"Mobile e-commerce" has arrived with a vengeance, and even this holiday season, iPhone, Android, and other smartphone customers will be giving special consideration to merchant sites that are geared to accommodate them.
If you have any doubts, consider the numbers. ABI Research estimates that mobile online shopping in the U.S. more than tripled from 2008 to 2009, reaching $1.2 billion. The firm projects that globally, consumers will spend $119 billion by 2015 shopping from their mobile phones, accounting for about 8 percent of all e-commerce activity. Juniper Research is even more bullish, projecting that the total value of mobile payments will quadruple from $170 billion in 2010 to $630 billion by 2014.
The future of mobile commerce is already well under way. So what can you do to prepare? The most important first step is to create a mobile-friendly shopping website. Your goal is to make the mobile version of your website as inviting and easy to use as your regular site, while taking into account the constraints of mobile devices. The request for a second website should not come as a surprise to your website hosting service because this is a clear direction for the industry.