Brands, throw your app and polish your mobile browser version!
Find on my blog useful resources to help you navigate in this new era.
Let me tell you about two use-cases I experienced recently about mobile commerce.
On January, my mum and I were eating together and someone on TV talked about a great book that change people’s live and as a friend of mine already told me about that, I just took my cellphone and bought it on Amazon because I think I will like this book. I told her “I just bought it” and she was astonished that I just bought it in twenty seconds, while she was listening what the author had to say about her book. She said “Already ? But how ? What did you do ?”. I already did it a thousand times in front of her, even sometimes with her, but she is always entertained as if it was the first time. OK, I am sure you would like to know which book changed hundred of thousands of lives ?
Another anecdote is my wife, seeing a logo she liked on Pinterest and directly bought it through her cellphone on Etsy (through clicking in Pinterest), the world has become as easy as buying with your hands. Exactly like before the computer, buying with your mouse was just an accidental event in the shopping era during the last 20 years.
The next big step is to have a dedicated, unique m-shop experience directly on web mobile browser.
These two experienced highlight the fact that today, we are already living in a mobile way of life and we do not have to wait for it to come, it is already here. But, thinking mobile doesn’t directly means thinking of creating an application and fully working on it. I think that there is a huge misconception of brands about it. Let me explain.
Almost 5 billion people with a smartphone at the end of 2017
According to Scott Steinberg’s article in Mobile Business Insights : “Statista reported that roughly 4.77 billion people are expected to be using smartphones by the end of 2017. As eMarketer has pointed out, much of mobile commerce’s growth is being driven by these devices — devices with a wide variety of forms, capabilities and operating systems.”
This is why I think that the next big step is to have a dedicated, unique m-shop experience on web mobile. Why ? As Scott Steinberg said, almost 5 billion people will own a device at the end of the year with a lot of differences among devices and I think that companies will have to focus on creating a great shopping experience directly inside the browser.
Indeed, Peter Kafka said it in Recode, the app boom is over as you don’t have to download an app anymore because it will stay on your phone for a few purchases a year and people are not grabbing it
Brands are (very) late
While some brands ask themselves if they have to create an e-commerce platform, others are only working on their m-commerce one. Companies tend to observe this trend since so many years but it is already a must-have and millenials act like this already since years and this is going fast.
Instagram opening strategy is over
Do you remember the specificity of Instagram ? They started by creating an app-only based business. Back in October 2010, it was pretty revolutionary and they focused on what mattered on their product by polishing it at most and focusing on making it awesome. Creating an app-only business made sense for Instagram because of their product that mix pictures and sharing.
Regarding e-commerce companies, this strategy cannot work anymore because people are not downloading app as easily as before and they are now regardant on which app they choose on their smartphones.
Application vs Mobile browser
I think that mobile applications are very affective, people download only application they actually use, and as the app boom is over, we make efficient downloads on our smartphones. We tend not to download application from brand we don’t know, unless it’s the only way to buy or browse the brand. And in the long run, we erase the app because it takes space and our annual cleanup tells us to do so.
Instead, when we don’t know brands and we want to see what they are selling, we just go on their website through our Chrome or Safari apps (no, it’s not even a joke) and we browse smoothly and at the end, if we want to buy, there is often a huge pain point with the form that looks like a non-adapted desktop form.
The m-commerce path
- Browsing to be aware
- Browsing a second time ; Buy a first stuff
- Browsing a third time ; Buy a second stuff
- Browsing a fourth time ; Download your app, because it is more painful to complete information another time than download it.
Applications battle is Product vs Money
You can’t compete on the application war that is being run right now as there are plenty of actors that spend billions of dollars on app download each year, the app economy will be 100 billions of dollars in 2020, according to App Annie (app market researcher).
You must focus on your product and your users’s path to find you (acquisition) then get addicted to you (retention) to attract more revenues.
Which e-commerce app have I on my smartphone ?
And which one I use ?
Clearly, there are 3 apps that I use really often : Amazon (the first by far as you understood with the first anecdote), Deliveroo (but it’s more my wife on my phone on evenings), and LeBonCoin which is a Craigslist-style French company where you can easily buy and sell stuffs (their app is well-built as it is easy to proceed).
Apps I sometimes use
I use Vente-Privée which is the French leader of private sales and propose real deals with big brands at low rates. Prime now but I keep it telling myself that it can help sometimes.
Apps I never use and will delete right after the writing of this article
BazarChic is a Vente-Privée-like but lower quality and it’s been a while I have not using it, I couldn’t figure out when was the last time…
Nespresso, hum, everybody knows Nespresso but we are not big coffee drinkers so I go to a physical shop from time to time making a big order.
Choose is a startup that helps you find what you want, I downloaded it to try but never made an order and it’s exactly what I told you, I will delete it because it is irrelevant for me to keep it.
I hope this post gave you another perspective. If you had pleasure reading it, please recommend it and subscribe to my newsletter (only a few times a year) — that would mean a lot to me.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
