Mobile Commerce Research for Online Retailers

Keeping track of mobile trends, research and statistics gives small business ecommerce site owners a solid foundation to plan a mobile commerce strategy.  The following mobile commerce research and statistics are from trusted industry sources and experts in the field of mobile devices and electronic commerce.


Mobile Commerce Shopping Research & Statistics (2010 - 2011)

Mobile shopping research and statistics offers an in-depth look at mobile devices; including smartphones, iPads and tablets. With these facts and figures you can learn how consumers are using these mobile devices for online shopping-related activities.

The most common mobile shopping activity is researching products and comparing prices, which 15 percent of mobile phone owners now do every month.  (Source: Experian Simmons; 2011 Mobile Consumer Report)
48 percent of mobile owners surveyed had made a purchase via their mobile phone. Although mobile shopping was most popular with 18-34 year olds, more than one third of respondents aged 55+ also made a purchase via mobile. (Source: Lightspeed Research; Mobile Shopping Revolution)
Males 30-49 years-old tend to be the most active content consumers and mobile purchasers; men outspend women, with 31 percent having spent $499 or more through their mobile device in the last 12 months, versus 23 percent of women who did so. (Source: Adobe Systems, Omniture; The Adobe Mobile Experience Survey: What Users Want)
30 percent of tablet owners have used their device to shop online, while currently only 25 percent of smartphone owners have used their phone to do the same. (Source: eDigitalResearch; eCustomerServiceIndex)
In 2015, shoppers around the world are expected to spend about $119 billion on goods and services purchased via mobile phones. That number represents about 8 percent of the total ecommerce market.  (Source: ABI Research; Mobile Commerce Study)
In the United States, purchases attributed to mobile online shopping -- excluding travel -- grew from $396.3 million in 2008 to an impressive $1.4 billion in 2009. In 2010, mobile online shopping excluding travel in the U.S. had more than doubled again, to total more than $3.4 billion by year’s end. (Source: ABI Research; Mobile Commerce Study)
Apps and music are the most common purchases, followed by clothes and electronic books. (Source: Lightspeed Research UK; m-commerce prepared for Figaro Digital)
Consumer usage of mobile coupons will see users exceed 300 million globally by 2014. (Source: Juniper Research; Mobile Coupons & NFC Smart Posters)
The study of more than 1,400 consumers shows more than half of consumers use their smartphones to enhance their shopping experience, especially people under age 35. (Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey; How SmartphonesAre Changing the Retail Shopping Experience)
Retailers report that 21 percent of all mobile traffic comes from tablets; amazing considering the iPad was launched barely a year ago. (Source: Forrester Research; The State Of Retailing Online 2011: Marketing, Social, And Mobile)
Mobile Commerce Payments Research & Statistics (2010 - 2011)

Mobile payments (m-payments) are when consumers make a purchase using a mobile phone instead of using cash, credit card or debit. Types of mobile payments include direct billing, SMS transactions and mobile Web payments. These mobile commerce research and statistics will help you understand what’s happening in the mobile payment industry.

Worldwide mobile payment volume is forecast to total $86.1 billion, up 75.9 percent from a 2010 volume of $48.9 billion. (Source: Gartner Inc.; Market Trends: Mobile Payments Worldwide, 2011)
PayPal raised its 2011 Mobile Total Payments Volume (TPV) projections to $3 billion. (Source: PayPal Blog; PayPal Doubles Mobile Payments Predictions to $3 billion in 2011 by Laura Chambers)
Overall, mobile payment services are expected to reach $245b in value worldwide by 2014. At the same time, mobile money users are expected to total $340m, equivalent to 5 percent of global mobile subscribers. (Source: Ernst & Young; Opportunities for telcos in mobile money: 2011)
E-payments and m-payments collectively accounted for an estimated 22.5 billion transactions in 2010. E-payments (online payments for e-commerce activities) are expected to grow globally to 30.3 billion transactions from 17.9 (in 2010-13), while m-payments are expected to grow globally to 15.3 billion transactions from 4.6 billion in the same period.  (Source: Capgemini; World Payments Report 2011)
It is anticipated that this will begin to change in 2011 as the number of mobile payment users starts a significant run up from 116 million to over 375 million in 2015. (Source: In-Stat; Mobile Payments: Is the Market Ready?)
The potential for mobile payments is huge. Estimates for the volume of those transactions vary widely but share a consensus that mobile payments will see sizable growth this year and accelerate rapidly in 2012. (Source: eMarketer; Mobile Payments -- Moving Closer to a World Without Wallets)

Blogs, Podcasting and RSS | eCommerce Impact

Blogs, Podcasting, and RSS Overview You probably have heard all these terms an awful lot lately. You wonder about what these technologies do? What value to they provide? If you aren't up to speed on these new applications and how they are impacting online interactions then read this brief further. Will these technologies impact you? To be honest, it's too early to tell - but awareness will drive innovation and maybe your team will develop an idea/application that utilizes these technologies to enhance a portion of your eCommerce business.

Here's the rundown: Blogs What they are: Probably the most well known of the three, blogs allow everyday people to quickly develop a website presence and distribute any type of content that they desire. Look at the metrics relating to blog penetration. * 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people. * 27% of internet users say they read blogs. * Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term "blog" means. What a "blog" actually means is weblog. In basic terminology, it's the ability for someone to update web content directly though the Internet, using a web browser as the publishing mechanism. This makes the creation of content easy and many people are using blogs to establish authority sites within unique business and hobby/interest niches. Where blogs impact online retail most is within these targeted online communities. Certain blog authors develop a large base of specific visitors, hence the site becomes a potential target market for viral marketing efforts. Many web entrepreneurs us this functionality to develop affiliate hubs within niche markets, and use search popularity to beat out larger retailers within corresponding natural search results.

By integrating your brand image within the site experience at that SPECIFIC blog, you as an online marketer are able to segment your marketing PRIOR to converting someone as a customer. It is a place to communicate with current and potential customers about current offerings/promos while boosting the credibility of the brand. Should you care: If you have a very unique value proposition, or sell to a very specific or high-value customer segment, blogs can be a great way to increase overall brand awareness. You can better connect with your customers and provide detail into the current happening within the business (ex. Current sales on XBOX 360). Potentially, one person within your organization should own the monitoring of blogs within
your vertical and look to post new content to meet the needs within the unique blog community.

Podcasting What it is: Pocasting should be just called mobile video broadcasting. However, Apple's marketing/development team did a great job with branding their device to a type of emerging media - hence the term podcasting! Similar to traditional radio and television, mobile video broadcasting delivers branded content in either a paid/free environment, on someone's mobile media player (Apple only does video currently, but that will change shortly). Retailers can potentially use this communication channel to deliver targeted content to their customer base, while integrating advertising within the video content.

Should you care: Not really. Until video podcasting penetration increases, it's still a limited channel for advertising. The best application available right now would be an online audio content segment that is digitally delivered to an opt-in list. As technology advances, you can potentially do this from your current opt-in page on your website and not from Apple's iTunes platform.

RSS RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and is a method for electronic content distribution. RSS is transmitted via the internet, but what makes it unique is that no downloading efforts are needed by the end receiver of the content. The content streams instateneously within a webpage.

Advanced consumers have RSS news readers on their computers, either integrated into an email client, or utilize an aggregated web application such as News Gator. This essentially saves them time in aggregating all new and updated content that meets their interests. Already gaining steam in the travel industry and within comparison shopping engines, RSS seems to be a valuable way to push news and time sensitive offers to customers. Travel companies are able to provide a streaming supply of last minute airfare offers to their customer segments, without that customer having to open an email or visit a webpage.

Should you care: It completely depends on the nature of your business. Do you consistently offer new prices? Do you obtain new products to your assortment consistently? Do you have a customer base that is extremely loyal that you want to reach out to with messaging? If so, RSS may another channel to help build your brand. Call us today to learn more about these technologies and the potential impact they can have in reaching your customers with targeted messaging and fresh content.

Ecommerce - Boost Your Business ROI

Did you know that over 90% of all online orders are processed by credit cards and that web sites that offer customers the ability to pay with credit cards can achieve up to 300% more sales than those that do not?

It's a fact. Not only do more customers buy, statistics prove that customers actually buy more when given the option to pay with their credit card. Here are some recent trends that will reinforce the need to sell your product or service on the internet- if your business is not yet doing so:

-At the end of 2000, over 400 million people worldwide had Internet access. That number is expected to reach over 1 billion by the end of 2005!

-Almost 100 million people in the U.S. are now making a purchase after using the internet to conduct their research.

-U.S. Consumers spent a record $13.7 billion in online purchases during the 2003 holiday season. A follow-up study conducted jointly by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/Net Ratings pegged sales during the 2004 holiday season at $23.2 billion, up 25% from the previous year. This comes at a time when traditional retail sales are growing in the low single digits.

-Forrester projects that total e-commerce sales in the U.S. will increase by approximately 20% per year, growing to $229 billion in 2008, making online retail transactions 10% of total U.S. retail sales by 2008.

In addition, in a survey conducted among more than 500 small business owners, the overwhelming majority indicated that they were either very satisfied or at least somewhat satisfied with their company's e-commerce return on investment
(ROI).

It's no wonder- when compared to traditional forms of direct marketing such as mail order catalogs, the cost of establishing and maintaining an e-commerce website is minimal. Additionally, new affordable, user-friendly storefront applications simplify the task of establishing and maintaining a professional e-commerce website. It is now affordable and doable- even for the novice small business owner- to convert their brick-and-mortar operation into a click-and-mortar operation and triple their revenues in a very short period of time!

What’s more, if your company sells products to consumers or businesses and you don't have a fully automated e-commerce website, your business is simply not operating at its full potential and you're sending customers to your competition!

It is no longer a luxury for the small to mid-sized retailer to have an e-commerce enabled site-but a necessity to stay competitive in the marketplace.

Ecommerce & SEO

The purpose of any business website is to promote a product or service online. The purpose of an ecommerce website is to take it one step further and to allow your visitors to purchase your products or services directly from your website. This model has many great advantages over the non-ecommerce website in that it allows for the generation of revenue with little-or-no time spent in selling past the cost to have the website designed and maintained, and it does not require the visitor to call you during business hours thus helping secure the sale to an impulse buyer. If your website provides all the information that the buyer would want, you can save significant money in sales time spent in that the visitor can find all the information they need to decide to buy from you without taking up your time or that of one of your sales staff. But ecommerce sites have a serious drawback as well; very few of them can be properly indexed by search engine spiders and thus will fail to rank highly.

A non-ecommerce website may have the disadvantage on not being able to take the visitor's money the second they want to spend it, however if it can be found on the first page of the search engines while your beautifully designed ecommerce site sits on page eight, the advantage is theirs. The vast majority of visitors will never get to see your site, let alone buy from you, whereas a non-ecommerce site may lose sales because they don't sell online but at least they're able to deliver their message to an audience to begin with. So what can be done? The key is in the shopping cart you select.
SEO & Shopping Carts

The biggest problem with many SEO-friendly ecommerce solutions is that they are created after the initial product. Shopping cart systems such as Miva Merchant and OS Commerce are not designed with the primary goal of creating pages that will be well-received by the search engine spiders. Most shopping cart systems out there today are not in-and-of-themselves even spiderable and require 3rd party add-ons to facilitate even the lowest form of SEO-friendliness. The money you may have saved in choosing an inexpensive shopping cart may very well end up costing you your business in the long run, especially if you are using your shopping cart as the entire site, which we have seen may times in the past.
What Can Be Done?

There are essentially two solutions to this problem. The first is to create a front-end site separate from the shopping cart. What this will effectively do is create a number of pages that can be easily spidered (assuming that they're well designed). The drawback to this course of action is that your website will forever be limited to the size of the front-end site. Which brings us to the second option: choose a search engine friendly shopping cart system.


Finding an SEO-friendly shopping cart system is far easier said than done. There are many factors that have to be taken into account including the spiderability of the pages themselves, the customization capacity of the individual pages, the ease of adding products and changing the pages down the road, etc. While I've worked with many shopping cart and ecommerce systems, to date there has been only one that has truly impressed me in that it is extremely simple to use, it allows for full customization of individual pages and the product pages get fully spidered to the point where they have PageRank assigned. A rarity in the shopping cart world.
Easy As Apple Pie

Mr. Lee Roberts, President of Rose Rock Design and creator of the Apple Pie Shopping Cart, was kind enough to take the time to speak with me regarding how he developed his system. Trying to get an understanding of how this system was born I inquired as to what differentiated their system from others. Without "giving away the farm", Lee pointed out that his system was unique in that the search engines were a consideration from the birth of this project. Rather than trying to jerry-rig a system that was already in place, he initiated the development of a system whose first task was to allow for easily spidered and customized pages. A significant advantage to be sure.
In further discussions he pointed out a few key factors that should be considered by all when choosing a shopping cart system. While more advance shopping cart systems that provide for SEO-friendly pages may seem more expensive, they save you the cost of developing a front-end site, maintaining the pricing on a static page if one goes that route, and of course - if all your site's pages are easily spidered and you can then have hundreds of additional relevant pages added to your site's overall strength and relevancy you have a serious advantage in the SEO "game". If a shopping cart system costs you an extra $100 per month to maintain but it's use provides you with an additional $5000 in sales that month did it really "cost" you $100?

What Lee has effectively done is to provide a shopping cart system that enables search engines to fully read and index every page. Additionally (and perhaps because of his history as an accessibility expert) the system is extremely easy to work with as a user and as an SEO. And of course that's our primary concern at Beanstalk.
Conclusion

It is not to say that the Apple Pie Shopping Cart is end-all-be-all of SEO for an ecommerce site, if it was Lee wouldn't be in the process of building a new version that will include many new features for Internet marketing and tracking, and we would be out of work. That said, if you've got an e-commerce site or are looking to have one built, one must consider what type of marketing strategy will be taken with the site and if SEO is one of those, insure to find a system that provides the same advantages as this one.
It may cost a bit more up front but doing it right the first time is far less costly than building a site that can't be marketed properly and to it's maximum potential.

Cost Effective Ecommerce Solutions.

Ecommerce use to be about spending thousands of dollars on setting up your shop and hundreds of dollars on getting a merchant. My, how things have changed over the years. Now anyone with a few hundred of dollars in their pocket(or less if you have the time to learn it yourself) can have a great working ecommerce system up and running in the matter of days. This also includes the full ability to accept payments from Credit Cards, manage customers, create invoices and more.

The most cost effective ecommerce solution on the market today is Oscommerce.com . Why is it so cost effective, well because it is free. All you need to do is learn it yourself or get someone who works in the web world(a web designer or programmer) to set it up for you. This can run you anywhere’s from $500-$900, give or take a bit depending on the features you want and if you want it integrated into a custom built design. In a all in one solution you can set up products to sell, have a visitor sign up and pay via the osc(oscommerce) payment section, create an invoice for that client as well as deliver the product(if it can be transferred via email) or create a packing slip to be mailed out. These are just some of the features located in oscommerce.

Another great feature about oscommerce is that you can integrate it to fit right into your site design. If you view my site at www.Logo2D.com and click one of the links at the top(such as logo templates) you can see that it fits snugly into the design. You can customize any part of oscommerce including the buttons for the shopping cart. It is a really great program to use.

One of the hassle before with ecommerce was getting something that would process payment. Payment was a
big issue as before it was very costly to get a merchant account, which usually cost around $400USD. Also you had to pay a % of every sale you made, which can really add up.

Today there are two great forms of payment that can be added to Oscommerce as your payment modules, they are Paypal.com and 2Checkout.com . These two options are a great way to go. Paypal.com is free to sign up, has over 78 Million accounts, only charges a small % of each sale/payment, can be funded by your credit card or bank account if you want to purchase something online and any sales you get you can take straight down into your bank account. Though the user does have to have a paypal account to pay you, but with 78 Million Accounts, you can see that is no problem.

2Checkout.com doesn't offer as many features in the way as you being able to purchase products offline, but it is great if someone is purchasing products off of you. It allows you to take payments via credit card and the customer doesn't even have to have a 2checkout.com account. It only takes a small % off when you take money down into your account. The only down side to 2checkout.com is that there is a one time fee of $49 to purchase a membership and they only send payment out twice a month(the middle of the month and the end of the month). So really not much of a downside at all.

So combine these three options and you can have a fully functional ecommerce website up for only a few hundreds of dollar!

Accepting Payments Online: An ECommerce Web Site Overview

There are a seemingly infinite number of choices and configurations to accepting payments online. Choices range from almost total "do it yourself" programming to turnkey packages.

You can accept online payments from an ECommerce Web site in two general ways:

1)Through your own online merchant account and/or
2)Through a third party online payment processor.

Accepting Payments Online through your own Internet Merchant Account

Accepting payments online via a merchant account puts you in control and limits your reliability on outside payment acceptance services. This approach can also seem like a jigsaw puzzle. Besides an Internet merchant account, you will need shopping cart software, a store or site host, a processor, and a secure payment gateway.

You may fit these pieces together in several different ways. On one end of the spectrum, you can choose the provider for each piece individually. On the other end, you may choose a turnkey solution, where a single provider has completed the puzzle for you.

There is no single best solution. Your choice will depend on your particular needs and experience. Among other considerations, you should factor in your own comfort with the technologies, customer convenience, providers' service levels, available technical support, reliability, costs, and time commitment involved Fees
There are a myriad of potential costs and fees involved in accepting payments online, making it difficult to compare different options.
Potentially, you could be charged fees by each provider involved in helping you accept payments online - application fees, set-up fees, yearly memberships, monthly statement charges, monthly minimums, gateway access fees, statement fees, fixed transaction fees, variable transaction discount rates (processing fee for each transaction), and cancellation penalties are all common.

Often, it is easy to misinterpret the fees you will owe. Rarely are all costs revealed in one place. If you are reading about a merchant account, for example, the quoted costs may not include gateway access, hosting,
and/or shopping cart. Because you may be comparing "apples to oranges", options that at first appear low-cost can - upon implementation - turn out to be pricey. Similarly, expensive-sounding solutions may actually be reasonably priced.


Accepting Payments Online through a Third Party Online Payment Processor

If you are not ready to set up your own online merchant account and/or you want to offer additional online payment options, you can turn to a variety of third party online payment processors.

Third party online payment processors provide a way to accept payments online without the extra cost and obligation of a merchant account. To compensate, transaction fees and/or discount rates are significantly higher than for merchant accounts.

Each program is a little different and no single third party payment processor is right for all situations. Clickbank, for example, helps you sell digital products online. At last check, CCNow processes payment for tangible items only.

Deciding What's Best for You

Whether you accept payments online through an Internet merchant account, through a third party payment processor, or both, read all agreements carefully before committing. Do not hesitate to ask the providers questions if information is unclear or incomplete.

There is more information about accepting payments online - including explanations of merchant account fees, finding the right ecommerce providers, and third party payment processor overview - on the ecommerce information site Take-Payments- Online.com, http://www.Take-Payments-Online.com .

Put together the "puzzle pieces" for accepting payments online and your ecommerce Web sales will flourish!

An Ecommerce Internet Merchant Account

Small business owners and home based entrepreneurs sometimes reach the point where they realize their company is ready to grow, and then they begin to consider the advantages of an ecommerce Internet merchant account. Those who accept merely cash or check payments may decide to increase the ways in which a customer can pay for goods or services. A merchant account will let business owners accept credit card payments in many different ways. That is why so many business people opt to apply for an Internet merchant account.

If you do not already have an Internet Website to promote your business, this would be a good time to put one in place by opening an Ecommerce Internet Merchant account. More and more, consumers are looking to the Internet to find companies that offer the products and terms they want. Conducting business on the Internet or through technological means is called "ecommerce," sometimes spelled as "e-commerce," and it is growing at a tremendously rapid rate. Once your Website is operational, you will want to update it often with your latest product lines and descriptions and price lists. Once customers from any other computer in the world know where to find you, chances are they will return time and again if they like your site; they might even bookmark it. To keep customers coming back, get an Ecommerce Internet merchant account that will let you accept credit card payments. That way, customers can buy things at your store locations, whether online or at a physical site, and pay for them instantly. You won't have to send out statements or wait for checks to arrive in the mail. Instead, your credit-processing feature will let them pay with a credit card, and your underwriter can facilitate the payment by converting currency and deposit profits in your account, using real time.

An ecommerce Internet merchant account can put you leagues ahead of other companies in your industry. While they still take just check or cash payments, you can be busy processing credit card payments that could push your sales volume to new record heights. Naturally, you will want to keep your store looking attractive, and your Website should offer helpful information that will make guests want to return and possibly even bookmark your site for frequent reference. When the word gets out that you are accepting credit payments, more customers may browse your Website to check out your wares and plunk down a credit card in payment. One of the nice things about using credit is its convenience. Customers don't have to worry about carrying enough cash or making an account deposit before going shopping. They can browse spontaneously, and when they find something they want to buy, they need not be constrained by a lack of cash on hand or forgetting to order new checks for the checkbook. Why not apply for your merchant account services account soon so that you can enjoy the status and benefits of attracting customers who prefer using credit when they hear about your ecommerce Internet merchant account.