Posts Tagged ‘smartphone’

Mobile Commerce (Mcommerce) sales up 171% for the US Holiday Period 2012

17 January 2013 cybecom 0 Comments

A mobile commerce platform (Branding Brand) showed substantial increases in shopping from smartphones. The data was collected over a 35-day period from November 21 through to December 25, 2012.

The Branding Brand Mobile Commerce Index is a compilation of 84 mobile sites developed by Branding Brand for retailers across a variety of industries including apparel, health and beauty, and home goods. The Index is the largest collection of data on commerce sites specifically designed for smartphones, as opposed to non-optimized desktop sites with mobile traffic.¹

“While the year-over-year growth and traffic demonstrated the explosion in mobile as a channel, we are also seeing dramatic conversion rate improvements as a result of optimization work throughout our technology platform,” said Chris Mason, co-founder and CEO of Branding Brand.

Mcommerce – mobile shopping

The company has produced an interesting infographic that displays the key finding.

However, Mashable writes that for most retailers, mcommerce has had limited impact.

Lauren Indvik of Mashable said, “Sales of physical retail goods and services made on smartphones were $8 billion in the U.S. last year, accounting for 3% of online sales and less than 1% of total retail sales.”²

But given that smartphone take-up has only really accelerated in the last two to three years, it makes sense that it will be lagging the normal online sector. What is important is the pace of acceleration. 171% is a significant increase which is only going to continue.

Forrester, where Indvik got her data from, agree with this sentiment. Indvik also said, “Ensure that your mobile commerce site has a fast checkout solution, like PayPal Express or Checkout by Amazon. Make sure your mobile website is responsively designed so that it is optimized for the wide variety of device screen sizes on the market.”

Acknowledgements

¹ Branding Brand, (2013), “Branding Brand Mobile Commerce Index Shows Holiday Sales up 171%, Conversion up 30%“
² Lauren Indvik, (2013, January), “Forrester: Mobile Commerce to Quadruple to $31 Billion in Next 5 Years“, Mashable
Sarah Perez, (2013, January), “M-Commerce Boom Over Holidays: One-Third Of E-Commerce Traffic Was Mobile; Sales Up 171%, Conversions Up 30%“, TechCrunch

The Rise And Rise of QR Codes

06 January 2013 cybecom 0 Comments

Cybecom Contact Details QR Code

What exactly is a QR Code I hear you ask. A QR Code (or Quick Response Code) is a type of two-dimensional barcode and was first designed for the automotive industry in Japan by the Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994. The code consists of black modules (square dots) arranged in a square pattern on a white background. Various types of information can be encoded.

So your next question might be “So what! Why should i be interested in QR Codes?”. With the simplicity of the QR Code format and the growth in mobile technology, it has become super easy to store lots of information (or sometimes just a little) in a QR Code to make it easy for people to access that information. ie. With the camera of your smartphone or tablet and a free QR Code scanning app, users can very quickly scan the code and then act on that data. The best way to describe this is by way of examples. The following table highlights just a few and their use is only limited by your imagination.

Information Stored	Main Benefit/s	Where Would The Code Be Displayed?
Website Address (URL)	Customer can go straight to a specific page on your website and find out more information and/or buy the product.	Online and offline advertisements. In presentation slides. On stickers attached to cars, shop windows, etc. On products for competitions. Public transport timetable information. In newspaper articles. In art gallery next to an artwork. In parks, shopping centres, etc. as part of a virtual game. At key spots along a route for a car rally.
Business Card Information	A quick way to import full contact information into your address book.	On business cards. On websites. On any marketing material where contact information would be handy.
Asset Number And Other Relevant Details	Help track physical assets.	On stickers.
Electronic Coupons or eGift cards	Easy method for a shopper to receive benefits.	Smartphone apps.
Payment Information (Possible Future Trend)	A virtual credit card - no need to have a physical one anymore.	Smartphone banking app. Bricks-and-Mortar store shopping app.
Frequent Buyer Information	No more physical cards.	Smartphone apps. Wave code over the scanner when you shop.

And if you want to see a good example of a funny but very innovative use of a QR Code, [rokbox text=”check out this video” size=”640 310″]http://vimeo.com/21228618&autoplay=1[/rokbox] where the candidate had a very interesting way to provide his resume.

Acknowledgements: