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Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from Retail Dive, an e-newsletter and website providing a 60-second bird's eye view of the latest retail news and trends.
According to a Forrester Research report from October 2015, one-third of retailers' web traffic was expected to come from phones in 2015 but only 11 percent of sales. By 2020, phones were expected to only generate 15 percent of e-commerce sales.
Why are retailers struggling with m-commerce? Some of it has to do with how users interact with their phones.
"In the early phases of mobile, [using a phone] was more of a found-time activity," says Ryan D. Matzner, director of Fueled, a digital agency. "It was something to do while you were waiting in line."
This kind of learned interaction has created certain built-in issues for m-commerce that don't exist with web commerce. "On mobile, things load slowly, and the experience is second-rate and users are less patient," he says.
While larger phone screens are helping, search and image placement on smartphones are often clumsy and shopping apps remain prone to crashing. Mobile apps also have to be scalable as new features like mobile pay arrive. From a targeting standpoint, e-mails need to be shorter and contain fewer products to make messages easier to read, load and digest on a phone.
"Recognize that mobile and desktop aren't the same," says Mr. Matzner. "On mobile, you have push notifications. When you're on desktop, you're not getting push from Tinder, text messages, all fluttering through your screen. On desktop it's harder to get distracted. But on mobile, people leave your app open and forget to come back. But we can work with that. We can send a push notification that says, 'Hey! Someone put something in the cart and left it there for 30 minutes!' or 'Hey! Something's on sale!'"
Bluetooth beacons will further help mobile devices anticipate shopping needs.
"You're going to have deep linking as part of the game, too," adds Mr. Matzner. "Like, being able to go from social media to a particular part of an app. And searchability. You'll be able to search within apps more easily and more frequently."