It’s still up to retailers to cater to mobile shopping trends to increase conversion.
According to a report from a U.K. e-commerce trade association, Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), mobile shopping trends data indicates that m-commerce is rapidly on the rise.
In fact, their data indicates that when compared to March 2011, there was an increase of 254 percent in the same month of this year. Equally, though, the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Index shows that there is still a tremendous amount of room for conversions in that channel to grow.
There was an increase in the March 2012 mobile conversion rates, doubling them from March 2011’s 0.7 percent to bring them to 1.4 percent this year. However, when that increase is compared to the 4.13 percent conversion rate on traditional desktop and laptop computers, it shows that there is still a long way for mobile to go.
IMRG’s index is an analysis of e-commerce and mobile shopping trends.
It examines data from among 100 online retailers in the United Kingdom. It speculated that one of the reasons that the conversion over mobile devices is being held back is that many shoppers in the U.K. are using their mobile devices to visit the traditional e-commerce websites of online retailers, and that it is too challenging to navigate those sites that aren’t optimized for the mobile experience.
This is because the screen is smaller and it involves having to swipe, zoom, and pinch in order to see products, instead of simply clicking a mouse. Moreover, pages that are too heavy with content can take a long time to load – often more than a minute. Therefore, one of the most important mobile shopping trends among retailers should be to optimize for the m-commerce experience, which fits a small screen, navigates with a touch screen, and is quick to load.
Clearly, a growing number of U.K. retailers are getting the message, as is reflected by a RichRelevance study, which showed that among all sales made over e-commerce in the U.K., 9.1 percent occurred over mobile channels. Comparatively, the United States is far behind, at only 4.6 percent.
