How Mobile Commerce Is Impacting On The SEO Industry

March 22, 2013 Web traffic

Image via CrunchBase

In the last few years, there have been more and more consumers purchasing smartphones in order to access the internet. However, not only that, but it seems that people are also using their iPads and general tablets to access various information on the internet. This shift has caused many businesses to rethink their SEO and ecommerce web design marketing strategies and to take steps into ensuring they can “grab” as many of these customers as they possibly can. It’s no longer a society that stays in front of their laptops looking for things online, but a society that’s getting more and more flexible and mobile.

Smartphones and Tablets Are Far from Peaking

Anyone who walks outside in a big city will notice there are plenty of individuals who own a tablet or a smartphone. Just by seeing someone using both of their hands to hold and type will signal that they are basically using a mobile device. However, not everyone is actually using a smartphone.
Statistics show that only 53% of mobile phone users use a smartphone as their main device, according to the latest figures from comScore. In total, there are a total of two hundred and thirty four million mobile phone users who are aged 13 and above, which means there are still more than one hundred and ten million people using a regular phone. However, good news lies ahead as more than half of the phone users own a smartphone. This shows the path towards a society in which everyone uses a smartphone is going to be an easy one to tread on.

In the least three years, tablets have had a massive climb with over forty million units being sold. Compared to smartphones, which got to this number in nine years, this is a massive ascension. There are dozens of options for prospective buyers and this can only mean the increase in tablets will just keep on growing. However, before saturation, there is still a very long way to go.

It’s also true that both of these devices drive the market towards where it’s currently heading, but each of them is quite different in terms of functions and what people are using them for. For instance, people using smartphones disrupt the old fashioned brick and mortar buying process and this doesn’t mean that it results in a direct conversion. At the same time, tablet users will most of the time use them at home, in the late hours of the day, resulting in an increased number of transactions.

Mobile Purchases May Be Ready to Accelerate

Individuals love the attractive pricing, comfort and convenience digital commerce affords. However, it seems that their mobile buying activity didn’t manage to catch up to their full usage of this new media. Truth be told, it only managed to represent a minimal percentage of the global electronic commerce activity in the last two years. Based on statistics provided by comScore, only 10% of online retail sales in the third quarter of 2012 were on mobile devices.
With that being said, it seems that the snowball effect of mobile usage is catching speed and soon there will be a massive wave of mobile phones and devices in general purchased and used by individuals all across the world. What does this mean for the mobile market? A huge rise in sales and profits of course meaning businesses are well advised to take notice and align their processes as a result.

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