by Shin Park
With the rising popularity of ecommerce and mobile payment options, it’s no wonder that retail companies are now switching over to the digital world as their main storefront. In places such as China and England, ecommerce makes up almost 18% of total retail purchases. This newly found change and available technology is great and holds many different possibilities.
The online purchasing intent and growth has skyrocketed within the past years, taking its place in everyday life as a commodity. With this change, more and more companies are starting to be innovative in their digital storefront. Namely, they’ve begun to change the ecommerce scene in the mobile landscape.
Before Ecommerce Mobile Payments
Before the rise in ecommerce, there was the rise in cellular devices. No one seems to be able to remember a time when the phone wasn’t a critical part of their lives. That’s what is happening to ecommerce. Amazon has become a titan in the industry strictly due to its foresight in where ecommerce was headed and their innovation to include different ways of paying. Some companies are still not taking the initiative to change the mobile landscape themselves, being content with how they are now. What they don’t realize is how much business they are missing out on.
Current Mobile Payments
Now we can see the shift starting from ecommerce on the desktop to mobile. Countless companies are seeing most of their customers coming to their sites through mobile devices. This means that their mobile site needs to be on par, if not better, to its desktop counterpart in accessibility, usability, and simplicity. This in theory seems simple, but there are a lot of parts that go into creating a site on mobile. Mobile is slower, smaller, and harder to navigate than a desktop. Companies are still trying to figure out the best ways to organize their site in a way that can overcome all of these obstacles.
With platforms constantly trying to make the experience not only easy for the user but for businesses as well, there is going to be a lot of newfound competition. Some merchants have resorted to using PayPal as their only merchant processing due to high merchant processing fees. Studies find that people tend to favor familiar faces such as PayPal which might be one of the reasons that companies are finding it hard to break into this industry.
Mobile devices are so highly thought of that even Google has stepped in to help the user experience. Now, if a site is known for taking too long to load, Google will penalize them with a “slow to load” warning, exclusion from ads, and lower SEO ranking. This is a motivational factor for many companies to up their game in mobile versions.
Future Of Mobile Payments
The future of mobile payments is not set in stone. Companies are constantly coming up with different ideas and solutions to problems we didn’t even know existed. ApplePay and GooglePay was only the first step. Now there are hundreds of different methods and solutions. Starbucks took it to the next level with their highly successful Starbucks App and are trying to monetize that even more with their own Starbucks credit card. Distributed commerce lets us buy things write off an article not related to the actual product’s site. Venmo and Zelle lets us send and receive money through apps on our phone. Amazon has a one click pay on their app. The limits are endless and the future is unsure.
To keep up with the latest improvements and innovations in mobile payments, make sure to visit Mobile Payments Conference this year August 22-24, 2018. The mobile landscape is changing and you can’t afford to be behind.