Mobile Ecommerce - Are you Missing Out?

Interesting stats came from the Christmas period from Pull US client’s ecommerce sites. The data seems to support a view that Pull Digital are developing that our client’s don’t necessarily need mobile websites – but, rather, sites that look and work well on mobile devices as well as computers. For one client in particular; 5% of revenue in the three months leading to Christmas came from mobile devices. Of that, 82% came from the iPad, 15% from the iPhone, and 3% from the Android platform.

Our conclusion is that while some big e-tailers may benefit from diverting mobile visitors to a mobile-specific site, as we go forward, the benefits to retailers in doing this may become doubtful. The mobile device makers have beaten the web developers to it in creating devices capable of rendering and placing orders on sites built often several years ago, and optimised for IE 4.0 for instance. In other words, very few sites have got smaller, but mobile device screens have got an awful lot bigger.

Ecommerce site owners therefore should be focusing on making sure their sites format well for smaller devices, and avoid using Flash for instance rather than rush to build mobile sites.