Thursday, April 21, 2011
M-commerce
Mcommerce which is short for mobile commerce is a new web platform that has long been used in much of Europe and Asia, but is only recently beginning to gain ground in the United States and Canada. With the introduction of 3G networks, smartphones, and other technologically advanced handheld devices, it is now becoming increasingly popular to shop with your mobile. There are literally millions of people using phones with internet access and they are starting to do all of their normal online activities on these handheld devices. The amount of people who are replacing traditional online shopping and purchasing with the mobile alternative is increasing daily. We will eventually reach a point where almost all transactions are completed using mobile devices.
M-Commerce started becoming somewhat mainstream with the emergence of ringtones, mobile apps and games. Users can do a search for their favorite songs, new applications that are compatible with their phone and games that can be played with their handheld devices. Then they can purchase these things directly with their mobile device and download it after the transaction goes through. Now m-commerce is starting to become much more popular and people are starting to buy tangible items in addition to products that can be downloaded. Mobile online shopping is now more reliable and convenient than ever before. In fact, a number of people go into retail stores, find something they want, take out their phone and search for the exact same product online for price comparisons. If the price online for the product is lower than the one in the retail store, chances are the person will buy the product online right away with their mobile device. This type of impulse buy is instantly gratifying for the customer and great for the online business.
If you are a business owner on the web, you may think that your online store is already completely mobile compatible. That's where you are wrong, in fact you will have to build an entirely different version of your original site in order to accommodate the smaller sized screen. If you would like your customer to find you through their phone and buy something, you must make sure they have a good shopping experience. With a normal website, navigating through web pages to look at the full size image of products and their descriptions on a handheld device is an extremely frustrating experience. The user not only has to scroll up and down, but also from left to right in order to view everything. On top of that, going through each step of the checkout process and actually completing the transaction can be even more painful. If you were to optimize your e-commerce store to take advantage of mobile commerce, it would not only fit your product images and descriptions to the smaller screen, but also creates a seamless checkout process. Whether you are surfing the web on your desktop or with your mobile phone, it can be easily detectable which version of your ecommerce store need to be displayed, allowing both versions to work simultaneously.
There are even more advantages that come with making your online presence fully mobile compatible. There are a lot of wonderful ways to create a marketing campaign targeting mobile users. It is easy to think of some innovative and creative ideas to target people with mobile phones. If you are able to have fun with it and allow your potential customers to have fun with it also, your marketing campaign will be able to become a viral hit. A few simple mcommerce marketing ideas include offering coupons exclusively for mobile users, announcing limited time sales on products making it virtually impossible for anyone to resist impulse buys, and also setting up contests or giveaways for people via text. There are a number of different ways to use this technology to increase your customer base.
Your key takeaway is to act now! Do not wait until all of your competitors have already caught on to jump on the m-commerce bandwagon. Be among the first movers and shakers to take advantage of this enormous opportunity. If you position your business in the correct way, it can result in years of continued growth and sustainability over the other guys.
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Labels:
m commerce,
mcommerce,
mobile commerce,
mobile commerce applications,
mobile e commerce,
mobile ecommerce,
mobile online shopping