Mobile

Going from e-commerce to m-commerce

In the article The need to do e-commerce, we reflected on the fact that a majority of purchases in both the consumer and business world are now made “online” and not through traditional sales channels.

Which implies one thing - that nowadays all companies must do e-commerce in addition to selling via regular channels, otherwise they’ll lose an ever-growing number of customers.

Now consider this…

Now, with more than half of all internet traffic shopping from a mobile device, it is extremely important to make sure your website is primed for mobile viewing.

Justin Smith

CEO, Outer Box Solutions

source: outerboxdesign.com

So what should you do if you have an e-commerce site based on Magento, WooCommerce or other technology that doesn’t work so well on mobile devices?

In the not too distant past, you had no choice. To do m-commerce you had to build native mobile apps for both the Apple iOS and Android mobile environments - a difficult, time consuming and very costly undertaking. So costly, in fact, that only large companies could afford it. But luckily things have changed.

Today there’s another approach that’s so cost-effective even mid-sized companies can readily foot the bill. It involves upgrading your current e-commerce site into something called a Progressive Web Application (PWA). Doing so causes your website to look, feel and operate like a native app on mobile devices. And you even end up with a company-specific launch icon for display on customer devices!

Pretty neat, huh? And by the way, upgrading your website to a PWA will simultaneously improve store performance on desktop computers. So it’s a “win” in more ways than one.

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PWA in practise: 11 case studies

By the way. In case some readers are worried PWA might be a risky, unproven technology, don’t be. It’s been around for a number of years and very well known companies like Airbnb, Lancôme, George and others have gone the PWA route and reaped huge benefits.

So to summarize, global market trends say you’ve absolutely got to get onto mobile devices with your e-commerce platform and at the same time PWA, a high performance, low-cost m-commerce technology has become available.

One last thing. If you go the PWA route, take full advantage of the development upgrade and also make appropriate changes to ensure your site is as visually attractive and easy to use as possible. Otherwise, you still might end up being at a disadvantage to your competition.