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Like most, I reach for my smartphone when I have a moment to spare. Thirty seconds is enough to check my email or visit my favorite websites to see what’s new or on sale. A minute can be enough to complete a purchase when I’ve made a decision.
Found moments like these are critical for retailers and brands to reach customers — but they represent a one-time shot. Engage the customer now, or lose him forever.
Marketing strategies depend on reaching customers where they are, quickly and with something relevant. Nailing that strategy will set any brand ahead of the pack.
Retailers aren’t just competing with other retailers for customers’ attention. They’re competing with everything else customers could do with their time. You want customers to use found moments for mobile shopping, but the experience must be fun and fast-paced to upstage “Flappy Bird.”
Typically, there’s a window of only a few seconds to make an impression. Your site’s responsiveness sets the stage. If your page takes three or more seconds to load, 57 percent of shoppers will abandon your site. At peak times, delays cause more than 75 percent of consumers to leave a site for a competitor’s.
As your customer’s found moments run out, checkout also has to be easy. If your visitor doesn’t buy now, he may spend the money on something else or buy from a competitor. Many times, that means Amazon. In fact, a recent study found 44 percent of product searches begin at Amazon.
Mobile shopping happens everywhere now — it’s impulse buying on steroids. An overwhelming number — more than 90 percent — of smartphone owners use their devices when shopping.
Purchases also increasingly originate from social media. At Mobify, we measured a 29 percent increase in mobile purchases attributed to social media from April 2015 to May 2016.
As you create a mobile marketing campaign, consider these strategies to make the most of your chance to engage your customers:
Tailor your messages to what’s important to the customer right now — based on his location or behavior, not his age or gender.
We’ve found 61 percent of customers want offers targeted at them where they are, and 56 percent want offers tailored to their interests and needs.
A notification or personal promotion that customers can act on immediately converts to a sale more often than an offer to be used later.
For Android users visiting its mobile site, eXtra began sending push notifications that resembled native app notifications and worked even if the device’s browser wasn’t running. The company saw a 12 percent click-through rate. Within six weeks, eXtra noticed customers who opted to receive push notifications returned four times more often and spent twice as much time on the site.
While technical metrics such as page speed are important, consider how long it takes shoppers to find what they want and check out.
The average checkout flow contains 5.08 steps, and 50 percent of sites ask for the same information more than once. Retailers with checkout processes of fewer than five steps are likelier to see more purchases.
To counter the trend of abandoned shopping carts, Adidas has removed all distractions. Their checkout process is short and self-contained, without pop-ups, navigation bars, or ads taking shoppers’ eyes off the prize.
It’s simple: The more shareable your content is, the more people will share it. Providing rich content and media — images, quotes, or infographics — improves the sharing experience.
For example, if you’re a luxury fashion brand, you probably have many loyal customers. Each customer has friends who may not know your brand. Create content or offers that customers can easily share on social media and other channels. Use tools such as ShareThis for blog content and Click to Tweet to share articles in seconds.
You only get one chance to make a first impression and engage mobile shoppers. How can your brand use these strategies to lock in a lifelong customer?
Peter McLachlan is co-founder and chief product officer at Mobify, a mobile shopping platform that helps enterprise retailers create unique shopping experiences at every mobile touchpoint.
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