Mobile experience is critical to business success
A new IBM study shows us that CMOs and e-commerce leaders in many companies recognize that mobility is a critical element in achieving business goals, but 2/3 of those same professionals recognize that they lack the necessary knowledge To understand the mobile user experience. With 89% of customers opting to switch providers after a poor experience, companies are turning to the big data and digital analysis to better understand the omnicanal customer.
Mobile traffic continues to grow, and study participants now attribute 19% of the total traffic to a mobile device. But companies continue to provide their customers with a quality mobile experience, with 40% of businesses agreeing that it is more difficult to deliver a quality mobile experience than on desktops. For many companies, their response to the need to create a mobile experience has been simply to adapt a web page instead of building a mobile experience from the bottom up, with 70% of the study participants describing their multichannel experience for customers as “Reasonable” or “poor”. So it is not surprising that the three most important elements that companies face are poor navigation, problems derived from the size of the screen, and problems filling forms.
The study, titled “Reducing Customer Struggle 2013,” was conducted for IBM by Econsultacy consultancy and interviewed more than 500 professionals from around the world from a wide range of sectors, Including distribution, financial services, travel and customer services. While mobility was clearly placed as the main problem for many companies, the study found that the challenges facing the customer experience, both in terms of identifying problems and how to solve them, remains an element of concern. Only 7% of companies indicated that they have a perfect understanding of the customer’s online experience, yet it is 3 points higher than the 2012 edition. 78% of the respondents said their understanding was “good.” In particular, the companies understand the customer very well in the initial phase of sales, but fail in the buying phases and, above all, in the abandonment and abandonment of the shopping carts.
Offline and digital integration is still lacking. Only 4% of participants stated that they provided an “excellent” multichannel experience. Most expressed themselves by saying that their experience was “reasonable” or even “poor”. Integration between offline and online is still an obstacle for most companies. Many companies are limited to basic functionality such as including store physical location information, contact details, and opening hours.
73% of companies are planning to increase their investment in online channels this year, 72% said they also do it on mobile channels and 53% of companies expect to increase their investment in social networks. In contrast, more than two-thirds of respondents indicated that they expected or maintained or reduced the same level of investment in offline channels.