Mobile technology has changed our lifestyle to a great extent. Our mobile phones are always at just an arm’s length. The apps that we have installed on our phones dictate the way we spend our days. Consequently, mobile commerce trends keep forming and evolving.
Consumer behavior has shown drastic changes over the past few years. One of the major changes in the growth in mobile commerce. That’s why understanding mobile commerce and all its trends are important for businesses and marketers.
If you are running a business and want to stand out among the competition, focus on understanding mobile commerce and its impact on your sales. With the pace at which mcommerce is growing, it seems like it will continue to thrive in the long run.
In 2020, 79% of mobile users shopped online through their mobile phones. If you own an online store, you really need to be aware of what’s going on in the mcommerce and eCommerce world, particularly in the industry you are in. Whether you are selling through one of the giant eCommerce platforms or running your own eCommerce website, you cannot ignore the growing statistics of mobile consumers. That’s exactly what inspired us to write this post.
What is mobile commerce? Well, it is simply the mechanism of selling products online in a way that allows your customers to make purchases directly from their mobile devices.
The difference between mcommerce and eCommerce is that mcommerce is all about the sales you make and the transactions through consumers’ mobile phones. This post is not about the trends of eCommerce as a whole. Today we will mainly discuss the trends on mobile commerce, which in short can be referred to as mcommerce.
We have researched some of the most recent and common mcommerce trends that we want to guide you through today. Understanding mobile commerce and keeping these trends in mind can help you go a long way in generating more sales for your business.
10 Growing Mobile Commerce Trends
Here are the 10 most common mcommerce trends discovered in our research.
1. Shopping via Mobile Apps
It is no secret that people find it more convenient to buy products from their mobile phones nowadays. Mobile commerce dominates the worldwide eCommerce market primarily because most online purchases are being made via mobile phones.
Interestingly, the trend is not just about that. The way people are shopping with their mobile phones is also changing. In 2019, 57% of customers in the US learned more about the brands and products they were interested in through a mobile retail app.
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Instead of using an internet browser on their phones, over 50% of US consumers straight away installed a mobile app to shop for the items they needed. This changes the game for ecommerce business owners.
It means if you sell products online, of course, it is vital for you to have a mobile website. But that’s enough anymore to cut it in this highly competitive and digitized world. It is also essential to have an app that serves as an online store on your consumers’ mobile phones. 85% of consumers these days prefer a mobile app over a mobile website to shop online.
2. High Sales Volumes from Mobile Phones
Smartphones and mobile commerce will definitely dominate the eCommerce world in 2022. People are not only browsing via mobile apps and mobile websites. They are also purchasing through their phones. The average sale value from a mobile app is $102, while a mobile website is $92.
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These apps and websites can be accessed from iPads and tablets as well. But sales from these devices have been on a decline since 2019. This means only handphone sales volume is on the rise. These findings have a few implications for businesses.
The way you choose to convey your marketing messages to consumers depends on their device. For example, if you build an app for your mobile commerce store, you can contact the app users via push notifications. Messages in these notifications should contain offers that the users can act upon instantly. In other words, app users need real-time sales offers.
3. One-Click Ordering
As more and more consumers get into mobile shopping, it’s becoming the responsibility of eCommerce business owners to ease the mobile checkout process. In the earlier days, placing an order on the internet required a lengthy process and a lot of information from the customer. Typically for an online transaction to process, you need the following information from the buyer.
- Customer name
- Credit or debit card number
- Card expiration date
- Shipping or posting address
- Billing address
- Email address
All this information is required today as well. But in modern mobile commerce, mobile apps allow customers to store this information in their user profile instead of making the customer key in all of it manually. This means they only have to enter this information in an app once and shop with that app multiple times with just one click after that.
4. Social Commerce
Most brands these days use social media to build brand awareness. If you are running an eCommerce business, you must be doing the same. Along with all the advantages of using social media marketing, there is a downside. It has always been a challenge for businesses to convert their social media traffic into sales. Consumers do not usually navigate from a social media post to a product page.
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Therefore, a growing trend in mobile commerce is that businesses have started creating shoppable social media posts. The new features of Facebook pages and Instagram business accounts enable businesses to create such posts. Companies tag their products in these posts and promote them directly to customers. When users click on the tag, they're taken directly to the product page from where they can make the purchase.
5. Voice Shopping
Siri and Alexa are voice assistants growing in demand and popularity for quite a few years now. More and more apps and devices have these voice assistants in them. Consumers are also making increasing use of voice search for various different tasks.
Voice search penetrated the eCommerce market in 2021. By now, voice shopping has reached a worth of about $40 billion. This has a significant consequence for mobile commerce. 40% of adults use voice search at least once a day. Out of all the searches made on mobile devices, about 20% are voice-based.
6. Mobile Chatbots
We all know that chatbots have existed for decades. You have probably interacted with a few chatbots yourself for various reasons. Many business owners are already leveraging chatbot technology on their eCommerce websites. It is now one of the most effective ways of providing customer service.
Chatbots are now becoming common in mobile commerce too. 54% of people prefer getting in touch with the merchant via a chatbot over a human rep. All businesses running an eCommerce website need to incorporate this technology in their mobile apps to keep up with the competition.
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7. VR and AR
These are two types of technology that we have been hearing about for quite some time now. VR and AR have endless opportunities for businesses. Many online shopping apps have already implemented AR to enhance the consumer shopping experience.
For example, a business selling furniture online could use AR technology to show what the furniture item would look like in a consumer’s house. This makes it easy for consumers to select the right color, shape, texture, and type of furniture to buy.
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Without augmented reality in mobile commerce, customers are forced to buy using trial and error. That’s why more and more businesses are implementing this technology in their online stores. By 2025, AR and VR industries will hit $35 billion.
8. Omnichannel Mobile Shoppers
Omnichannel retail refers to the practice of selling products using multiple channels. If a business is selling its products through a physical store, an eCommerce website, and a mobile app, it uses an omnichannel strategy.
All mobile commerce players need to realize that omnichannel marketing helps cut through the competition and penetrate new markets efficiently.
9. Mobile Fraud
Unfortunately, as mobile commerce is gaining momentum, mobile frauds are also rising. 65% of fraudulent transactions are made through mobile phones. You need to make sure that your consumers’ information stays secure with you, or else you would lose the trust of your customers, which might lead to a drastic drop in sales.
10. Mobile Payments
Mobile wallets are getting more and more popular. All mobile commerce websites need to ensure that they allow customers to make online payments through their mobile wallets.
Does Strikingly Help With Mcommerce?
Strikingly is a website builder that allows you to create mobile-optimized websites. Our features allow you to build pages that provide a scustomers with smooth mobile checkout experience.
The eCommerce checkout sequence can be customized on Strikingly through the checkout form settings.
Image taken from Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
For your eCommerce website to succeed, your customers must have an error-free and convenient shopping experience. We look forward to our users running their businesses successfully and making high sales. That’s why we keep updating our tools and features to facilitate you every step of the way.
For building a prosperous mobile commerce website, register for a free account with us today.
