February 09, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Content Team
Consumers are using their smart phones more and more to shop online and make purchases via a mobile commerce app or a mobile optimized website. The holiday shopping season of 2009 saw a solid increase in consumers using their smart phone for comparison shopping and purchasing items. Many online retailers were prepared for the increase in mobile commerce last year, but there are still a large number of merchants not utilizing a mobile optimized website or mobile commerce app for their online storefront. Now, in 2010, many small and medium sized online businesses need to determine if they need to set up a mobile app, mobile website, or both, to help increase their reach and overall sales.
For the last few years, mobile shopping via a mobile optimized website was still difficult because of the time it took to type searches and browse the products of an online store. However, the newer iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android phones are making the process of shopping on a mobile optimized website even easier. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly common to use mobile commerce websites to browse and compare your next shopping purchase. Some online retailers do not feel it is necessary to make a unique mobile optimized website because they do not think there is significant value over their traditional website. Not only can a mobile optimized website often help your website rank better via mobile search results, it can also allow a merchant to instantly have a customized site across any mobile phone platform. If your online storefront is not optimized for mobile phones, then you should seriously consider this change for 2010.
Small and medium sized online businesses often do not have the extra budget to develop a mobile commerce app, as they need to create one for each phone platform they want to use to attract consumers. Most merchants choose the Apple iPhone first as it is the most popular among smart phones, with the largest app store in the market. However, developing an iPhone app can be tough if you’re not a developer, and it can also take weeks to find out if your app is even approved. If you have the time and resources, you should further research if you should develop an iPhone app, in addition to a mobile optimized website.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
is there a sort of internet bookmark for Mobile Webistes?’~”
mobile websites are already growing these days. pretty soon we would have tons of them.,-”
To Nathan, there is a bookmark function for mobile browsing. Just explore your mobile phone and you will see the bookmark function. By the way, may I ask what mobile brand and unit you are using, in case I can help you find it?
mobile websites will surely grow in the following years*-;