Are we ready for M-Commerce?
The December 2009 RIS News declared 2010 as "THE YEAR of M-Commerce." While I’m amazed by how fast this issue has come to the front burner of industry and retailer discussions, I'm still confused over how long it will take for us to figure out the best usages for it.
For sure, the M-Commerce opportunity for retailers represents one of the largest upside sale opportunities seen in a while. The great thing about a mobile device is that a consumer is highly unlikely to leave home without it. This offers retailers the ability to stay in continual contact with their consumer while trying to build a long term, strong and profitable relationship
The biggest questions in my mind are: how will the technology manifest itself? What will the consumer accept? How will the occasional slow download speed affect performance and consumer impression? The mobile savvy consumer will certainly not tolerate slow applications and speed therefore the risk for retailers to disappoint their customers is high.
For now, much of the focus seems to be on delivering cross-promotion type of applications such as coupons or basic lookup's such as SKU's and stock statuses. The larger, but more challenging frontier, is trying to use mobile as a true transaction platform. For my money, this is what will lead to the greatest upside. The impact here to change the competitive landscape is as great as the Internet was.
Coming into NRF, tekservePOS (and myself) will be in booth #320. As we move past 2009 and into 2010, I'm filled with optimism and looking forward to the new retail world as we know it. NRF 2010 promises many great discussions, trends and new product announcements. Please stop by our booth, I'd be happy to meet you or, contact us to make an appointment to discuss how tekservePOS can you reduce costs AND, increase efficiencies!
Happy holidays!
John Pruban
President, tekservePOS
One challenging issue will be the stability and overall performance of the mobile platform. The consistent delivery of content at a speed that is satisfactory will be difficult to manage given the variables in a mobile environment but necessary to win mobile buyers. We all have realized the improvements in online experiences from our desktop PC and the mobile environment will be similarly challenged. The typical web site response time from a traditional desktop is sub 2.0 seconds while reportedly mobile pages averaged around 3.7 seconds. In some cases the response times were measured at 6 seconds. I don't know about you but I just left the store! In order for M-commerce to be a part of my shopping experience the platform must consistently perform ta a high level. The retailers that put web performance management high on the priority list this year will win my mobile shopping business.