My 5 year old daughter offered me the option of ordering on my computer when we played shops at the weekend. Apparently she has acquired ecommerce capability. She really does need to get with the times.
A new report from Pricegrabber, released 1st May suggests mobiles may becoming a viable channel for ecommerce. Over 58% of phones in the US are web-enabled & c. 10% of these have been used to purchase products or services (58% digital content, 37% computers/laptops). For iPhone users, over 56% of users reported using their device to compare prices, twice that of other Smartphone users (e.g. Blackberry). In the UK, digital content is less important, (46% made purchase in last year) but 50% of consumers purchased, computers, laptops and related equipment on their mobile.
For me this is interesting because if you have ever tried to purchase stuff outside the App Store using an iPhone, it can be very frustrating as so few sites support it effectively. To make a purchase you will have gone through some effort to get there. I would love it if I could organise our weekly grocery shop from the train, bus or even bike (a true test of simplicity!).
View while grocery shopping - mobile shopping Nirvana?
I assume it would need a useful iPhone App rather than a browser based experience to enable this effectively. Whether Tesco, Ocado, ASDA or anyone else can deliver a simple mobile experience for regular shopping, they will get my business, at least till all the others follow suit and they have to come up with the next innovation.
This fits with my recent informal survey asking for questions of our upcoming ecommerce panel where of the 30 or so responses, over 20 related to the availability of ecommerce solutions, particularly grocery shopping, on mobile devices.
38% of users in the survey report that purchasing processes taking too much time, and 28% report that purchases are ‘too difficult to complete’. It does seem though that iPhone users are in the vanguard of consumer behaviour.
It will take a while to become ubiquitous but is is coming faster than people might think. I am looking forward to hearing the views of the people that deliver that capability to hear their views tomorrow at our BLN ecommerce discussion dinner.