The holiday shopping season is the most important time of the year for many businesses, and sales are expected to rise 2.8% compared to last year.
A large part of this increase is due to the rise of mobile shopping, and 44.7% of smartphone users expect to use their device for holiday shopping in 2015, up from 29.9% last year.
With consumer shopping increasingly revolved around mobile devices, how can your business be ready for this changing type of holiday shopper?
Optimize your website, app and in-store shopping for mobile.Google recently announced that more internet searches are taking place on mobile devices than desktop, making it clear that mobile is both the future and the present.
While this is exciting news for retailers, anther survey found that only 42 percent of respondents found it easy to actually complete a purchase on a mobile device. This makes it essential to improve your mobile shopping experience.
Methods for improving mobile shopping include:
- Embracing mobile payment systems, such as Android Pay and Apple Pay
- Offering mobile discounts and deals that can only be used in-store
- Ensuring your mobile website and app offer a simple shopping and purchasing experience
- Integrating your physical store with your online and mobile experience, such as ensuring your online and in-store prices are the same, and letting users check in-store product availability from their device.
While these are challenging tasks for any business (particularly so close to the holiday shopping rush), mobile shopping will only increase beyond this year’s holiday shopping season—and consumer expectations for mobile shopping will rise as well.
