Many online shoppers now find products or discover brands on mobile devices, and use mobile search or mobile apps for social media. This trend toward mobile-friendly shopping inspiration may suggest that mobile advertising and content marketing could have a significant impact on a store’s ecommerce sales.
“It used to be that shoppers would thumb through catalogs or stare longingly at the holiday window displays,” wrote Google Retail Industry Director Julie Krueger in an October 2016 Think with Google article. “But mobile is now the super shopper’s go-to-source for inspiration. Sixty-four percent of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile search for ideas about what to buy before heading into stores.”
Krueger’s article specifically addresses holiday sales and a “new breed” of consumer “super shoppers” who are both mobile savvy and open to new products. But the trend — the idea of using a smartphone to discover a product or store — may be applicable to more than just holiday so-called super shoppers.
Mobile device usage is still growing significantly and it makes good sense that as shoppers become more dependent on smartphones generally, they would also become more dependent on mobile for specific things like shopping inspiration. “Mobile is their muse,” as Krueger put it.
Mobile Platform for Product Discovery
There have been many surveys, polls, and reports that support the idea that mobile devices play a role in helping shoppers find interesting things to buy.
As an example, Tapbuy, a mobile optimization platform, reported that some 79 percent of millennials surveyed said “they have discovered new brands, products or services on their smartphones.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers, a London-based professional services company, reported in 2016 that 62 percent of shoppers scout for products on mobile devices before making a buying decision. That’s up some 18 percent from PwC’s 2015 findings.
Something like 59 percent of smartphone users research items on mobile before making an ecommerce buying decision, according to a Huffington Post report.
Shoppers are using mobile devices, particularly smartphones, to find products, locate product reviews, and comparison shop. Often, those shoppers will decide to make a purchase, be it in-store or online, based on what they find.
Mobile, then, is an important platform for product discovery. But actual content — in search, on retail sites, and in social media — is the deal maker.
Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/132111-Shoppers-Relying-on-Mobile-friendly-Content