Behaviors of Mobile Shoppers That Retailers Need to Know

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Transformation Strategy (145-slide PowerPoint presentation). Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations across most industries, as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. This has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thus, to remain competitive and outcompete in today's fast paced, [read more]

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Between smartphones, tablets and e-readers, mobile technology is arguably one of the single strongest influencers of first-world culture in the modern era. This includes the buying behaviors and interactions of consumers with businesses. As a smart business owner, you must understand these new mobile behaviors and market to them to get the most out of e-commerce sales.

Images Receive Better Responses

People respond differently to marketing messages that come in image form than those in text, according to research published in the journal Procedia Economics and Finance. The article explains that brand reputation and awareness are better received as images than the same message placed in text format.

This is an important factor for marketing to mobile shoppers. New models of smartphones like the HTC One M9 have twice the screen resolution than smartphones from four years ago. This gives an advertiser the ability to create large, high-resolution images that can still look great on mobile devices. Businesses can distribute high-graphic photos that build up their brand reputations across mobile-optimized networks like Twitter to stay top of mind.

People Are Social

Using social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, businesses can create a dialogue with customers. This increases their brand awareness and offers real-time solutions to customer service issues. However, what many business owners do not realize is that consumers use these social networks fluidly, switching back and forth between platforms.

Hootsuite is the industry standard for social media integration, both as a consumer end manager and as an integrated marketing platform. Businesses can use it to connect and engage with customers over multiple platforms.

Videos Must Fit the Platform

Video content providers like YouTube are an economic way to get informational videos in front of a customer. However, businesses need to be aware of the different bandwidth requirements that drive the viewer’s behavior. YouTube, for example, is designed for short, low-bandwidth videos. Additionally, brands need to consider the audience of each platform to create appropriate content. Again, using YouTube as an example, the platform’s videos have a specific feel that viewers have come to expect. Highly-produced or commercial-grade videos may come off as advertorial and insincere. Instead, this is a good platform for camera-ready executives to simply talk to the viewer and encourage communication and feedback.

Content Needs to Be Safe

With the current Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, mobile content needs to be safe for both work and family life. Brands that have marketing campaigns that are not safe for work need to label them at the top. This doesn’t mean that these advertisements won’t be seen, but rather they will be saved for a time when it is safe to view. Also, most phones have child-safety software embedded, so companies should make sure that their content is labeled as not for kids.

Demographics Are Important

Business must remember that, like other aspects of marketing, smartphone behaviors often depend on age, gender and cultural factors. A millennial uses mobile tech differently than a baby boomer, women are different than men, and rural and urban users have different needs. For example, rural users may rely on their mobile devices for consistent business whereas urban users may have the luxury of creating face-to-face contacts.

Responsive web design is an approach to website creation that changes the site’s look and input methodology depending on specific user parameters. Gender, culture and age should be part of every business’ responsive design work so they can market their product or service appropriately.

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