Some interesting stats and trend-lines are emerging from a recently discussed Forrester Research study on Smartphone-based sales in the coming years. The data notes that Smartphone-based retail numbers will hit $12 billion in 2013, all the way up to $31 billion in 2017. Those are exciting numbers, but it’s worth noting that the 2013 figure actually represents just 5% of current e-commerce sales, and the 2017 number clocks in at 9%.
Which means that 90% of e-commerce sales in 2017 still won’t be done through a smartphone.
Of course, it’s worth noting that the Forrester figures don’t include tablets, which are a growing percentage of “mobile” consumer trends, and which a lot of e-tailers themselves include in their own “mobile” calculations.
However, the Forrester report also says that smartphones – regardless of the percentage of completed sales on them — are still wielded by consumers as part of their shopping experiences.
The Internet Retailer website quotes Forrester VP Sucharita Mulpuru who says that “mobile gives stores a welcome opportunity to use the web to support their primary channel. As a result, more retailers are focusing on the elements of the mobile site experience that can help in-store shoppers and even store associates rather than on generating transactions via those devices. For instance, they have prioritized product information, ratings and reviews rather than checkout and payment options.”
So shoppers are still wanting to use their mobile devices to compare prices, receive deals, and find out more about the very products you offer. As for those businesses who are most successful at getting “early adopter” customers to actually use their phones to pay and check out, Mulpuru says “we estimate that about a third of all U.S. m-commerce retail revenues are generated by sites that can be classified as vehicles for daily deals. (i.e., Amazon Daily Deals, Groupon, etc.) The feature common to all these sites? Easy checkout functionality that often preserves shoppers’ shipping and payment information.”
Your customers, then, like to have a constant variety of deals to choose from — and they like to keep their information private and secure. While the deal-offers are up to you, AVPS can certainly help with the latter: If you’re looking for additional e-commerce solutions, mobile processing, and more, we can help you get ready for 2014, 2017, and any year beyond that, regardless of what kind of screen your customer is going to shop with.
In fact, you can use that mobile device of your own for a very old fashioned function: Call your AVPS rep today, to find out more! A Brave New World awaits.
