Smartphones: Convergent Commerce kings
Mobile ubiquity
Mobile has been adopted by more users faster than any previous technology and several generations of consumers now expect to conduct their lives via mobile. Brands and retailers have opportunities to engage and transact with their customers like never before. In convergent commerce, retailers can no longer view their brand’s brick-and-mortar and other digital channels as separate commerce outlets. To adapt, retailers need to deploy mobile integrated cross-channel sales strategies that provide seamless shopping experiences.
- Make storefronts available anywhere, anytime 365/24/7.
- Offer fully transactional mobile (search, shop, buy, pay, service).
- Tie together in-store, web, social, and mobile commerce.
- Enable mobile Web for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and Androids.
- Run geo-specific marketing and eCommerce campaigns.
- Seamlessly integrate mobile with Venda eCommerce platform.
Venda’s mobile commerce platform delivers on this promise consumers have been looking for with a comprehensive and expanding suite of capabilities- delivered at Enterprise scale across multiple platforms, and supported by a global development and client care network.
Opening up the world
The mobile revolution is underway. Similar growth trends are occurring in cultures around the world as consumer adoption of smartphones and “anytime, anywhere” commerce are giving retailers a way to expand their sales and brand engagement on a global basis. Now, mobile services are extending retail to remote areas so consumers in New York City, the rural west, and even isolated parts of Asia and around the world can have the same access to retailers’ products.
By 2015, it is predicted that mobile shopping will account for $163 billion in sales worldwide, 12% of global eCommerce turnover.
ABI Research
Mobile power shoppers
Capturing your share of the mobile shopper’s wallet is not as easy as simply copy and pasting your website into a mobile browser. Mobile shoppers are creative, resourceful and will switch to other brands in seconds. To succeed, your brand must treat mobile as a viable commerce channel that needs it own strategy, unique capabilities, and personality if it is going to be a valuable platform in the cross-channel retail strategy.
Mobile connects other channels with your brand by:
- Seeking stores based on geo-location and current postcode.
- Researching products while in-store on ipads or smartphones (iphone, android, blackberries).
- Scanning the item’s barcode to access ratings and reviews, product information and video.
- Share items to Facebook and Twitter or emailing them to friends and family.
- Seeking special discount offers to decide between competing retailers; and
- Validating decisions in-store by cross-referencing and researching alternatives.
- Purchasing on-the-fly, and checking order status regularly.
Gartner estimates that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing an ideal environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web...the quality of the experience of applications on these devices, which can apply location, motion, and other context in their behavior, is leading customers to interact with companies preferentially through mobile devices.
Gartner, Inc. (2010)
