On the heels of our post earlier today regarding a panel discussion at the eTail 2010 summit over mobile apps vs. the mobile Web when it comes to a mobile commerce strategy, Adobe has published a new survey that should shed some light on the debate.
Adobe’s “Scene7 Rich Mobile Commerce Survey” was conducted from July 6 to July 23, 2010, to identify businesses’ strategic and tactical plans for mobile commerce over the next year. The survey received 446 responses from representatives at leading enterprises worldwide – with most coming from North America. Of the respondents, it found that 80 percent of companies were planning, or had already deployed a mobile website, compared to the 8 percent of respondents that were interested in applications.
Granted, Adobe has a vested interest in the mobile Web over mobile apps — as its Flash technology is more prevalent and accepted there — but the survey still sheds an interesting light. The survey uncovered four key areas of focus for businesses’ mobile strategies: promotions, commerce, product information and branding. Seventy-five percent of respondents named promotions as the core of their mobile strategy, validating the mobile channel as an important method to drive traffic and support multi-channel commerce.
“Multi-channel shoppers tend to purchase more; therefore, companies must effectively engage customers by delivering consistent, rich experiences across all channels – including mobile – to maintain and fuel current double-digit e-commerce industry growth rates,” said Sheila Dahlgren, senior director of product marketing at Adobe. “The survey results demonstrate the opportunities that exist for companies to fully leverage rich visualization features to improve their emerging mobile presences and drive cross-channel sales.” Here’s some other interesting tidbits from the survey:
- More than 55 percent of respondents cited full-screen image zoom and videos as indispensable viewing features for driving conversion
- In addition, 96 percent of respondents asserted the most effective visual merchandising features were catalogs & brochures, alternative images, and zoom & pan
- While only 18 percent of respondents currently utilize rich visual merchandising features for mobile commerce, up to 81 percent of respondents cited plans to deploy these features, thus implying richer mobile experiences will be created and offered over the next 12 months.