With almost 25 percent of the world’s population (1.6 billion) using smartphones to transact everyday business, e-retailers cannot ignore the burgeoning opportunity of M-commerce. Even if you are a real estate agent in UAE, it’s important to get digitized in this increasingly virtual world.
Market research shows that online shopping via desktops and laptops has decreased by 15 percent in 2018. Online retailers will now have to adapt content to lure people to buy more through smartphones. The focus will be on to turn a browsing user into a purchaser and reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts (a repeated occurrence on smartphones) with better interfaces through optimised websites, apps and social media presence, better marketing deals, bargains such as payback points and cross offers, and multiple payment options.
The in-store customer service needs constant updating. Many sites utilize basic chatbots, which just pay ‘lip-service’ and are not able to extend much help. Intuitive analytics can be used for personalised services based on customer data, and purchase and browsing history. New technology advancements are offering diverse options to gather and analyse customer data, which can provide an insight into user behaviour and help improve e-retail services. Mobile users are impulsive and tend to make purchases late at night, and chatbots can provide 24/7 customer service.
M-commerce retailers are increasingly using AI-driven personalised algorithms to increase conversion rates (purchases), which have been pegged at 30 percent by some researchers. According to research, 64 percent of customers expect website pages to load in less than 4 seconds.
The online market is set to get crowded in the coming years with middle-men marketing companies, or aggregators on the internet selling stuff at inflated prices. Dropshipping schemes are picking up, eating away into the already squeezed margins of retailers selling online.
Online retailers need to offer diverse payment platform options beyond PayPal and Apple Pay or Google Wallet.
Retailers wanting to sell via smartphones will have to become smarter if they want to stay in the competition. Besides utilizing better interface and latest technology, the content also has to be cutting-edge. That means the imagery has to be of high-quality. Purchasing decisions are made based on the photographs/ videos of the product; additionally the accompanying description should be crisp, informative and cover all customer needs.
Voice activated search based apps are on offer that help shoppers based on their online purchase data. In 2016, IBM came up with a personal mobile AI shopping assistant called Macy’s on Call for Macy’s stores. Amazon is working on its own unique assistant called Mona. The future of mobile commerce seems to be moving toward a personalised shopper, a one-stop-window doing all the browsing, wishlisting and purchasing for the user.
The transaction value of global m-commerce sales is expected to be over 500 billion dollars in 2018 and it is expected to go up to 700 billion in 2019. The Asia-Pacific region has the largest online market globally. Australia’s high level of growth in this segment has played a large part in this. According to a report by eMarketer, Australia’s total online sales exceeded $32 billion in 2017.
