It just may be that some mobile shoppers are getting pickier.
On Friday, we wrote in this space (Mobile Shoppers & the Hope for Physical Stores) about the opportunity for retailers to leverage their brick and mortar assets after one study found that visiting a physical store is the most influential source of information for consumers making purchase decisions.
The point we were attempting to make is that retailers have a chance to influence a purchase at the last stage of the shopping cycle, when the customer is in the store.
But the overall mega-commerce issue facing merchants is the evolving method in which the mobile consumer is shopping.
A new U.K. study found that when making a purchase via mobile, more than half (51%) of buyers complete purchases on a mobile website while fewer (40%) buy via apps.
The study, by Episerver, showed that the key locations websites were most accessed by mobile users were at home, on public transport and at the office. This is yet another indicator that marketers have to take an all-of-the-above approach to reaching consumers during the purchase process.
This reiterates the point I’ve repeatedly made: an app is not a mobile strategy.
The study also showed that consumers are willing to act based on their satisfaction levels with their mobile website interactions.
More than a third (37%) rated many mobile websites as hard to navigate, an increase from a year earlier. The bad news for some retailers is that many (38%) consumers will stop using the site if it is hard to use.
App users were even less forgiving, with almost half (47%) saying they would delete or stop using an app if it is hard to use.
The mobile shopper is always shopping and some many becoming less forgiving along the way.
Chuck Martin is editor of mCommerce Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily MobileShopTalk. He is author of “The Third Screen,” “The Smartphone Handbook,” and the soon-to-be-published “Mobile Influence.” He is CEO of Mobile Future Institute and a frequent mobile keynote speaker around the globe.
