Mobile Commerce - Are You Ready for Mobile?

Mobile Commerce (mCommerce) is building a presence in the mobile channel. Products offerings have begun to expand beyond ringtones and games into apparel, electronics and health & beauty aids. TowerGroup views mobile commerce as spanning three distinct categories: 1) Handset-based mobile content purchases (e.g., ringtones, games, music for use on the handset itself), 2) Purchases of goods and services via the mobile phone browser (e.g., buying a book on Amazon.com), 3) Purchases completed by near field communication (e.g., micropayments for purchase of newspapers, gum, or other small items by swiping a phone over a point-of-sale terminal at a news kiosk or convenience store).

Mobile Commerce Maturity
Though mobile purchases today are largely focused on content for the handset, the metrics surrounding mobile commerce are pointing towards broader goods and services. According to M:Metrics as of January, 2008 there are 219 million mobile subscribers aged 13+ in the U.S., and a total of 2.4 billion worldwide. Ten percent of U.S. subscribers have purchased ringtones and 13% have accessed news and information via a web browser. This is important to note since many shoppers use the internet to research products before they purchase, and browsers are the front end to commerce applications. Interestingly, 85% of iPhone users and 58% of Smartphone users have accessed news or information via a browser.

Taking the Lead
The iPhone offers a 3.5 inch diagonal screen with a 6 square inch viewing screen. Smartphones, for example the Blackberry is 2.75 inch in diagonal providing 4.7 square inches of viewing. A survey by Change Wave Research found that 73% of iPhone users are very satisfied with their cellphone, 55% of RIM owners are satisfied, and that feature phone users drop off from there. Other studies have shown that phones like the iPhone and Blackberry provide a much more user friendly experience due to their larger screens and keyboards. This user experience directly supports a users’ ability to key in product search and purchase information. As more phones become more user friendly, the number of subscribers researching and purchasing product on mobile phones will increase.

Mobile Commerce Components
Creating a mobile shopping capability requires investigation into multiple components including: platform selection, mobile site development, product integration, search engine marketing, mobile messaging & advertising, and offline marketing integration. It will be critical for those thinking about mobile commerce to not only create a commerce platform, but to also drive traffic to their platform and provide the same level of servicing given to those buying products from PC based commerce sites. It is possible to test mobile commerce with out incorporating all the components, but all will be needed for a robust mobile capability.

Mobile Commerce Strategy
How do you create a successful mobile commerce capability? Here are a few ideas: include a mobile URL on all offline media (unless you are using device detection on your server), provide the ability for PC site users to sign up for opt-in text messaging so you can send push WAP messages, advertise on mobile sites with banners, links and other mobile tactics, register mobile URLs with directories, participate with aggregator mobile commerce platforms like mShopper or Digby, develop a branded mobile commerce site in addition to the aggregator platform, and create a branded mobile site as a front end to a mobile commerce application.

Are You Ready for Mobile?
The key is to start getting through the mobile commerce learning curve now while carriers and handset manufacturers are getting through theirs. Getting up and running with basic mobile commerce is relatively inexpensive to do. Unlike the PC Internet growth rate mobile acceptance by consumers will be much quicker, so my suggestion is that marketers begin to test the waters and invest dollars into building their presence in mobile commerce now. http://www.ruready4mobile.com/

Scott M. Alexander
President – Marketing Enablement
scott.alexander@marketingenable.com