Mobile Commerce Part I – Shopping with iPhone or Blackberry
When was the last time that you left your iPhone at home? A long time ago? The reason might be that iPhone, Blackberry and others are not only useful to managers. It’s not only about being able to answer phone calls at all times but about being able to access and surf the internet without any limitations. But what does that mean for e-retailers?
Are there already any success stories in mobile commerce?
This is the first of two posts around the subject of mobile commerce. In the following article Hendrik Lennarz e-commerce technology expert at Trusted Shops is giving an overview of the current situation in mobile shopping:
Whether you are on holidays at a family meeting or in your favourite restaurant it’s always very handy to be able to check your e-mail or have a look at an interesting eBay auction you’re bidding on.
The mobile internet has grown up
Because of the very fast transfer rates at affordable rates latest generation mobile phones play an important part as a channel for transactions and information in the daily life of many people. Consumer have constant access to price comparison sites and sites with product details of online-shops. The hardware sector today is still dominated by Apple’s iPhone but encouraged by google’s new mobile operating system the competitors are introducing their own models to the market. This competition on the market will result in falling prices for mobile devices which will further penetrate the market. A study conducted by comscore affirms this development. Compared to january 2008 the number of mobile internet users has nearly doubled in 2009.
Mobile commerce is just a question of the technical development
The way that e-retailers can profit from this development today is still limited by the technical development. The number of various different devices that all have different requirements for hardware, operating systems, browsers and operating controls still present obstacles to the developers of mobile applications for online-shops. At the same time these new applications require technical but sometimes even conceptual changes to truly improve the usability.
The requirements can be:
- Adjustments to the screen size
- Adjustments to Internet browsers
- Adjustments to the bandwidth
- providing secure connections
- integration of payment systems
but also conceptual requirements like:
- compressing grafics
- shortening of texts
- limitation of certain functions and features
- avoiding unnecessary entry of data
- shortening of the check-out process
For SMEs implementing mobile commerce into their shops might be too early as the costs of the implementation are high and the number of potential customers still too low to justify these high costs. For some shops like the German Wine Trading platform Hawesko mobile commerce already plays an important role as this company is already receiving up to 50 orders a day via mobile devices.
Click here for the German version of this article in the shopbetreiberblog.
