Shopping online, on your mobile. Total breeze or complete nightmare? Neil Hawkins, contributing editor at Chooseisp.co.uk takes a closer look…
Better mobile broadband would certainly boost mobile commerce in the UK, making the experience quicker, easier, as well as providing the the security of knowing that you are not likely to suffer any interruption of service during your shop. However, the onus is not only on regulators and service providers to deliver the backbone but on brands like eBay to ensure that shopping on mobile devices is made as easy as possible.
eBay wants “high quality and reliable mobile broadband coverage throughout the UK” to be the ambition of government and regulator Ofcom. It believes that if enacted this better mobile broadband could add up to £4.5 billion to the economy by 2016.
Verdict Research’s study, conducted on behalf of eBay, stated that in infamous ‘Not-Spot’ parts of the country where mobile broadband coverage is poorest, mobile spending is at least 20% lower than average with 33% failing to complete purchases in the past due to issues with their mobile broadband connections.
In fact, respondents complained that patchy connections, poor 3G coverage which both contribute to mysterious timeout and server errors, even when in areas of decent 3G reception, were the most frustrating things about online shopping from a mobile.
Ofcom recently released a report into mobile broadband in the UK which showed that the average speed experience was a pretty dire 1.5Mb, rising to just over 2Mb in areas of good 3G coverage. What this study showed most obviously is that for mobile broadband to improve significantly in the UK the divvying up of the 4G networks needs to happen as soon as possible, currently it could well be some time in 2013 before anything much is achieved with 4G.
Completing all the steps required to shop online, filling in names, addresses and payment details, can be a fiddly business on a 3 inch screen and for all the effort to be wasted thanks to a timeout or connection error on the final page would frustrate even seasoned smartphone shoppers.
The study also showed that 80% of people thought the cost of using data on their phone was too high, a surprise when you consider that the UK is among the cheapest in the world for mobile data usage. Mobile operators clearly have a lot of work to do to convince customers that going online on your mobile needn’t be pricey, despite the massive proliferation of so-called “unlimited” data plans.
Whilst faster mobile broadband would undoubtedly bring huge growth to mobile commerce, its up to the companies looking to gain from this growth to ensure shoppers are able to browse, choose and buy with ease.
Too many online shops make their websites too difficult to use on mobile devices nor do they consider shoppers using slower mobile broadband or non-3G connections. A greater proliferation of mobile specific sites and apps, developed for all platforms not just iOS, could certainly prove as much a boost to the confidence of people shopping on mobile devices as better mobile broadband.
This is a guest post from Choose. The site covers rights issues, research and debate into home broadband and more broadly home media and mobile markets.
