5 Tips to Drive Mobile Commerce Sales
With nearly 110 million smartphone users in the U.S., mobile marketing and commerce offers a real way for retailers to grow sales and customer loyalty. By investing the time to put best practices in place, retailers can ensure they get the most out of their mobile initiatives. Consider the following best practices:
1. Identify your opportunity. Apple's iOS and Google's Android make up a large majority of the mobile landscape in the U.S. Since development and testing can take a significant amount of time, make these two systems your priority.
2. Keep it simple. Avoid using Flash, drop-down menus, pop-ups or other functions that you would use on a fully functioning site. Since mobile phones don't have a mouse, any function or item that requires "hovering" is a bad idea.
3. Maintain a consistent brand. Don't sacrifice your brand's personality and look for the sake of simplicity. Display your company logo prominently, keep your color scheme and reassure customers and prospects that they haven't left your mobile site.
4. Use a single source of data. Avoid duplicate content by using one source of data for each of your products and categories.
5. Don't make sacrifices for tablet compatibility. Though tablets may be considered a mobile device, tablet users often expect a full browsing experience similar to one they have using a PC. Displaying a template optimized for a mobile phone on a tablet could result in a lot of wasted space. Render your full site on tablets for the best browsing experience.
Fred Lizza is the CEO of Dydacomp, a provider of business technology platforms for small and midsized e-commerce and multichannel merchants. Fred can be reached at fred.l@dydacomp.com.
