• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, July 15, 2015

There are tons of stats out there that speak to the impact of mobile commerce, but it boggles my mind how many people are buying this way. The data tends to range from general shopping stats (I seem to recall a recent stat from somewhere saying 35% all commerce is done on a mobile device, but don’t quote me) to other stats like Shopify recently stating more than 50% of its ecommerce traffic comes from mobile devices, with 40% coming from a phone. 

Is it me?  Maybe my eyes are going bad (they are), but I simply can’t fathom this kind of retail behavior.

There are two types of shopping; impulse buys and considered purchases.  I can somewhat understand impulse buying on a phone.  When you’re in the moment and something catches your eye, you take out your phone, check an app and make a buy.  For small-ticket items, that completely makes sense to me.  

The harder one for me to grasp is the considered purchase, with all the research required, plus the lack of a tactile interaction in a mobile phone purchase.  

My wife does a ton of shopping research on her phone, where she also does all her holiday shopping. For me, I need to lock myself away in the office and sit with my laptop.   Even then, clothes purchases are off-limits.  I need to see how things look and I need to see how they feel.  Call me old-school (no, really – it’s OK) but I still like to see and touch things when I make the majority of my purchases.  

The other problem for me is my fat fingers.  I am not a big man, but I swear my fingers are too thick and inaccurate to type on my phone.  I do it all the time, and auto-correct tends to get the best of me.  For example, this past week I meant to text a friend, “Hey – playing basketball at 2:30 – you in?”  What came out was, “Hey Playboy – be the 230 tin.”  I don’t even know what that means, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be good!  

The world is shifting towards a mobile-first play, and ecommerce is one of the dominant ways people spend their time online.  I know these trends will continue and I support them.  I also support a better vision plan in the workplace, along with mobile phone typing classes in high school: both of which would significantly impact the world of mobile-driven commerce.  I also support better algorithms for auto-correct, and more time “getting to know Siri.”As it stands right now, she and I simply do not have a good relationship – there’s substantial room for growth between my digital concierge and me.

In all seriousness, though, mobile commerce is exploding, and I think it’s being driven by younger demographics: the under-40 crowd.  Those of us who are over 40 simply don’t have the eyesight and the manual dexterity to make it work.  Plus, I like to see more in one line of sight than I can possibly ever fulfill on my mobile phone screen.  

Responsive design has had a huge impact on making m-commerce more feasible, so the inevitability of growth is clear.  The phone is becoming the biggest mall in the world: far, far larger than the Mall of the Americas!

How is your company taking advantage of mobile commerce?