The internet ecommerce marketplace continues to boom, driven in large part by the exponential emergence of mobile technology.

DENVER, CO – eCommerce, that ever-emerging virtual retail marketplace that has touched the lives of nearly everyone, is poised to nearly double its sales in just the seven years from 2009 through 2015, according to a recent study from eMarketer, an internet research and statistical service. Sales online in the U.S. topped $144 billion in 2009, the firm said with confirmation from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the projection is that a whopping $269.8 billion in goods will be purchased over the internet in 2015.

Ecommerce remains a small percentage of overall retail sales in the country, but it is growing at double the overall rate, statistics show. And this doesn’t even take into account the people who still buy at a physical retail outlet – say a car dealer, or Target – but use the internet as a research tool to home in on their purchasing options. In other words, even large national department stores and local shops find an ever-increasing need to have a web presence to stay competitive with or without a web-shopping portal.

What’s fascinating about the eMarketer report is that among the many drivers of ecommerce sales gains is mobile ecommerce; that is, people using their mobile devices – smart phones, pads, laptops, etc. – are increasingly using their walk-around technology as a purchase medium.

While the internet in general is quickly becoming the launch-pad of commerce in the U.S., the excitement is in the mobile space where thousands of new “apps” are created seemingly daily, many of them aimed directly at easing purchases of goods by mobile device users.

What this says is that anyone selling goods or services – or for that matter featuring products for research and sales purposes – online are missing a huge and quickly-growing marketplace if they don’t have a mobile ecommerce strategy in place. 

There are many mobile devices on the market today, of course, but the buzz since smart mobile technology was launched in the last several years has been with Apple. The company’s iconic iPhone, which is just now launching its new iPhone 4s, could be in the hands of some 100 million people by the end of this year, with Apple holding on to something like just 30% of the overall smartphone market. The iPad has also set the world on fire in its two-year tenure, with estimates approaching sales in the several millions of units.

The key challenge in the mobile market for online sales websites is that the mobile space is such a moving target. It’s really only bee a short time – a matter of a few years – when marketers began discussing the challenges of scaling existing websites to fit the screen size and use patterns of smartphones, and since that time mobile technology continues to leap forward every few months. And it’s not just in the screen sizes; one planning to attach the mobile sales channel constantly has to address connection speeds, gigabyte data capacities, and users who begin a contact on one device and then continue to complete their transactions on another. This multiple-device use pattern – iPhone to iPad to laptop or desktop – presents device communications and sharing capabilities that continue to evolve.

Then there’s the whole app marketplace. Apps are, essentially, shortcuts created and installed on mobile devices to speed and ease contact/communications between the mobile user and his/her popular web destinations. And just about everyone – retailers, e-retailers, news sites, weather channels, ad infinitum – are creating apps they hope mobile users will download and that will strengthen the relationship between user and provider.

So rather than just jumping into the mobile space as a kind of knee-jerk reaction to all of the buzz, smart marketers are planning their strategy to have a competent, winning approach to the mobile technology marketplace on Day 1 and for the ever-changing future.

Here are some Tips to Build an Effective Mobile Technology Strategy:

• Mobile goals – the best place to begin is to draw in all company stakeholders – senior management, IT team (or vendor), sales, content, and marketing – and set an overall vision of what the enterprise would like to accomplish as it relates to mobile technology. This will help set up the game plan, step-by-step, and in the capitalization of each step.
• Departmental synergy – one of the biggest mistakes enterprises make in the entire technology arena is to leave the development to the IT team and then just lay it in the lap of the business departments which will use it and interface with constituencies. Involve all pertinent departments/people in each and every step so that by launch of every step everyone is on the same page.
• Customer/user research – customer profiles are probably already part of the enterprise’s data base, but do they include anything that would relate to mobile technology? Age demographics are helpful and can be used for some broad-based assumptions, but the need will be to drill down customer and target customer data to more clearly understand mobile device penetration, multiple device penetration, and their use of mobile devices (e.g. are they shopping by smartphone, pad, etc.)
• Competitive analysis – what are direct competitors doing in the mobile space? Analyze what works and what doesn’t seem to work for them. Imitation, especially of success, is the sincerest form of flattering one’s own bottom line. Knowing the competition will enable an enterprise to create a unique selling proposition of its own.
• Focus on user experience – this is all very high-tech, of course, but if the ultimate user/visitor is unhappy with the way it works on any of his/her devices, time and expense have been wasted. Remember: studies show that users are not wedded to one device, but rather start a communication on a smartphone, switch to a pad or laptop at a coffee shop, and then finish on a laptop or desktop when they arrive home, or some combination of these steps. That means a critical focus on APIs – application-programming interfaces – which allow software of one system to seamlessly communicate with the software on other systems, and vice versa. 
• Plan for today and tomorrow – everyone can figure out what the devices, sites and apps are at any given moment and design a mobile strategy to meet those needs. The trick is to design a process that will maintain the momentum of that strategy when – not if – the devices and the apps change. Build in applications that continuously test content  and presentation in many different formats and can adapt to changing communications between devices and platforms as they change.
• Analytics and optimization – a system needs to be in place right from the start that analyzes all mobile usage data. This will assist in optimization as strengths are accentuated and weaknesses overcome or eliminated.
• Roadmap to success – map out everything in advance, and continue to meet with all stakeholders as plans emerge and strategies roll out, and be prepared to remap, remap, remap as needs arise – as they surely will.

Obviously, for the technology-related aspects of the strategy, IT team members or IT vendors will be the go-to people in defining what is necessary and implementing the technology aspect. But everyone – including customers – has to be involved in the creation of a plan and its step-by-step implementation, and changes along the way, or it won’t work.

The key is to plan, map, re-plan, and remap, and don’t jump to conclusions. Doing a mobile strategy right the first time may not be completely doable, so you adjust. Really messing it up out of the chute could be a disaster.

Unleaded Software, the West’s premier website design and development agency, with a specialized focus on ecommerce, has all of the IT expertise to be an IT team member or to assist any IT department in implementing a successful mobile ecommerce strategy. And within the Unleaded Group we also have all of the content and marketing expertise to be a great asset as well. Call 855-UNLEADED (865-3233) for complete details.