The Simplest Ways to Personalize Mobile Commerce

Recent studies have shown that mobile commerce is and will become a booming industry. Currently, the majority of online shoppers make purchases from their mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets have redefined the shopping space and will continue to do so.

For the most part, consumers have embraced mobile commerce wholeheartedly. There are the benefits of accessibility, convenience and investment in future growth. If you start now, you can develop along with your clients. They already use their mobile devices for everything from listening to music, to chatting with friends and watching movies and television shows.

The only caveat to the mobile boom is retailers need to find more ways to stand out. In the beginning, it was profitable just to have a mobile commerce site. These days, if you want attention, you need to get much more personal.

Commit to Each Customer

The beauty of mobile commerce is it’s convenience and stress-free environment. You do not have to tackle crowds or wait in long lines to get what you want. So, it makes sense that this is the direction for retail. On the other hand, consumer mobile behavior is also shifting, and so are their expectations of brands and retailers.

In order to acquire more customer involvement, you have to get inside the heads of each and every one of your clients. Of course, that is easier said than done. The good news is there are steps you can take to do so. The first one is determining your preferred audience. You can start by answering these questions:

• When do mobile customers shop?
• How are they using their mobile devices to shop?
• What are mobile customers purchasing?

These are the kinds of inquiries that will help you to better understand your clients. Once you have them well defined, you can start modifying your content, products and services to fit their wants and needs.

Consumers Are In Control

Mobile use is common and mobile commerce will continue to expand. This leads to exciting prospects for getting retailers to intrigue customers by combining both the physical and digital worlds successfully and creatively. For this reason, having a thoughtful mobile strategy is imperative within the mobile commerce world.

Your marketing plan should aim to deliver value to each and every customer and not just a select group of customers. Why? Because through social media, as well as online forums, all of your customers have a voice, and they can use it if they choose. Furthermore, your site should be user-friendly, mobile-optimized and have intuitive navigation features.

Stay Ahead of Mobile Benefits

To take advantage of the mobile platform, you need to consider its key attributes: perception, portability and access. Perception is how your customers react to your product and your brand, depending on how your site is formatted. Moreover, with real time engagement, you have an improved opportunity to study your shoppers’ and prospects’ behaviors.

Another option you have at your disposal are incentives. Although you should not undercut your value proposition, consumers do want to feel they are getting the best bang for their buck. Not to mention, they can browse your competitors’ prices in a matter of minutes. This is a far cry from decades ago where a consumer might need to take days to shop around.

So, although clients do want to shop online, they want bargains. In addition, they want a payment system that is quick and easy-to-use. Also, if you can create an exclusive and customized experience from the beginning of their shopping experience to the checkout cart, even better.

Establish Relationships

In a brick-and-mortar store, customers want some semblance of a warm and inviting environment when shopping. They want to be greeted, approached with respect and shown that their time and money are appreciated. Although you cannot do this personally on a mobile site, there are still ways to improve personalization through these four methods:

• One-on-one personalization.
• Location-aware personalization.
• Profile-based personalization.
• Broadcast messaging.

However, you want to distribute these techniques in stages. You do not want to overwhelm your shopper. Also, you want them to opt-in, especially when it comes to broadcast messaging. To keep them interested, offer incentives for opting-in. These could be discounts for members or invitations to special online events.

Tailor Your Approach

Consumers are consistently barraged with content, emails and product offers all throughout their day. Even if they might be interested in several of them, the sheer number of emails they receive cause enough fatigue to keep them from looking into each of them specifically.

So, you have to take a varied approach that uses tailored content relevant to your shoppers. It would be a lot easier to send mass messages with the same content, but that would perturb your results, adversely. Keep in mind that personalized messages will take longer to curate. However, they can result in long-lasting relationships and faithful clients, which is what you want. Other effective mobile commerce strategies include:

• Strategic content scheduling.
• Determining your clients’ time zones and sending messages when it is convenient for them.
• Addressing customers by name (both by email and social media).
• Turning promotions into personal invitations.
• Segmenting content (for example using different messaging for men and women).
• Tracking modifications (A/B testing).

Personalizing your mobile commerce site is all about maximizing your opportunities with current and future clients. They already want what you have, but to keep them, you need to ensure they continue to seek out your products.

Because the virtual world can feel cold, indicating that you treat all of your consumers like individuals is a powerful strategy. They have millions of sites they can browse. So, you should analyze their user data in order to guide them better. If you help your clients browse less, by offering targeted suggestions, it becomes a win-win for you and your shoppers.

Lastly, no e-commerce business will last without a strong brand at its core. This means delivering great products, articulating your message and aligning your company with influencers who are happy to convey your message. It also includes creating a memorable shopping experience with augmented options, improved services and fair prices.