Mobile Commerce

One of the most dramatic effects of the new mobility is that traditional behaviors are no longer tied to familiar time and place constraints. In fact, they may not even be tied to a consumer's own familiar brands. The internet may have made shopping available to consumers 24/7 on the desktop, but devices have now made every moment everywhere shoppable. Wal-Mart Canada seems ready to grasp this opportunity of the always-shopping consumer by putting a buy button in an unlikely place — a bus shelter.

Only a few years have passed since retailers finally became comfortable with their transformation to e-tailers. Now they must shift their point of view again, becoming what we might call "see-tailers," as the physical retail store assumes the role of a showroom, with consideration selection and transactions all conducted online through smartphone apps or mobile websites. Rather than visit stores to compare prices or find new styles and products, consumers are using stores to see, touch, taste or smell a product they've already targeted, then are leaving to order the item online.

As mobile commerce activity increases within the U.S. marketplace and payment processing advances alongside it, ISOs, acquirers and other merchant service providers must reposition themselves to meet the immediate and future needs of the businesses they serve. A newly released research report from ControlScan and TransFirst promises to help meet this objective, sharing important insights into small merchants' progress and struggles in implementing various mobile payment technologies.

Mobile commerce is a driving force behind the dramatic and accelerating pace of change in the retail industry. More than ever before, consumers are relying on mobile devices to interact with brands and retailers. This has been the trend for the past several years, and so far 2013 has been no different. Four notable trends are leading the way this year

The day may come when more of your shoppers are making purchases on mobile devices than via laptop and desktop computers. While this milestone hasn't been reached quite yet, many mobile device users are eagerly embracing shopping on the small screen: According to eMarketer, U.S. mobile commerce sales will top $17.2 billion this year, up from $3.5 billion in 2010 - and by 2015, mobile sales will reach $31 billion.

Mobile Commerce Daily reports that 44 percent of shoppers wil not return to a site unless it is optimized for mobile. The study from Kentico Software also reports "that 85 percent of smartphone owners use their mobile devices to compare companies, products and pricing before making a purchase."

Don't look now, but the smartphone might end up being more friend than foe to the retail industry. According to a new study from xAd and Telmetrics, mobile now accounts for one-third of all retail activity online with 98 million shoppers using a smartphone as  their retail experience. And the vast majority of those mobile shoppers end up making

Mobile devices account for just 15 percent of e-commerce today, but eMarketer estimates that by 2017, one-fourth of online sales will be mobile-based as people conduct more of their lives on smartphones and tablets. The spread of tablets in particular will drive mobile commerce; by 2017, nearly three-fourths of mobile retail sales will be done on tablets, with 125 million people using them to make purchases.

Google is abandoning its payment processing service called Google Checkout, but it still wants to offer merchants a way to streamline the checkout process for mobile users through Google Wallet. On

Las Vegas based apparel retailer Zappos rolled out an update to its iOS app yesterday that saw the company fold some neat new features into the mix. There are a few new graphical flourishes here and there (users can now change the animal that appears when adding an item to their cart), and user order history is much more visual than it was in days past — it now integrates images into the mix rather than forcing users to jump into each order.