According to Retail Research, ecommerce is the fastest growing retail marketing in Europe and North America. And with mobile ecommerce, or mcommerce, steadily picking up pace over the past few years, as a retailer, you can’t afford to ignore the growing market of the mobile customer. In fact, Econsultancy reported that the UK retail industry is sacrificing an overwhelming £6.6bn per year due to lack of investment into its mobile offering.
So in a world where our smartphones rarely leave our sides, why is it that retailers are failing to capitalise on the mobile ecommerce revolution?
Cross-channel and omni-channel marketing play an important part when delivering a successful mobile marketing strategy. Appealing to all of your buyer personas, offering a seamless experience regardless of device or channel, is certainly a tall order. And with growing competition from retailers who continue to raise the bar with faster and easier delivery and payment options, there isn’t time for your fashion brand to stop and think about whether or not it’s going to invest in mobile, the simple answer is, you need to – if you don’t, you’ll struggle.
Research undertaken by the Centre for Retail Research (CRR), found that 66% of retailers said investment in mobile would help them drive growth and 88% said they believed they would get more visits in-store as a result of that investment. Therefore at Hit Search, we think it’s time you took your head out of the sand and started moulding your offering and customer experience around your mobile customers, before you become so far behind the competition you struggle to catch up!
Mobile should be a primary focus for any ecommerce retailer; particularly within the fashion industry. With so many high fashion and high street retailers alike, adopting and harnessing the power of social media and mobile interaction, it’s important your fashion brand takes a leaf out of their book and becomes a creative hub for its mobile customers.
It’s as much about the shopping experience for the customer, as it is about the end result, a conversion (and hopefully repeat customer!)
Confidence plays a large part in customer retention. As a customer, being able to research and shop across a variety of platforms and devices, helps create a seamless shopping experience.
Since 2014, browsing for products online using a smartphone or tablet device has been the default process for 33% of shoppers, even if they then purchase from a desktop, or from your physical store.
A mobile-first strategy should be adopted cross-channel. The graph below clearly highlights the need for an integrated mobile/in-store experience. You shouldn’t be just limiting your mobile strategy to people who shop through their mobile devices. Your mobile users might research on mobile but purchase on desktop, or even in-store. With 43.3% of the total smartphone audience surveyed using their phones in a retail store, this could be an opportunity your brand could capitalise on.
Whether it’s the use of in-store Wi-Fi to push messages to your audience with timely offers, to QR codes strategically placed around your store to highlight special offers. Whatever your idea is for connecting your smartphone audience with your store, this creative brainstorming process should perhaps become one of your brand’s priorities.
Use your thumb as a guide for any design and user experience changes you make to your site in order to make it more appealing to the mobile customer.
Visual Web Optimiser (VWO) is a fantastic CRO tool to help you truly understand user behaviour across any device or browser. Particularly worth your attention is the heat map, scroll map and area stats sections. Very useful and interesting for your brand to understand exactly which areas of the site draw your user in and which they skip right over.
Create specific mobile buyer personas. You need to create a picture in your mind of what your mobile user looks like. How do they behave? What does their buying cycl3e look like? All these questions need to be answered in order to make a start on your specifically-targeted strategy!
Extra tip: Create your buyer personas by using makemypersona.com, or, alternatively, get in touch with our digital experts and we can build them for you!
Banish the silo mentality within your organisation. We know this can be tricky but if your teams aren’t fully cooperating and on-board with your strategy, it’ll become difficult to implement it successfully. Marketing should be a business-wide philosophy, not just a function within your team.
Everyone needs to understand and contribute to your mobile goals. Getting everyone involved in the creative processes, perhaps with small incentives, can help slowly break down these barriers!
If you need a helping hand to connect your fashion brand with the mobile customer, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our in-house ecommerce experts, and find out exactly how we can help you!
