Fourth Quarter 2010 Trends in Mobile Retailing

For most retailers, the fourth quarter is relied upon to generate a substantial portion of the company’s yearly revenue. The mobile commerce market is currently $2.5B with a projected 4x annual growth rate for 2013. Businesses have made mobility a top priority for growth and view m-commerce as a new retail channel. As businesses scramble to get a piece of the mobile commerce pie, there is clearly much to be done, in order to provide a quality user experience. According to an Adobe survey "Only 18 percent of respondents currently use rich visual merchandising features for mobile commerce, up to 81 percent of respondents cited plans to deploy these features, thus implying richer mobile experiences will be created and offered over the next 12 months." With that many retail businesses moving to provide a rich experience for their customers, while leveraging brand equity and increasing the reach of their products, here are some of the big trends as we head into Q4 2010, and the all- important holiday shopping season.

• Location based couponing


• Full screen image zoom of products with pan capabilities


• Browse functionality (tied into a company’s specific product taxonomy used by the .com)


• Videos


• Social networking


• Customized promotions for black Friday

Retailers have seen the results of having rich content on a website as it relates to conversion rates of customers, but recent studies have shown that the same conversion statistics are amplified 2x on a mobile device. Location based couponing will also be a huge feature for many retailers, along with custom promotions based on the customer’s exact location. It is going to be a very exciting time in mobile commerce, both for retail companies and their customers. Innovative application developers will be adding fuel to this fire, by creating new functionality using the latest consumer grade devices and technology.

For more information on mobile commerce check out:

Mobile Commerce: A Definition

Disclaimer: “The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Smartsoft.”