Three Steps to Convert Smartphone Shoppers

Smartphone Shopping

Shopping by smartphone saw significant increases in the 2013 festive season compared to the previous year, according to a report from IMRG and Capgemini.

So, Summit conducted its own, brief street survey to ask shoppers about their use of smartphones for mobile shopping.

We all know smartphone ownership has increased massively.

Now combine that with favourable data tariffs and the proliferation of wifi (much of it free) and it’s easy to see how the landscape is set for growth in mobile shopping.

Smartphone Conversion: The Obstacles

The IMRG and Capgemini report points out mobile refers to tablet and smartphone, and helpfully splits its figures between the two.

Picking through the detail it seems sales via smartphones alone increased by 186% over Christmas 2013 – that’s worth £420m.

So the market is valuable and growing rapidly, but our street survey revealed that 4 out of 5 online browsers didn’t complete a purchase on their smartphone for a number of reasons.

Those reasons include the small size of screen, the fiddliness of using a non mobile-optimised website, the casualness of the browsing session (the user was travelling and preoccupied with meeting friends), a preference to browse on the smartphone and then complete the purchase at another time probably on a desktop or tablet device.

Smartphone Conversion: Recommendations for Retailers

Summit has put together three broad recommendations for forward-thinking retailers to implement.

The list responds to the main reasons shoppers didn’t complete a smartphone shopping session:

• 1. Optimise websites for smartphones
• 2. Build loyalty so shoppers are more inclined to make a purchase
• 3. Use in-store devices like beacons to target customers’ smartphones