In the first quarter of 2023, users from all over the world downloaded 27 billion applications from Google Play, including those for online shopping.

That is why the rise of online retail is closely related to mobile commerce. Its capabilities allow brands to quickly establish communication with their customers, ensure a high level of personalization, and keep shopping accessible 24/7.

In this article, we will dive deeper into the essence of mobile commerce and overview the trends marketers can expect in the upcoming years.

What is Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce is a business model that involves selling goods and services online using a mobile device. Today, consumers rely on gadgets more than ever, and Insider Intelligence predicts that within the next five years, mobile devices will become the most popular channel for shopping online.

There are three main types of mCommerce:

• mobile shopping;
• mobile banking;
• mobile payments.

The main feature of mCommerce is constant and comfortable access to online shopping. If you want to place an order, just click on the mobile app icon and enter your personal data. The only condition for interaction for brand interaction with a shopper is a stable Internet connection.

eCommerce vs mCommerce: What's the Difference

The rising popularity of smartphones and other gadgets created a marketing segment with a clearly defined target audience that interacts with online brands through mobile applications.

Mobile commerce is an eСommerce direction that online stores and retailers often prioritize since a mobile-first strategy helps them keep up with the competition.

Important features of mCommerce are speed and accessibility because laptops and computers are inconvenient to use on the go, making quick and efficient transactions almost impossible. Also, mobile commerce offers a wider range of payment methods than eCommerce, including mobile wallets and contactless payments.

Mobile Commerce Relevance and Key Advantages

Mobile commerce is an important element of a multi-channel strategy for business interaction with customers. Today, companies must provide a seamless user experience, allowing customers to communicate with the company offline and online using different devices and channels.

By the end of 2022, mCommerce sales reached $3.56 billion, which once again confirms the relevance of this channel. With a simplified checkout process, personalized messages, and convenient online transactions, customers are more eager to make purchases using mobile devices.

Below are the key benefits of mCommerce for businesses:

• Wide possibilities for marketing offer personalization.
• An additional sales channel that can bring a new loyal audience — mobile users.
• Mobile analytics will help you gain new customer insights, identify patterns and learn user behavior, review mobile transaction history, and help predict future customer decisions.
• An ability to reach a wider audience and increase sales.
• mCommerce provides convenience to users, allowing them to quickly make online purchases anywhere and anytime without a computer or laptop.

2023-2023 Mobile Commerce Main Trends

Let's consider the trends that are relevant in 2023 and, most likely, will remain popular in the next year.

One-Click Purchase

The fewer clicks the user needs to make during the transaction, the more likely it will be successful. That is why online stores implement the "Buy in one click" feature instead of the classic order form or an addition to it. As an option, you can implement this functionality using widgets.

The Royal Sleep children's furniture online store encourages its customers to save time and fill out the order form, where it is enough to enter the name, email, and phone number.

After filling out the form, the delivery information is specified by the company manager, who contacts the client by phone number.

One-click shopping stimulates and encourages customers to make impulsive purchases, which can significantly boost sales.

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing combines various customer communication channels into a single system. Its main principle is an integrated approach, with a focus on the interaction channel and traffic being shifted to the customer’s needs.

Following this tactic, Starbucks combines mobile app information with offline data, prioritizing convenience for customers. For personalized communication with the audience, the brand uses different channels within a single system: email, abandoned cart notifications, instant messenger, and widgets. Starbucks also offers its customers a loyalty program and encourages users with bonuses regardless of the channel they use to make a purchase.

First, the company identifies the strongest points of customer interaction, after which it creates trigger workflows involving different channels.

Neural Networks in mCommerce: Visual Search

Neutral networks can recognize and describe images in photos, translate texts, and interpret natural language. So, visual search is one of the most promising ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) in eCommerce. ASOS online store uses it in a StyleMatch mobile app.

To find the necessary item in the product range, customers need to download an image from their phone, and StyleMatch will offer a similar product from the ASOS catalog. This way, the brand reaches more potential clients and recommends clothes or accessories that are relevant to their requests.

AI can suggest similar or complementary products. When used in mobile commerce, it encourages customers to use the app, searching for the necessary items again and again. This is one of the reasons why AI technology is frequently used in customer retention.

Augmented Reality (AR)

AR is a technology that allows for adding a layer of virtual objects onto the real world, using special devices, for example, AR glasses or mobile gadgets.

IKEA Place is a prominent example of using augmented reality in mobile commerce. With the help of a mobile app, IKEA customers can virtually place 3D models of furniture into their home interior. If the furniture fits into it, buying it instantly without leaving a mobile app is possible.

IKEA Place has streamlined purchase decision-making and simplified the ordering process. In 2022, the number of its active users reached 8.5 million.

How to Develop an Effective Mobile Commerce Strategy: 6 Useful Tips

Optimize Your Website Speed

Almost half of mobile users leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. People who have a negative experience of interaction with the site are 62% less likely to buy products of this brand in the future.

Gather Customer Feedback

Customer feedback allows you to understand what your customers are thinking about your business, as well as better understand their needs. Thanks to their opinions, the company can analyze and improve the user experience.

To encourage customers to leave reviews, you can offer them discounts, loyalty points, or free shipping. A reward can significantly boost the speed and improve the quality of the response because customers will understand that their opinion really matters.

To allow users to quickly and seamlessly leave reviews from their mobile devices, integrate relevant modules into your app or website. Use simple and convenient formats like one-tap ratings, emoticons, sliders, or multiple-choice questions instead of full-text fields. For example, collecting customer feedback is easy with Yespo widgets.

You can send relevant and personalized reminders or prompts to your customers through push notifications, emails, and SMS, still, don't abuse these mobile marketing tools.

Leverage Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing allows you to communicate with the customers in a channel and at a time that is convenient for them. For example, if a user does not respond to an offer in one channel, you can always communicate with them through another. Also, an omnichannel approach helps to increase customer loyalty and effectively manage the marketing budget because you can stop sending your messages in a channel where the user is inactive.

When a customer interacts with a brand across multiple touch points and channels, it increases audience trust and the likelihood of making a purchase. According to research, such buyers have a 30% higher lifetime value.

Provide Personalized Recommendations

Use information from different channels to customize personalized product messages, and add product recommendations and related accessories that might interest your customers. AI algorithms allow you to suggest products that are most often purchased together to increase average order value, session length, and browsing depth. In this way, you can promote different assortment groups and increase the frequency of purchases, building a loyal audience at once.

According to statistics, 45% of buyers are more likely to purchase on websites that use product recommendation blocks.

Implement Behavioral Segmentation

User behavior analysis is one of the most important ecommerce trends and it helps unite subscriber groups and create separate marketing strategies for each of them. For example, you can segment customers based on product usage frequency, custom events, benefits they seek from a product or service, and brand loyalty and send them relevant messages and offers.

Another advantage of behavioral segmentation is the rational budget allocation. When a company understands the behavior of its customers, it can find the most profitable segments and communication channels to optimize resource usage.

Create a Safe Space for Your Shoppers

If the user is confident that their transactions and personal data are well protected, their trust in the brand increases significantly. That is why the positive attitude of customers towards an eCommerce site can be significantly improved with the help of security service icons.

At the same time, requiring full prepayment, multiple confirmations, and a lengthy ordering process can reduce satisfaction and trust.

How to Automate mCommerce Marketing Campaigns with Yespo CDP

Marketing automation helps improve communication with users and makes brand promotion more effective.

Yespo is an omnichannel CDP (Customer Data Platform) that centralizes the collection of customer data from various sources and monitors the behavior of each user in real time in all connected channels. The platform allows you to create complete profiles of users (Single Customer Views) and reach out to each of them automatically. You can deliver personalized offers in a timely manner and quickly configure omnichannel workflows, building a loyal audience and increasing the overall efficiency of your business.

Below are the main Yespo capabilities for mobile marketing automation:

• In-app messages that grab users' attention, help attract new customers, announce important events, and drive sales.
• Email, SMS, and Viber messages, and push notifications that can be involved in omnichannel communication.
• Personalized product recommendations based on artificial intelligence algorithms to increase the likelihood of purchase and, consequently, an average order value.
• Advanced segmentation, which allows you to deeply personalize messages, select a relevant audience segment for a specific offer and increase the conversion rate.
• SDK (Software Development Kit) that improves application capabilities, deepens customer relationships and personalized user experience. The SDK includes API methods for tracking events, enriching customer profiles, and sending messages to mobile app users.

Yespo comes with the ultimate functionality for omnichannel interaction, but if necessary, other systems can be integrated into the platform.

Conclusion

Companies that pay attention to optimizing their sites and applications for mCommerce can quickly attract mobile shoppers and provide them with a seamless experience across all devices. It also provides businesses with important information about customer behavior and preferences, allowing them to better adjust product offers and marketing strategies.

Omnichannel communication, integration with artificial intelligence, one-click ordering, relevant in-app notifications, product recommendations, and other tools provide users with a personalized shopping experience and help businesses stay competitive in today's market. You are welcome to get all these benefits at once with Yespo CDP!

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