Mobile Commerce is small, but growing rapidly.  Merchants who sell to customers who are heavy mobile users (like teenagers), or who sell to segments amenable to mobile purchases (music, car parts, clothing) should look closely.  Here are a few statistics:  

• PayPal processed $500,000,000 in mobile payments last year
• By 2015, it expects the mobile commerce market to reach $115 billion, or 8% of total online sales
• 37% of smartphone users have made a purchase on their handsets in the last 6 months.
  Customers using smartphones purchased 12% of clothing purchased on eBay, 8% of auto parts, 7% of sporting goods and 6% of cell phones.
• The top categories for mobile commerce are: travel, computers/electronics, apparel, books/music/DVDs, office supplies, housewares and tickets.
• Less than 1/3 of retailers have a mobile strategy.

 Clearly the mobile commerce market is starting to take shape.  So how do enable your site for mobile commerce?  Some good news is that AbleCommerce itself works well through a mobile browser.  So just by using AbleCommerce, you’ve got a good start. 

 However, if you really want to optimize your site for smartphones, check out Web2Market’s Mobile Commerce plugin.  The Mobile Commerce plugin makes it easy for your customers to navigate your site using a small screen.  Web2Market has rewritten the layouts of the home, category, webpage, checkout process pages.  Here you can see the billing checkout page: 

Checkout page

 The plugin automatically detects the device, and displays either a full page, or a mobile page.  It fully integrates with AbleCommerce, so you continue to manage your site as before.  Best of all, it’s all within your site, so no additional hosting fees! 

The Mobile Commerce Plugin allows mobile devices to browse and order products from your AbleCommerce site. The plugin contains: 

• Mobile home page
• Mobile category page
• Mobile product detail page
• Mobile Login page
• Mobile Account/Member pages
• Mobile Contact page
• Mobile Basket page
• Mobile Wishlist
• Mobile Checkout – 4 step checkout process for mobile customers
• Easy Management – The AbleCommerce administration is unchanged, you continue to manage the site as you did before.
• Product Images/Icons – used throughout browsing and checkout process
• Enhanced Design – Uses customizable CSS unique to mobile browsers and uses completely custom and separate AC theme so you can make adjustments specific only to Mobile version
• Mobile browsers are detected by Javascript technology

 Want to know more?  See a video demo?  Check out their Mobile Commerce plugin page: 

http://www.web2market.com/mobile-commerce-plugin-p104.aspx

Posted in AbleCommerce 7 Partners
No Comments Yet Posted by Mike Randolph