M-commerce performance survey ranks retailers

Saturday, October 9, 2010 - 15:35 by

A new survey into the performance of various retailers who have entered the m-commerce market has concluded that Play.com is currently topping the charts in terms of service capabilities and ease of use.

The study conducted by eDigitalResearch, gave each eligible retailer a percentage-based score and with 89.6 per cent, it was Play.com that defeated all comers. These points were awarded for an easy to understand site navigation system, a comprehensive basket for product review prior to purchase and a simplistic payment approval platform.

Marks & Spencer will also have reason to celebrate as, with a score of 86.8 per cent, it entered the charts just behind Play.com only five months after its m-commerce site launched.

Amazon was bumped into third position according to the rules of this study and although it did not score quite as highly as its peers it was marked out for the implementation of an advanced product search tool.

Marks & Spencer's m-commerce site gained approval because the information listed about each product was detailed and the process of moving around the site was painless.

Marks & Spencer was seen as something of an anomaly amongst the other top flight m-commerce providers, because, unlike Play.com and Amazon, it operates on the high street as well as in the world of safe shopping online. Other high street retailers did not make it anywhere near as high in the rankings.

eDigitalResearch's Chris Russell, said that m-commerce was starting to change consumer shopping trends in the UK, perhaps to the same degree that the arrival of online shopping achieved in the 1990s.

Mr Russell did point out that some issues were still common among fledgling m-commerce sites, including inadequate space for total payment card information entry. He expects to see ongoing work addressing these problems, as a greater amount of competition enters the m-commerce market, to make safe shopping online possible from any location.<