New report shows the importance of mobile for retailers

Retailers are starting to master mobile marketing

A fully optimised experience across devices is the holy grail for ecommerce and retail marketers. Getting mobile right has often been the sticking point. Now marketers are starting to get their head around what good mobile marketing looks like and are beginning to implement it.

Digital Doughnut surveyed over 100 retail executives and heads of ecommerce, asking them about their mobile strategy and the resources they had in place for managing it. At a time of massive disruption by mobile in both the in-store and online retail sectors, the findings make for interesting reading.

Mobile capabilities

Now it's 2016 retailers are finally starting to really get a handle on mobile. A few years ago departments were floundering around without a strategy, but now about a third or more consider themselves advanced, and the majority of the rest consider themselves to be 'getting there'. Only 10-20% consider themselves to be behind the curve. This is a sign of growing confidence, although when you think about it by definition 50% must be below average, so if you think you're ahead of the curve, you may be one of the many people who are wrong.

Percentage of digital budget allocated to M-commerce

If you're still in the process of digital transformation you might be interested to learn what percentage of spend the industry currently receives from m-commerce.

The 100+ respondents were asked how much revenue they allocate to mobile as percentage of total digital spend.

The results show only a tiny amount devote less than 10% or above 70%. Almost all fall somewhere between 11% and 50%. The results should spur action if you're spending less than 10% of your digital budget on mobile at current.

If you're wondering why mobile spend is so high, then it's worth reminding you that over half of web traffic now comes from mobile. In fact, the mobile influence factor has doubled ever year since 2012. So don't get left behind, make sure to invest properly in mobile!

What's holding retailers back when it comes to mobile?

Knowing the importance of mobile is one thing. Implementing the best techniques requires departments armed with the very best skills. Keeping up the constant changes in technology seems to be the greatest challenge for mobile marketing departments. When asked what the top 3 challenges their mobile departments faced, a whopping 70% said technology, whilst over half also struggle to understand the impact of their customer behaviour. Setting useful KPIs and company culture also were major hurdles.

If you're interested in more insights about retailers mobile tactics and strategies, you can download the full report from Digital Doughnut. You'll have to give some details to get hold of it though.