According to recent research from the Nielsen Company as reported by Practical eCommerce, more than 9 million people have made at least one purchase using their mobile handset, and an additional 125 million people indicated they would be willing to do so. m-Commerce is the newest way to increase your customer base and revenues, given that there are almost a billion web-friendly phones being used worldwide right now.
Most new-generation phones have browsers that support shopping carts, making mobile commerce a rapidly increasing phenomenon. To make your website mobile commerce ready, there are some specific conversion issues you will need to consider that will ensure that your website is capable of being navigated properly from the smaller mobile handset screen before you can launch your business as mobile-friendly. Because many of the mobile browsers read and interpret the web site code, if you really want a mobile commerce friendly site, you need to consider removing code that a mobile phone might have difficulty with to ensure speedy downloading of your pages and a clear view of your store.
It may be necessary to develop mobile-friendly CSS for your website to enhance the shopping experience of mobile users. Even when using a mobile browser that is designed to provide a desktop-like navigating experience, shopping from a smaller screen might make it difficult for your mobile commerce customers because of the need to continually zoom in and out to see products and endless scrolling to see your products. Understanding the way in which your customers will see your site on a phone screen will help you understand how to enhance the experience, so be sure to test your site on a variety of mobile browsers.
As well, not all of the security bugs have been worked out for credit card payment processing through mobile web browsers, and the U.S. is lagging significantly behind the rest of the world in accepting phone payments (where the purchased product is simply added to the user’s phone bill).
The ever-increasing popularity of mobile commerce will make it certain that you will eventually need to accept mobile payments. As new generation phones take center stage with users for surfing, socializing, and communicating, it is inevitable that these phones will also become the primary way in which most people shop online. Paypal, Amazon, and other major e-commerce sites have already rolled out mobile shopping options. Are you ready?
Photo credit: maveric2003
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Ranked 1st on Seven technology trends to watch in 2010 at http://blog.igloo360.com/2010/02/seve-technology-trends-to-watch-in-2010/
It says …
2010 will be year of mobile computing and mobile commerce.
There will be interesting battle among Android vs iPhone vs Nokia.
M-commerce will rise in India.
Hi Prakash,
m-Commerce is definitely growing globally. Device usability and security requirements will increase as m-commerce increases and I’m interested to see how the mobile devices change over the next two years.
Thanks for you comment!
m2
Dear Mike,
Security is obviously key issues in proven system whether it is PC or Mobile. You have to ensure basic security measures your own.
For example you should avoid surfing unknown or warez or crack websites websites from your mobile devices. Mobile Trojan can stay in your device for a week and on your next shopping from mobile, it steal and send data to internet locations.
I already know particular this trojan.
Happy m-Commerce !
That’s good advice Prakash.
Thanks,
m2