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M-commerce report urges retailer improvements

Thursday, July 8, 2010 - 09:34 by Simon Crisp

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A study of the mobile shopping habits of UK consumers has found that many are far from pleased with the current experience of shopping online using a mobile phone.

A poll conducted by YouGov and commissioned as part of the Brandbank M-commerce report has concluded that just four per cent of mobile users have been satisfied with the process of buying products via a networked mobile phone.

A fifth of the 2255 respondents said that they were smartphone users and of this proportion 81 per cent said that they had shopped online using their mobiles in the past. This drops down to just 15 per cent amongst those who do not use smartphones.

Nearly half of all smartphone users took advantage of browser-based shopping, relying on the native software to get them to a retailer's site and to make a purchase. 34 per cent said that they made use of their mobiles to compare the prices of goods online and 28 per cent used location-based services to pinpoint the location of local high street stores.

The power of the smartphone app was demonstrated in the report, as 26 per cent of respondents said that they had made in-app purchases with retailers, ensuring their ability to carry out safe shopping online by contacting the retailer directly.

Despite the positive news that smartphones are encouraging M-commerce, many users reported that their online retail experience was less than satisfactory, which is likely to dissuade the user from further visits to a given retailer.

Excessive load times and hard to read text which requires constant zooming were amongst the most significant issues cited by respondents. However, many complained that having to input details into vast forms using mobile phones was a real turn-off.

A quarter of respondents said that if they were dissatisfied with a retailers mobile site they would never return, highlighting the importance of easy to use sites that offer safe shopping online in a mobile environment.