When it comes to how top e-tail sites perform when the shopper is visiting with a mobile device rather than a personal computer, the Amazon and Apple online stores are clear leaders, according to research by customer experience analytics firm ForeSee.
As I reported a few weeks back, those two companies do really well overall when it comes to customer satisfaction with their e-tail environment, but satisfaction with Avon’s online shopping experience suffers when you factor in the mobile experience, according to the research firm.
Here are companies that earn almost the same level of customer satisfaction for both their mobile retail shopping experience and the overall Web shopping experience. I am citing the top seven companies where the scores (on a 100-point scale) are within two points of each other. You’ll notice that Apple actually gets a HIGHER score when mobile is factored in the equation. I am listing the scores in descending order of the mobile experience rating.
- Apple.com, 85 points for mobile and 83 points for Web
- Dell.com, 78 points for mobile and 80 points for Web
- Netflix.com, 77 points for mobile and 79 points for Web
- BestBuy.com, 76 points for mobile and 78 points for Web
- Staples.com, 76 points for mobile and 78 points for Web
- Toysrus.com, 74 points for mobile and 75 points for Web
- Blockbuster.com, 73 points for mobile and 75 points for Web
You’ll notice that Amazon isn’t included on that top five list. That’s because even though it gets an 84 score in satisfaction for the mobile experience it offers, that is four points less than the 88 that it received in satisfaction for the Web experience.
The reason all this matters, of course, is because people are starting to use their smartphones, media tablets and other computers to handle more everyday tasks. During the past severa months and especially during the just-ended holiday shopping season, mobile shopping became much more of a concern for innovative and leading edge retailers.
Another company that increasingly follows retail trends, IBM, has reported that approximately 18.3 percent of all the traffic to online retail sites on Christmas Day 2011 came from a mobile device. Consider that Foresee believes that 38 percent of all Web shoppers are now using mobile phones or other devices to access retail mobile retail information. Here are some mobile retail demographics in a graphic that Foresee has cooked up:
Said ForeSee President and CEO Larry Freed:
“As the adoption of smartphones increases, more consumers are using them to access retailer Websites. More and more, there is expectation that companies will address the mobile environments in ways that are effective and user-friendly. Mobile commerce is still relatively new and there is a lot of room for innovation and improvement.”
Which means that if your company expects to continue leading the way in online sales, it could find itself at a disadvantage if it has not optimized its site content for those visitings with the much smaller screens and bandwidth limitations of many mobile devices. The main things you need to worry about are shoppers who use their mobile devices to comparison-shop or check out product inventory questions. But a growing percentage of shoppers (15 percent at Foresee’s last count) are buying products from online Web sites with their mobile phones, smartphones or other mobile devices. That is up from 11 percent one year ago.
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