as soon as you want now, but it isn’t that hard as it used to be few years ago.

A successful e-commerce business is a result of the right choices and decisions. When you want to start an e-commerce business, the first decision which is probably one of the most important one will decide how you move forward with your business, that’s right, choosing the right e-commerce platform for your business. So how do you know which one is right for you? The internet is riddled with choices to spoil you, but not all platforms are right for your business. Let’s take a look at the different factors that can weigh into the decision when choosing an e-commerce platform

What are you selling?

What are you selling at your business plays a huge role in helping you decide if the e-commerce platform you are evaluating can handle it or not. Some e-commerce platforms are built to handle physical, some digital, and some both. Also the number of products you are planning to sell also decides the platform. So you need to decide on your products first – Digital, Physical, Options per product (colors, size, custom options), Offline selling and so on. Some platforms also have limitations on alcoholic and adult products, so a thorough research in understanding your product will definitely help you in reducing your search space.

How do you want your e-commerce website hosted?

Hosting is the next important decision to make. Normally there are two different options to host your e-commerce website – Host it on your own or pick a platform who does the hosting for you. If you host it yourself, you have to take care of maintenance and security. Also, you have to worry about keeping the platform up-to date and functional all the time, but you will remain in control of all your data and can move to a different hosting service whenever you want. But with cloud making its impact, many platforms offer its customers its own hosting, taking care of every need of their customer- security, features, hosting speed, and also making sure that the platforms stay updated all the time.

Is it SEO friendly?

E-commerce is all about discoverability. Most of the online visitors search through different search engines for specific products or product descriptions to find the right product. With 44% of every online purchase begins with an online search, making sure that your products found easily on search engines take higher priority than any marketing campaign. Here’s a great article on what you should look for in an e-commerce platform for SEO.

http://ecommerce-platforms.com/compare/best-ecommerce-platform-seo

Features

E-commerce platforms need to impress online visitors with its functionality. Anyone can provide a simple e-commerce platform for businesses. What’s more important is, does the e-commerce platform, offer something unique that could make your business? Because, at the end of the day you are competing with other businesses for sales and visitors with similar products. To stand out you have to offer great service and features to your customers to make them come back to you again and again. Many e-commerce businesses also integrate with different services via plugins and integrations. This allows you to choose the features that you or your customer will enjoy and provide a seamless shopping experience.

Mobile friendly or Mobile-first?

This is the most important question that needs to be answered by any new business. Do they want to be mobile-friendly or mobile-first? Before answering, let’s look at what they both mean. Mobile-friendly normally means that your website is built for desktop visitors, but also works for mobile users. The website is optimized for mobile devices, allowing your customers to buy on the go. Mobile-first generally means that your e-commerce website is built keeping in mind mobile devices and its features. Mobile devices take precedence over the desktop website in terms of updates, features and sometimes even offers to attract more number of visitors.

Conclusion

With over 50% of the sales coming from mobile devices (the number is set to reach 70% by 2018) even with relatively less mobile penetration compared to desktops, you can understand the importance of mobile devices on e-commerce. So looking at the current growth of mobile commerce, mobile-friendly is not an option anymore. Every business who aims to be on the top needs to mobile-first and an e-commerce platform that lets them achieve this is the perfect match to their business.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

M-commerce (a.k.a. mobile commerce) is rapidly overtaking e-commerce as the de facto mode for online transactions. With over 45% of total traffic coming from mobile devices, 33.7% from smartphones, there is little doubt that by the end of 2015 transactions from mobile devices will far eclipse those from desktops. Amazon, the leading e-commerce company has more mobile-only users than Facebook in the U.S.These users visit only on mobile and never see the desktop version of the site. Gartner predicts that the total sales coming from mobile will double by 2017 tantamounting to $98 Billion. With such mind-boggling percentages in favor of mobile, e-commerce merchants are left with no choice but to embrace mobile.

Why is this happening?

With more and more people now own smartphones and tablets and connect to the Internet using these devices. According to Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends report, smartphone usage has consistently grown over the past few years, so much so that 30% of mobile users are smartphone users. The factors driving consumers in these regions towards mobile rather than desktop are:

Speed: Purchasing through mobile devices is becoming quicker and easier every day. It offers instant gratification for customers and allows businesses to generate urgency and drive sales through the use of very short-term discounts.

Affordability: With Android taking over India, even the low-income bracket is able to afford a smartphone, which is then used as an internet device. According to IAMAI, 65% of internet users are e-commerce customers. 

Access: With mobile devices, people now have unprecedented access to buying the products they want without having to go to a physical store. Even if the products are not available locally, shopping online made it possible to buy products across geographical boundaries. 

Convenience: Mobiles allows customers to pay for the products they want in real time which is convenient for both sellers and buyers. Customers can browse and buy from anywhere at any time. There are no trips to banks or ATMs required and many mobile payment solutions don’t even require lengthy credit card data entry. 

For these reasons, mobile commerce can no longer be ignored, and why business and e-commerce venture(s) should be mobile-ready for their customers. These days, not having at least a mobile-optimized site for your business is like closing your store one day each week.

What does “adopting mobile” mean?

Adopting mobile means to be able to serve mobile shoppers well. Mobile shoppers are very demanding and impatient. 57% users won’t recommend and 40% users will turn to a competitor if they have a bad shopping experience on mobile. They will not wait more than 4 seconds for a page to load, and the conversion rate goes down by 7% for every second delay in page load time. What these statistics mean, is that mobile shoppers are very hard to please – and the efforts made to please them constitute “adopting mobile”. Here are a few ways in which merchants can adopt mobile.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

It’s a fun time to be in the e-commerce business. Online retail is one of the fastest growing sectors across the world and the rapid growth doesn’t look to slow down anytime soon, mobile commerce is going to make sure of that. Mobile shopping apps are the real star of 2014. Shopping apps use grew faster than any other app category, according to flurry. Sessions in shopping apps on both iOS and Android increased by a whopping 174%. This tells us just how big of a role mobile commerce played this year in the growth of ecommerce as a whole. Mobile has become a formidable channel in the ecommerce sector with a year-on-year growth rate of 47% in mid-2014 compared with just 10% growth seen in PC commerce.

In 2015, retailers need to bring their A game. Customers are more demanding than they ever were and if they don’t get what they will go somewhere else to buy the products they want (there is literally no shortage of online retailers). Today’s customers are more knowledgeable about products they want and at what price, reviews on the product, availability, shipping costs and how fast can they get it. Well, you can say that customers are becoming more like your 5 year old in demanding products (I want a pair of shoes now!). So what are the important trends that are emerging this year that will play an important role? Let’s look at some.

1. Mobile, Tablet and Mobile: 

A year ago, mobile was primarily a device to help researchproducts. Purchasing on mobile was not very common, but not anymore. Mobilesaccount for more than 40%of the total transactions and by the end of 2015, the number is set toreach 50%. Customers are feeling increasingly comfortable about buying theirfavorite products from their mobile. But there is still a deal breaker. Morethan 95% of the ecommerce websites are still not optimized for mobile and tablet devices and this could potentially derail a purchase before it even happened. So if any merchant wants to make sure that their customers can access their website wherever they are, then it is for the best that he optimizes his online store for mobiles and tablets with a mobile website or a dedicated app or better, both. Want to know how much you can make by going mobile? Calculate it yourself here.

2. Mobile Show-rooming: 

Show-rooming is the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick and mortar retail store or other offline setting, and then buying it online, sometimes at a lower price. As much as 50% of the customers use their smartphones to compare prices in the store and the practice is here to stay in 2015. Electronics items are among those frequently (as much as 80% of the time) searched by customers in a retail store prior to their online purchases. So if your app or mobile website is not offering them the information they want that could convince them to make a purchase, you could lose a potential customer.

3. Omni-channel Journey: 

Omnichannel retail is the evolution of multi-channel retail and it is growing popular among customers. Shoppers today have different channels to research, pick and buy products from. Traditional brick-and-mortar stores no longer have to rely on websites like Amazon or Ebay to sell online, SaaS ecommerce platforms like Shopify made sure of that by allowing merchants build their own online store quite easily. Customer journey is far from linear - it goes back and forth, online to offline and back, mobile and desktop. Retailers must look at strategies that are omnichannel than just multi-channel, meet customers’ expectations, needs that encompass where, how and when. For example, retailers who have both online and offline presence can offer free shipping/ pickup at the store which can gain more foot traffic.

4. Social Commerce:

Now this is something that needs no introduction to merchants or customers. Social commerce plays a very important role in deciding the purchase of products. U.S. social commerce sales are expected to reach $14 billion by 2015 and the potential is still virtually untapped. User generated content plays a vital role in the decision making process (good or bad). Customers share their reviews, lodge complaints, opinions on the products, share their favorite products, make or ask recommendations using different social medial channels, blogs and forums. Merchants have now to be active across different channels always and be available to help customers in any issue they might have. Now, more than ever, social engagement is the key, and the most importantly the merchant should remember that the customer is always, always right!

5. Logistical Challenges: 

Logistics play a very important role in ecommerce. People want their orders faster and at a little cost (Even Great, if the shipping is free!). Same day delivery and in-store pickups will become more relevant. With in-store pickups, shoppers will enjoy the joys of both online and offline shopping at once. Managing inventory has become more challenging, especially with products that are in great demand- You don’t want to disappoint even one customer with a wrong order or with a cancellation. You can fulfill a thousand orders, but all can go down fast if one delivery goes wrong. Merchants should always be on their toes and be ready to tackle any problems that might arise regarding logistics. ‘Wow the customer or give up’ must be your motto.

6. Shopping Holidays:  

A few years ago, discounts on products were only fixed to Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday days which come once in a year. Today, shopping holidays are not just limited to these three days. To acquire more customers, online retailers are offering discounts and deals that shoppers can’t resist. Also the shopping holidays are longer than they ever were- in 2014, retailers started offering deals and offers on products 2 weeks before the holiday season even started.

The biggest strength any merchant should have in 2015 is adaptation. Retailers should be flexible enough to adjust to your customers’ demands and should have the courage to bet on something that is totally new (shoppers like something refreshing. Hit the right note and the music will be beautiful). Mobile will be at the center of everything, so make sure that your store is mobile ready. Enjoy a great year of selling and setting new sales records for your store.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

Had a so-so holiday season? Don’t fret because Valentine’s Day is right around thecorner. This global celebration of love transpires into one of the biggestshopping seasons around the world and rakes in more moolah than Halloween, St.Patrick’s Day and the Super Bowl put together. Needless to say, merchants focused on gift-giving catalogs are making a mad rush to be ready for this shopping spike.

According to Business Insider, 53% of women would dump their boyfriends if they don’t get a gift on Valentine’s Day. More than 9 million pet owners will buy gifts for their pets. 11% of America will get engaged and the highest number of at-home pregnancy tests will be sold a month later. Jewelry, flowers, candy and condoms will see their highest sales this time of the year as well. All this means that consumer spending will be really high across several categories this February 14th.

In 2013 alone, Valentine’s Day generated about $20 billion of sales across the United States and is set to cross that figure by a huge margin in 2015. Popular categories include flowers, chocolates, jewelry, clothing and accessories, novelty & hobbies, electronics, adult & lingerie, travel, wedding, home décor, animal, books, music and health. The clear winners amongst these product categories are flowers, candy and jewelry, so online merchants selling such items need to be well-prepared for this day celebrated by more than half of America.

On this day, when a third of America types a romantic message on their mobile, more than 40% of the gifts will be purchased on mobile. Online merchants need to brace themselves for the huge traffic that is expected from mobile devices and provide a compelling mobile experience that converts traffic into sales. According to MartMobi, a leading mobile commerce platform, there are several fixes merchants need to make to be mobile-ready – the most important ones being loading fast, looking good and having a smooth checkout flow.

“To many merchants who sell products in romantic categories, this is going to be the biggest time of the year – probably even bigger than the recent holiday season. So they need to pull out all the stops to serve their customers, particularly mobile shoppers,” says Satya Ganni, CEO of MartMobi, a platform that generates mobile commerce apps and sites instantly.

With Valentine’s Day less than a month away, now is a good time for florists, candy sellers, jewelers and merchants in neighborhood categories such as health, hobbies and fashion to start thinking about discoverability and conversions. Here are 5 things that merchants can do to maximize their Valentine’s Day sales:

SEO: Online merchants need to build their SEO profile so they are discovered when a user searches for “nearby florist” or “Valentine’s Day jewelry”.

Sharing: Shoppers should be allowed to easily share their favorite items on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to increase the likelihood of referral traffic.

Recommendations: For shoppers who visit their site, merchants need to make recommendations on the landing and product pages for similar or related products. This usually results in higher average order value.

Infrastructure: Shoppers are impatient and demanding. Mobile shoppers do not wait more than 4 seconds for a page to load. Merchants should make sure their site loads quickly.

Push: Merchants with apps should start sending out push notifications about special offers, early bird discounts and new inventory that might be of interest in the context of Valentine’s Day.

As early reports start to trickle in about the 2014 holiday season, retailers are waiting with bated breath to see how they fared compared to other offline and online merchants. These reports will probably also signal the way 2015 is going to shape up. While retailers will soon be caught up in a mire of statistics, metrics and benchmarks, one question that is looming large in their minds already is “Which channels worked best this holiday season”.

Amazon announced that nearly 60% of their customers shopped from a mobile device this holiday season. Wait, what?! Yes, Amazon sold more stuff on mobile than it did on desktops, making this the biggest headline yet in 2015. And their app made a killing too, doubling their sales from 2013.

There is more. As the holidays got closer (and the shoppers got more nervous), the number of mobile shoppers accelerated further. Particularly, Cyber Monday and Black Friday peaked for mobile shopping. This is unsurprising, considering that last minute purchases are made in a hurry on the go.

Mobile was expected to represent one-eighth of e-commerce spending this holiday season, which is a big number to begin with. So retailers are understandably stunned to see Amazon’s holiday stats.

Does Mobile work only for the Big Guys?

We decided to break these numbers down further. After all, Amazon by itself represents about 25% of America’s e-commerce market. And the top 10 retailers represent about half of it. So extrapolating their numbers for the rest of the ecommerce industry might be statistically incorrect. MartMobi, a mobile commerce platform that serves small and medium sized online merchants gave us some statistics that showed mobile was equally (if not more) effective for these merchants.

Merchants got about 61% of their traffic from mobile devices and engagement was nearly 87% higher. The most surprising statistics, however, were the conversion rates and the average order values. Mobile has traditionally been known to lag behind desktop on these metrics. However, merchants saw both these metrics on par between desktop and mobile this holiday season. Add to that the mobile attribution of several desktop sales and clearly mobile was the biggest driver of online shopping this holiday season.

Effectus Clothing is a street wear brand from New York which adopted mobile ahead of the holiday season. Its CEO, Brian Danesi says “We were forced to get mobile-friendly by our customers, because that is where they shop. I am glad we did it before the holiday season because that gave us a huge boost this Christmas.”

Other merchants will soon have to follow Brian and serve their mobile shopping customers if they want to exploit the full potential of e-commerce.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

The wishlist feature is a simple yet powerful tool that allows customers to create a list of items that they “wish for”. They won’t necessarily buy all the products in the wishlist, but they certainly have a much higher likelihood of buying some of them. Wishlists also help retailers understand trends in customer interest so they can build future campaigns and stock inventory based on this data.

How wishlists help shoppers

1. Window shopping: The wishlist feature works for your e-commerce site in several ways – it allows visitors to window-shop with consequence – increasing the likelihood of conversion to a sale at a later point in time if the wishlist is used effectively by the merchant.

2. Return Visits: Research published by University of Glasgow shows that 74 percent of online shoppers in fact use shopping carts as an online wishlist. Wishlists can circumvent this behavior and directly store items for customers so that when they return they can easily find these sought after products again. By allowing returning customers to find their shortlisted items in one place saves customers a lot of time.

3. Future Purchases: Finding the right gift for someone is not easy. So when you do find it, you would want to latch on to it immediately. So if the customers’ credit card bill for the month is too high, or your timing for giving the gift isn’t right, they will be able to save the item to their wishlist and then come back some time later to buy the item.

4. Public Wishlist & Gift Registry: Wishlists can be private or public. With a public wishlist there is the opportunity for getting gifts. Much like in a registry. Customers can share their wishlist with their friends and family and get things they want rather than random gifts.

5. Narrowing down to the Right Product: The market is flooded with similar goods that serve the same purpose. Customers often use wishlists to shortlist all the products that they are interested in within a category and then research this wishlist further before finding one that they would like to buy.

These are just a few use cases of wishlists for mobile shoppers. Customers continue to surprise merchants with innovative ways of using wishlists, always resulting in an increase in conversions. Wishlists offer customers flexibility from searching products to buying them. E-tailers need to work hard to build a relationship with their customers and the wishlist is one way of building it in a robust and long lasting fashion. Want to know how retailers can take advantage of wishlist data effectively? Read our whitepaper on Wishlists.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

2014 has been an amazing year for MartMobi. We have grown rapidly over the past year in team size, customer base and product maturity. As we look at the year gone by, here are some memorable and useful milestones.

Awards & Recognitions:

• Techstars: We were the first Asian company that made it to Techstars Chicago. It was a proud moment and a learning experience, which we got through with flying colors. • NASSCOM Emerge 50: We were recognized as one of India’s Most Innovative emerging software product companies by NASSCOM, the IT industry body. • AsianAge: We were listed as among the top 5 startups in Hyderabad.

Product Innovation

• Launched our previewer App for Android and iOS – any merchant can visualize his mobile store via the Mobile app in just a few minutes. • Partnered with 3dcart, Volusion, Yahoo Stores, Shopify, Bigcommerce and have built integrations with app store listings on these platforms. • Built a completely new framework to launch and support worldclass mobile sites and native apps on Android & iOS. • Launched a self-serve platform for to support merchants on SaaS shopping carts. • Reduced the on deployment time from 36 to 24 hours.

Team

We are working tirelessly to push the boundaries of Mobile eCommerce and help our merchants make more from their fast growing mobile traffic. To make this happen, we have grown as well. From a team of 4 to 14 awesome folks, we are seriously committed to build a world class engineering, marketing and customer success team.

Customer Success

We saved the most exciting news for the last. Online merchants from more than 22 countries trust us to power their mobile site and apps. We have significantly increased their conversion rate and their sales with our cutting edge platform. This is the single metric of success for us at MartMobi. We are happy to share some great success stories.

2015 plans

We are on a mission to build the best mobile eCommerce platform the world has ever seen. We are also working on some secret (mindblowing) things and are gearing up for a major product announcement in Q1 2015. Lots more in store for 2015! Thanks again for choosing MartMobi .

Customer reviews are the key to selling more online. While ecommerce merchants have their own vanilla reviews, more trusted are reviews by users who have purchased the product and experienced it (a) first-hand and (b) for a while. User reviews answer important questions such as “Will this laptop start heating up after six months?” or “Does this dress shrink when I wash it?” These are questions that can only be answered by users and not by merchant reviews which are based on a one-time usage.

User Reviews Help Purchase Decisions

According to Nielsen, 84 percent of consumers are more likely to trust word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than branded advertising campaigns. While the importance of reviews varies by category, they play a role in all categories, from electronics to fashion, groceries to books. Reviews allow purchasers to make decisions in three broad areas:

1. Is this the right product for me?

2. What alternatives should I consider before finalizing the product to buy?

3. Is the merchant reliable in terms of delivery time, originality of product, returns, etc.?

User Reviews Help Your Sales

Around 70% of online shoppers in the US say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. Product descriptions (by the merchant) don’t give accurate information on the product – rather they feel like glorified sales pitches. By integrating user reviews, merchants give vital first-hand social proof that consumers need from other users and buyers. Often, customer reviews have the final say in the consumer’s purchase decision.

63% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.

The beauty of customer reviews is that they can be both positive and negative. This builds a realistic and wholesome picture of the product. Do NOT delete negative reviews because showing only positive reviews will NOT help your sales. Reviews can help your business by:

1. Building Trust: When customers see uncensored reviews on your site, it builds trust and develops long lasting relationships with them. This will also help them contribute to your reviews which will further the cycle of trust building, purchase and reviews.

2. Sales: Shoppers are often stuck in the process of decision making. This could be due to concerns about the product, the price, the alternative options or the merchant itself. Customer reviews help them come to a decision quickly and make the purchase rather than put it on the backburner. This reduces abandoned carts (which are a hefty 74% of all shopping carts). Reports show that stores with customer reviews see a remarkable increase in their sales.

3. User Generated SEO: Adding customer product reviews not only helps in convincing customers, but also provides tremendous SEO benefits. With new and unique content added to the page through different customer reviews, your page will rank higher for your organic keywords. Also, users tend to use words which are similar to search queries, so you will have better matches and higher rankings for converting key phrases.

4. Word of mouth: Integrating social media to your reviews allows customers to share their reviews on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other social media. This gives your store social media coverage and a wider reach.

The biggest challenge in building a review system is to get your customers to review their purchased products. You can do this by sending them an automated email (be sure it is friendly!) a day or two after the product is delivered, requesting for a review. You could also innovate further and send them review requests at different points in the product life cycle (after six months for a camera or after a week for a dress). You can also offer incentives to reviewers – incentives go a long way in encouraging customers to take the time out and write reviews. Reviews are powerful decision making tools and can help boost your sales tremendously.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

With an increasing number of mobile users and increasing competition in online retail, stores need effective ways to cut through the clutter of unwanted messages and get their customers to come back to their online store for repeat purchases. Consumers are bombarded with promotional emails and SMS messages every day, so ecommerce merchants need a more reliable and standout mechanism to reach out to their customers. Push Notifications.

Push Notifications: The Basics

Mobile apps are a pivotal channel for mobile commerce marketing. Through apps you can deliver rich content to your customers and develop a personal relationship with them. Further, push notifications are a means to get your mobile customers to engage with your brand even if they are not logged into the app with relevant and timely messages.

Push notifications allow etailers to send instant messages to customers about new arrivals, stock availability (of wishlist products), and special offers directly to his smartphone or tablet. These messages pop up on the screen of the smartphone or tablet regardless of whether the user is engaged with the connected app. This also works if the mobile device is in sleep or silent mode.

When a push message is received and the customer touches it, it opens up the app (can be programmed to open a specific section of the app as well). The one criterion for merchants to be able to send push notifications, is that the user must have downloaded the Android or iOS app to his device. According to Flurry Analytics, apps continue to dominate the mobile web in terms of engagement and repeat purchases. Time spent on apps has increased from 80% to 86% while conversely time spent on the mobile web has decreased from 20% to 14%. So with the increase in app usage, push notifications play an even more important role to increase engagement and conversion rates.

Push Notifications: Effectiveness

Push notifications are very effective in reaching out to customers. Reports suggest that 52% of people opt-in to push messages. Users who enable push messages are highly engaged. Here are some stats,

1. 88% higher engagement on average for push-enabled users.

2. E-commerce apps exhibit the highest push engagement lift at 278%.

3. Targeted Push Messages result in increasing the conversion rate by 3x.

4. Marketers who segment their push messages saw their open rate doubled.

5. 70% or more consumers found push notifications to be valuable.

Push Notifications: Sales Impact

1. Getting Users Back: Customer retention is very important for any ecommerce store. With push notifications you can send consumers who haven’t used your app recently or used it only a couple of times when installed by sending them suitable reminder messages that tempt them back or make them want to be a part of the mobile interaction.

2. Offers & Deals: Every customer is looking for a good deal. With push notifications, you can now send a targeted notification to relevant customers. With targeted and optimized analytics based on user behavior, you can find all customers who are likely to buy the product and send the notification. This also helps in keeping the push notifications to a minimum, optimized for each visitor.

3. Helpful Content: You can send users personalized notifications with helpful content that could be useful for them. For instance, you can send users a notification which allows them to browse products based on his last purchase (link to a page with headphones, phone covers a few days after he bought a mobile phone from your store). You can also push notifications to your customers whenever there is a new collection or a product is released in your store. Used properly, push notifications can be much more effective than a traditional ad.

4. Cart Abandonment: You can also remind customers with push notifications to complete their purchase if they had left a purchase at checkout with the items in their cart. 70% of all carts are abandoned, and almost 2/3rd of them have been proven to be recovered. So this is a treasure trove waiting to be exploited. Targeted offers such as free shipping, or discounts on related products are also incentive to recover the cart. You can place the shopper directly at the checkout and remove any purchase friction that they may face. Also your brand can be elevated beyond the customers’ overcrowded email inbox.

Like all advertising, push messages need to be created from the customer’s viewpoint. The more targeted the segment, the better the results. This targeting can be done based on user behavior, context such as location or device, or transaction history.

Conclusion

Push notification is a powerful tool that needs to be handled carefully. This is a healthy and actionable alternative to traditional means such as email and display retargeting. Consumers today are familiar with push notifications and opt into this promotional channel. However, the merchant needs to ensure three things: Relevance, Timeliness and Personalization.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

Shopify merchants can now go mobile in no time and almost no cost.

MartMobi has partnered with Shopify to bring compelling mobile experiences to its merchants. With this pre-built integration, merchants can acquire an immediate presence on smartphones and tablets. The MartMobi platform provides both mobile sites and native Android and iOS apps.

"As mobile traffic continues to grow, going mobile is the next logical step for us to have a direct channel to engage with our customers who now shop on the move,” says Raghunadhan Saraf of InSaraf, a highly successful online furniture store.

Mobile commerce is booming in India. More than 5 million internet users are added every month, and all of them are on mobile. In fact, more than half of all Indian internet users are on mobile. Industry analysts expect more than 70% of online sales to happen on mobile in the near future.

Ajay Kulkarni, the marketing head of OnlineTemple where customers can purchase prasad online says, “For businesses to be successful in e-commerce, they need to have a strong mobile presence. 40% of our business is driven by mobile and the balance is only going to shift further towards mobile. MartMobi's mobile optimized website and native apps have given us a tremendous push in that direction.”

Hundreds of Shopify merchants across the world use MartMobi to enhance their mobile offering and to dramatically increase their sales. MartMobi cuts down development time of mobile sites and apps from 16 weeks to less than one week. It also brings down the cost from lakhs of rupees to Rs. 1,800 per month. Several successful Indian Shopify merchants such as Postergully and madinindia are already benefitting from the MartMobi platform.

“We are excited that MartMobi is working with Shopify to help Indian merchants seamlessly transition to mobile at an appropriate price point," said Vargab Bakshi, Partner Manager for Shopify India.

About Shopify

Shopify is a powerful ecommerce website solution that allows retailers to sell online by providing everything they need to create an online store. It lets them organize their products, customize their storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks of the mouse. Shopify also allows online retailers extended the functionality of their online store by integrating their favorite small business software tools from the Shopify App Store.

About MartMobi

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile in less than a day, through both mobile sites and native apps. Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

With most of the consumers on the go daily, the growth of the mobile web and increasing smartphone penetration has been a big boon to ecommerce stores. Shoppers can now research, explore and shop from anywhere and anytime they want. But with increasing competition, it is very important for any store to get shoppers to come back to their stores for repeated purchases.

How can this be achieved?

The answer to this problem is Email Marketing and Mobile Optimized Websites. Email is one of the most if not the most powerful marketing channels when it comes to driving ecommerce sales. According to the MarketLive Q3 Performance Index report, email marketing was responsible for 13% of visits and 15% of conversions. A significant amount of consumers check their email on the go and when they see a promotional email from their favorite ecommerce store regarding discounts, recommendations or new products etc. Reports suggest that 70% of the shoppers make use of coupons and discounts they learn about in their email and if the store has an optimized mobile website, shoppers can instantly access the products and complete their purchase then and there. Without a mobile optimized website, it is very hard to navigate the store and make purchase leading to a significant loss of revenue.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message like a promotional email to a group of people using email. When done properly, it can boost sales significantly. Here are some email marketing best practices that can boost your sales.

1. Welcome Emails with Coupons: Sending coupons, offers and discounts on your products to any new visitors who subscribes to your email list or to a new sign up, helps convert sales instantly. Stores can also notify about their mobile optimized websites alerting them about the possibility of shopping on mobile (Tip: You can always send them a mobile only coupon code or exclusive mobile offers that allows them to see your mobile optimized website’s full potential)

2. Cart Abandonment: Cart abandonment is a very serious problem for any ecommerce store as it is a potential sale. There are a lot of reasons for shoppers to abandon their cart at checkout and one of the being, time. For example, a customer may be browsing your website on mobile device and after getting to checkout realizes that they don’t have time to checkout on their device, so they abandon. By the time they return to their device there is a good chance that they might have forgotten about it. Here, sending them an email after some time reminding them about their cart with a simple call-to-action allowing them to restore the items to the cart automatically and allowing them to checkout directly simplifies the whole process for them wherever they are. (Tip: You can also send offer discounts on the cart items to try and get customers from abandoning the cart.)

3. Recommendations and New Releases: Most of the products in the market come with a lot of accessories that augment the customer’s experience of the product. Sending a personalized email to your customers with recommended products increases the chance of the customer coming back to your store to make new purchases. Stores can also send out an email to all or selected customers informing about the release of a new product or a product line that they might be interested in. With a mobile optimized website, customers can directly go to the product page even on the go. (Tip: Adding customer reviews for the recommended product in the email can also help the customer to come to a decision fast regarding buying the product.)

4. Remainder Emails: Remainder emails are a great way to remind your customers regarding an upcoming sale, low stock of their wish list products, new products pre-order/release dates etc. You can also send remainder emails as a win back email, sent if the customer hasn't purchased anything from your store for a period of time. Send him a discount coupon or any special offers in order to incent them to come back.

5. Emails on Special Days: Sending an email to your customers on their special days like birthday, anniversary shows that you care. Adding a discount coupon makes the email even more special.

Each business has a different approach to marketing and email marketing campaigns differs from one store to another, but the final goal is always the same, try to get a customer to buy from your store. All ecommerce stores need to understand that email marketing is just a tool to try and convince customers to come back to your store at their convenience and finish a sale. With a mobile optimized website for both mobiles and tablets, your store is always available for customers to buy new products wherever they are and whenever they want.

Conclusion

In the end, email marketing is all about sending the right email to the right person at just the right time. This is what really differentiates email marketing to email blasts. With relevant emails to the customers, you can see a definite increase in traffic, customer satisfaction and revenue. So what are you waiting for? Optimize your ecommerce store for mobile devices, build marketing campaigns and wow your customers today.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

There has been an unprecedented rise in the popularity of mobile shopping. Tablets and Smartphones are playing a very important role in the current growth of the mobile commerce space. Shoppers are using their Smartphones and tablets to research products, read reviews and to buy them.

Shopping patterns and experiences differ a lot between Smartphone and tablet users, so stores must build their mobile strategy considering the two groups separately. Forrester says that US mobile and tablet commerce will reach $293B by 2018, a whopping 54% of total US E-commerce sales, and using one-size fits all approach won’t work if stores want to attract more consumers.

What's the difference?

Consumers interact with the tablet and mobile commerce apps/websites differently. Creating a strategy with the assumption that consumer interactions with mobile and tablet are same is a recipe for disaster which would become visible eventually in the conversion rate. According to an IBM report, tablets accounted for 14.4% of all online sales on Black Friday last year.

Tablets are primarily used at home for consuming media, online shopping, and viewing along with the TV. You can call them as “lean-back” devices, and the term makes sense - 67% of tablet owners use them in the living room and 57% in the bedroom. Smartphones are used on-the-go and at home for communication, apps, and content search. They are primarily used to ‘get things done’. A study found that 75% of mobile consumers use Smartphones while shopping in stores.

Tablets and mobiles have some key differences that every retail owner should know:

Order value:

Consumers spend more using a tablet than from a mobile. Studies show that a tablet user spent $126.30 per order compared to $106.49 by Smartphone users.

Time Spent:

Tablet owners enjoy shopping more than mobile users because of the bigger screen size. So they don’t mind spending a bit searching for different products, reading reviews and buying them on an optimized tablet website. Smart phone users usually spend time on mobile when they are shopping in a store, searching for better prices or researching about the product.

Traffic:

Smart phones drive more traffic than tablets do. This is mainly because of accessibility. Users can easily reach out to their mobiles and search for different products and their prices.

Conversion Ratio & User Demographics:

Even though mobiles drive higher volume of traffic than tablets do, tablets have a higher conversion ratio. Research shows that tablet owners typically come from high-income households, and are prepared to spend as much as 20% more per purchase than regular desktop visitors.

The following image shows how mobile commerce activities differ between a Smartphone user and a tablet user.

Beyond portability and convenience, device choice is based on the user needs at that moment. They could be on the go and reach for their phone, in the office and turn to their iPad, or at home trying to pick one – either way, leads to a mobile purchase. But for this to happen, you need a really good tablet optimized and mobile optimized website and apps taking advantage of features and capabilities of each.

Conclusion

With the larger screen size of a tablet, there’s much more flexibility with regard to content, images etc., while with Smartphones you have to show relevant content for the user which maybe info on the next sale, offers etc. Consumers wouldn’t want to pinch and zoom to search and buy products from your website and it would drive most of your consumers (about 40%) to your competitor. Optimizing your E-commerce store’s website to different devices goes a long way in providing a seamless shopping experience and turning your visitors into loyal customers.

The moral here: Don't assume and get with the times. Our mobile culture is constantly changing and it's up to your brand or business to stay on top of it. Mobilize your business and see the magic happen. With different Mobile commerce solutions available, you can build a tablet and mobile optimized websites, a dedicated app for your store in minutes.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. Our platform provides mobile sites, tablet sites and apps for Android and iOS (both smartphones and tablets).

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

If you didn’t get a chance to check out the Shopify blog in the last few weeks, then we would like to get you up to speed regarding some exciting updates you will find in Shopify’s core offering. Let us introduce you to Shopify’s new Responsive Checkout.

Online shoppers are increasingly using multiple devices to purchase products. A recent report published by MarketLive says that mobile traffic to e-commerce sites grew by more than 62% and revenue grew 141%. Tablet revenue and traffic grew by 20%. Even though there has been an increase in smartphone and tablet usage, conversions dropped by 2% vs. a year ago. This is mainly attributed to suboptimal mobile commerce experiences faced by customers leading to shopping cart and checkout abandonment. However, with Shopify’s Responsive design coming out just weeks before the holiday season kicks in, Shopify store owners can put their worries to rest regarding customer conversions through mobile.

So what’s new in Shopify?

The Responsive checkout adds some seriously awesome stuff. The checkout experience is really smooth across all devices while browsing through the Shopify mobile site and adapts to display a layout optimized to the screen size. You can upload a header image, change colors of various elements to match your brand, and add your logo to give your customers a seamless shopping experience that will leave them impressed.

But there are a few things you should know before you implement Shopify’s Responsive Checkout for your store,

1. You can preview the new Responsive Checkout on your store before you activate it. You can find the Preview option when you click on ‘Learn More’ button on the ‘Activate Responsive Banner’ located in the checkout settings page in your Shopify Admin Page.

2. To add the new Responsive Checkout to your store, click on ‘Upgrade’ button in the Responsive Checkout banner that can be found in the Checkout settings page, in the Shopify Admin page.

3. The new Shopify mobile template for checkout comes with new settings that are automatically installed into your Theme Settings. With this feature you can now customize your checkout’s accent, buttons, and call-to-action colors to match your brand without having to do it manually in a separate style sheet.

4. Finally, the Legacy Checkout is always available in the admin page if you feel that the Responsive Checkout is not for you yet. You can find downgrade to Legacy Checkout option in the admin settings of your Shopify store.

If you decide to upgrade to the new checkout, you will lose any CSS customizations you would have made to your previous checkout. The changes cannot be carried over to the Responsive Checkout from the legacy checkout as Shopify is now using a new format for style sheet, checkout.scss.liquid (the format is ‘scss’, not ‘css’) for controlling the design of the Responsive Checkout.

Issues with the new checkout

No new feature is without its issues. The Responsive checkout of Shopify has its fair share of them. Listed below are some suggestions and fixes for some of the issues found in the Responsive Checkout.

No line item properties at checkout.

Currently ‘line item properties’ are not shown in the checkout page for the products and this has had the unfortunate outcome of seeing increased cart abandonment in some cases. Currently there is no fix to show line item properties in the checkout page and if you think that the new checkout might alarm your store visitors, you can continue using the legacy checkout page for your store.

I don’t want to show alternative payment links to my customers!

One more issue surfaced with the Responsive Checkout. For the stores which offer their customers multiple payment options, say PayPal, Shopify now shows an option to checkout via PayPal link at top of the checkout page. The discount code cannot be added via this link as Shopify redirects them directly to the PayPal website. The option to choose PayPal for payment can be chosen further down the checkout page once the discount code and the shipping details are filled, which is ideal for both the customer and store. So if you prefer to hide this on your store you can use the following method for now.

Go to your themes page and under the Assets header, click on the link "Add a new asset", then click on "create a blank file" with the extension .scss selected. Add the following lines of code to the file and save the file.

.alternative-payment-methods { display: none }

.paypal { display: none }

This should do the trick, and hide the alternative payments bar and the PayPal button. You can also create a new css file from your text editor and upload it to the template editor in your store. Make sure you name the file as checkout.scss.liquid (not just ‘css’, but ‘scss’)

I want my logo to be wider!

Currently the logo shown in the checkout page is not 100% wide. If you want to widen your logo, you can do this by adding these3 lines of code in the checkout.scss.liquid file and uploading it to your theme editor (as explained in the alternative payments fix).

.shop__logo { max-width: 100%; }

You can also use .shop__logo to add any additional styling that you may wish to see on your store.

With smoother user interface, customized checkout, and easy setup, the new checkout promises to provide a great mobile shopping experience to your customers. So if you are a Shopify store owner, what are you waiting for? Try out Shopify’s Responsive Checkout today.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. We believe that this is a better solution than a responsive site because it is built ground-up for mobile shoppers, which is imperative to increase mobile conversions.

Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

Abandoned shopping carts are arguably the worst nightmare to any ecommerce merchant. According to Business Insider, lost sales through abandoned shopping carts will amount to an eye-popping $4 trillion this year, driven by the 70% of transactions that are abandoned by online shoppers. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that most of the reasons why shopping carts are abandoned are within the control of the merchant.

Of the 14 reasons listed above, a merchant can fix at least nine by just tinkering with the website experience:

1. Don’t spring surprises

Be upfront about the cost of the product. If you plan to charge for delivery or taxes, show them from the very beginning. Or at least mention that taxes and delivery cost extra.

Likewise, don’t wait until the checkout page to let them know that a product is out of stock (or worse, send them a sorry email later). Clearly show the stock available or let them know if the item is out of stock. You could go a step further and ask them to set an alert that informs them when the item is back in stock.

2. Easy navigability of website

It is amazing how even an online store with as few as 500 SKUs can sometimes be incredibly complicated to maneuver and checkout. 25% of shoppers drop out of the checkout process due to this reason. So follow best practices when you design your website, or use a template that is designed for conversion.

(Psst.. MartMobi’s conversion-optimized mobile templates for sites and apps trigger an immediate uplift in sales via smartphones and tablets)

3. Robust website

One of the cardinal sins of ecommerce is to design a buggy experience. Especially while shopping, consumers often tend to go back and forth, change their mind, do something else and come back. Shoppers often parallel browse products in multiple sites before choosing one. Make sure your website is flexible enough to neither timeout nor break when the shopper puts it to test. Again, a simple fix to this would be to use a tried and tested template rather than attempt to build it from scratch.

4. Fast page load times

Reams of blogprint have been written about how page load affects sales on mobile devices. For every second delay in page load time, conversion rates drop by about 7%. In fact, mobile shoppers do not want to wait beyond 4 seconds for a page to load, and will leave to never come back if the site takes longer to load. This is particularly an issue with responsive sites where large images intended for web shoppers are not optimized for mobile shoppers. Responsive design is generally intended for publishers and not ecommerce sites. Make sure you have a dedicated mobile site so you don’t lose half your traffic!

5. Consistent omni-channel experiences

Online shoppers are increasingly using multiple devices to make purchases. Mobile is often their first port of call where they compare prices, read product reviews and sort of narrow down on what and where they want to buy. These purchases are often completed on a laptop or on a tablet. For such shoppers, it is important to be synced real-time across all channels and provide a seamless experience for customers. As an example, MartMobi’s platform allows a complete sync between a web store and its mobile site and/or apps.

6. Optimized checkout

Don’t be greedy and force shoppers to register. Like the saying goes, “If you love them, set them free.” Allow visitors to guest checkout, you have their email address anyway. Single-page checkouts work better for some merchants, whereas multi-page checkouts work better for others. Test it out and see what works for your store.

Show thumbnails of the items being purchased to reassure them that they are buying the right items. Allow them to change the item from the checkout page. Show them the progress they have made so far in the checkout process. Here is an awesome infographic on what the checkout page should look like:

7. Balanced payment security checks

This is a tricky one. As many shoppers drop out due to security concerns as due to excessive security checks. There is a fine line and as an ecommerce merchant you have to find and toe it. Rely on security reinforcement measures that will not create friction to the checkout journey.

For example, you could add the image of a lock, or of a security vendor such as VeriSign. Add social proof through reviews or number of people who bought the product to reassure the shopper that this is a safe website, while also not asking them to do more work.

8. Flexible delivery options

With the holiday shopping season nigh, this is probably one of the biggest concerns for shoppers. But round the year, delivery options continue to be an issue that could tilt the shopper towards or away from you. This is often a combination of both the shopper and the product in question. Some products warrant expedited delivery (such as groceries or medicines) whereas others might require just standard delivery (such as books). Cater to these different situations by offering multiple delivery options.

9. Payment method options

The saddest way to lose a customer is to have your payment gateway fail. Imagine a shopper who has chosen your site from amongst thousands others, and has gone the distance – entering payment details and hitting checkout – only to be presented a sorry screen!

You have lost this customer for not one transaction, but forever. Avert this by tying up with reliable payment gateways. Also have multiple gateways which are programmed to kick in if one fails. Let them pay in a way that suits them – bank transfer, card or cash. Don’t let these customers go.

Bonus Tip:

10. Get ‘em back

Despite all these measures, if you still have abandoned carts (which you probably will), make sure you entice them to come back. Business Insider’s report states that 63% of all abandoned carts are recoverable. In fact, recovery emails sent 3 hours after a cart is abandoned average a 40% open rate and a 20% click-through rate.

If you have the budget, you could also retarget them through display advertising and incentivize them to come back. Finally, if you have a mobile app, you could issue push notifications that give them a special offer or remind them that they have items waiting in their cart. (Plug: MartMobi’s premium mobile marketing toolkit allows merchants to segment users and to send them push notifications)

There are several measures that online merchants can take to reduce shopping cart abandonment. This includes price matching, free delivery, phone support and other such business model variations. We have focused on the low-hanging must-do tips that every e-tailer should adopt, irrespective of their category or business model. At MartMobi we provide mobile storefronts to online stores across various categories, sizes, shopping carts and geographies. We see that adopting these strategies helps reduce shopping cart abandonment irrespective of any of these parameters.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile with our m-commerce platform in less than a day, through both mobile commerce sites as well as our ecommerce app builder. Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

MartMobi, the platform that powers mobile storefronts for online stores across the world, is now available for 3dcart merchants. With this integration, MartMobi is now available to another 15,000 3dcart merchants, in addition to the 400,000 it already supports across platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Yahoo, Volusion and Magento. Online stores built on the 3dcart platform can now get beautiful looking and conversion driven mobile , tablet websites and Native iOS, Android Apps in less than 2 days. The onboarding takes about 20 minutes and requires absolutely no coding. “We are really excited to partner with 3dcart and offer our mobile commerce platform to its fast growing merchant base. With the holiday season right around the corner, the MartMobi platform could make a big and immediate impact on these merchants,” says Satya Ganni, CEO of MartMobi Technologies.

About 48% of the total online ecommerce market is held by the top 10 stores. Further, the next 100 stores hold about 83% of all web sales. So while the exploding growth in ecommerce is an encouraging sign for most budding online retailers, we need to dig deeper – beyond macro statistics – to understand the challenges in starting a new online store today, and what a merchant can do to get noticed, attract customers and drive sales.

According to Nielsen, the largest segment of mobile shoppers is the millennials. In 2014, sales from mobile devices is expected to hit 21% of all online sales, up 80% from 2013. Combining the two trends of exponential mobile shopping growth and the tendency to buy from mobile devices amongst millennials, we conducted some ethnographic research to understand the mobile shopping habits of 20-year olds.

The goal of this survey is to help new mobile stores get noticed and increase sales.

About the Study

The ethnographic study was conducted with 33 random people, distributed evenly amongst men and women, and all within the age bracket of 22-27. These participants were studied in natural environments including their place of work, study, play and stay. The focus was to understand their interactions with new (and hence unknown) mobile stores as opposed to popular online stores that have the luxury of being top of the mind for most shoppers.

For the purpose of this article, we will refer to such stores as “unknown” mobile stores. These stores were defined to participants as niche stores that hadn’t been publicized or recognized by mainstream shoppers – stores that a very small percentage of their social circles were aware of, let alone customers of.

Do 20-year olds buy from unknown mobile stores?

79% of the participants had bought something at least once on mobile (smartphone or tablet). The encouraging news for new mobile commerce merchants is that 42% of them have bought from unknown mobile stores. To reinforce the definition of these “unknown mobile stores”, the participants stated that these were stores that their social circles were not aware of and had not received mainstream recognition.

Why do people buy from unknown stores?

So what prompted these shoppers to buy from an unknown store rather than a popular (and hence reliable) brand? The two primary drivers for buying from an unknown store are product catalog and pricing. Further, almost 30% of the participants said that they fell in love with the brand and would like to go back and buy more from this store that they discovered. To summarize a general perception amongst the participants, they said it was “cool” that they know of a store that none of their friends have ever heard of. This also probably had something to do with the fact that all the niche stores were apparel stores with trendy designs that are not very common.

What convinces people to hit BUY in unknown stores?

Another notable trend in the data was the emphasis on user experience. Participants who had bought something from an unknown mobile store said they were hesitant to pay and make a purchase from the store because they weren’t sure if the store was for real. The impulse reaction was to hold on to the purchase and review the website from a laptop or a tablet. However, the experience that the store provided, its general look and feel and the checkout process either gave them the confidence or dissuaded them from making the purchase, depending on how authentic the experience was.

How do mobile shoppers find these unknown stores?

Discoverability is obviously a huge obstacle for new and unknown stores. So how did these shoppers find the stores from where they eventually made a purchase?

The two sources mentioned frequently by the participants were search engines and word-of-mouth (more than 55% each). Surprisingly, just 10% of the shoppers were redirected to the site from an email. And almost none from social media or paid ads. These statistics reinforce the shoppers’ self-image of belonging to a “secret club” that buys from very exclusive stores that most others have not heard of. Once a store goes mainstream and gets posted on social media or advertised online, it loses its “cool” factor and becomes a known store. At that point, the motivation to buy from that mobile store could be very different and are beyond the scope of this study.

Checklist for a new mobile store (apparel) merchant:

1. Either have a really trendy product catalog, or have the lowest prices anyone has to offer. 2. Make sure the shopping experience you offer is on par with the more popular stores out there. This is absolutely crucial for credibility and for shoppers to hit the BUY button. 3. Target the early adopters, the niche segment of shoppers who want to belong to the “secret exclusive club” and buy stuff that very few people know about. 4. Seduce (don’t incentivize) your early adopters to spread the word (ask them to share you awesomeness). 5. Make sure you are mobile SEO friendly 6. Build a brand that resonates with this target segment. Make sure your web copy, your emails, your logo and your overall user experience reflect the trendy product catalog you have.

About Us

At MartMobi, we believe that mobile is the present, not the future. We help online retailers go mobile in less than a day, through both mobile sites and native apps. Our extremely friendly pricing allows customers with almost zero budgets to also increase conversion dramatically on mobile. We have taken great pains to make the entire process code-free, so it is really simple to use and ready to go.

MartMobi will be exhibiting at the 14th Edition of MivaCon to be held in Chicago on September 23rd. We are the first Miva Merchant partner that helps their customers with their mobile commerce strategy with our conversion optimized mobile shopping cart. We provide beautiful mobile commerce templates that help online retailers build mobile and tablet sites, as well as Android and iOS apps in a jiffy. Typically, online stores that use our mobile shopping cart builder see an immediate and dramatic upswing in their mobile sales.

Sponsored by ecommerce industry bigwigs such as PayPal, the MivaCon helps online retailers “reach the pinnacle of success” with deep-dive sessions on Ecommerce Best Practices, SEO for Ecommerce and Email Marketing, Social Commerce, Conversion Optimization and several others.