Increasing Mobile Engagement - Part 1

There are 7.1 billion people in the world and nearly a third of them are using smartphones.  This past Thanksgiving and Black Friday, nearly 80% of e-tailer site traffic came via mobile devices; smartphones and tablets.  This data clearly makes the case for mobile being undeniably important as shoppers make the transition to mobile.

As encouraging as the usage and traffic numbers are, checkout conversion rates are still relatively low compared to desktop.  With 40% of consumers stating that easier checkout on mobile would convince them to buy on mobile devices, e-tailers need to focus less on driving traffic to mobile, and focus more on increasing user engagement and creating a seamless mobile transaction experience.

Mobile is a way of life for the majority of your customers, which makes it one of the the most pivotal challenges for every organization to solve. Mobile provides the gateway and the expectation that e-tailers will learn to leverage in order to create the most personal and meaningful connection with buyers.

None of this is news to you I’m sure.  Most marketers get it. Yet for some reason, the majority of organizations continue to struggle with the implementation of a cohesive mobile approach.  The ideal approach must provide meaningful context in the user journey, be as frictionless as possible, and help orchestrate an omnichannel experience.

So what’s causing the gap between what marketers know they should be doing to drive mobile engagement compared to what their organizations are actually doing? According to IBM, 80% of marketers are attributing the gap to a variety of causes including:

1. fragmented marketing teams working in silos
2. lack of certainty about new mobile technology
3. lack of customer focus across the entire enterprise
4. many non-integrated solutions that have been implemented and put in use throughout the organization over time

Marketers will need to invest time employing a lifestyle view of mobile that goes beyond the device and takes a broader view of what “mobile” means.

While smartphones are a large part of it, it's critical to think about and understand the broader mobile ecosystem including tablets, smartwatches and other wearable devices and how consumers interact with the various channels on these devices such as email, SMS, push notifications, apps, social media, and Web.

Most importantly, marketers need a greater understanding of mobile context as it applies to both how users are interacting with your brand and where mobile fits within your broader marketing and company wide objectives.

In the next few posts, I’ll share mobile engagement strategies and best practices to help you produce more value for your customers, build brand loyalty and drive increased revenue.  Specifically, we’ll cover the following:

1. Mobile Customer Journey
2. Moments that Matter and Context & Usability
3. Orchestrating the Omnichannel Experience
4. Continuous Improvement Through Analytics