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Mobile taking lion’s share of ecommerce, but many retailers still aren’t mobile first, study warns…

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Smartphones continue to play an important role in the ecommerce game, overtaking desktop for sales and popularity. Yet, retailers are failing to turn their strategies towards being mobile-first to tap into this mobile shopping boom.

So finds The Mobile Method: The Apps Commerce Outlook for 2018 research presented by Shopgate. According to its research, some 54% of the $414bn (£297.32bn) from ecommerce sales is expected to be mobile this year. This is a considerable increase from 2% in 2004,

The study finds that more than 45% of cart abandonment occurs at the payment stage and four out five consumers bail the checkout process because of the irritating card detail entry process. As it appears it’s to do with trust issues, with one in five shoppers feel their identity could be stolen when paying on a smartphone. While 15% of 18-24-year-old users say having their data stolen was their biggest fear.

Shoppers appear to want to first check how the item looks online before committing to buy it, with the volume of shoppers that browse products is 70 times greater than those who actually add the item to the cart. Some 40% of shoppers say small screen sizes are their biggest barriers to mobile buying, while 26% of shoppers say mobile sites just aren’t easy to use.

“Being entrenched in the mobile industry, we get to witness firsthand the growth retailers are expecting on the small screen. Many retailers suffer from the same barriers to purchase, however, apps are a powerful tool to overcome these common issues,” says Marc Biel, the chief executive officer at Shopgate.

According to the research, the most practical way to overcome the common complaints is to adopt smartphone apps, as part of the multichannel strategy.

Shoppers that tend to buy via their mobile devices do so 90% of the time on an app rather than on the web. App shoppers who return to buy from a retailer’s app spend 55% more per purchase, and 65% more likely to buy during a visit than a mobile web shopper. In addition, over 50% of smartphone shoppers say they will rely on a digital wallet to make purchases this year.

“Marketing your app with a holistic strategy will absolutely help determine its success-the best app in the world with no users holds no value,” comments Casey Gannon, the vice president of Marketing, Shopgate, on the Vitality of Smart App Marketing.

The report reveals that on average we check our phones 150 times a day, which suggest that we spend three hours on our phones with an average session lasting a mere 70 seconds.

When it comes to international markets, the UK is surprisingly lagging in mobile shopping in comparison to the rest of the world, with 37% of overall UK sale transaction are conducted via phone, reveals the same body of research. Whereas, mobile shopping continues to dominate countries in Eastern Asia, with China taking fourth place (40%) and South Korea (55%) securing the top spot in mobile shopping. In fact, during the Singles Day in 2017, China’s most powerful purchasing day of the year, mobile transactions made up 90% of sales, with 97% of orders coming from mobile devices in the last minute.

Photo credit: stokkete (Fotolia)

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