ED 49: May-June 2013

42
Ma r k E t in t E l l i gE n C E
During a time where 99
per cent of all enterprises
in Singapore are SMEs,
mobile and mobility
are buzzwords that
resonate in almost everything regarding
productivity, efficiency and customer
experience.
According to Canalys, 216.5 million
smartphones were shipped in Q4 2012
and this represented close to 50 per
cent of all phones shipped. To put these
statistics into local perspective, there are
close to 6.5 million 3G subscriptions in
Singapore, which is almost 22 per cent
more than the Singapore population in
2012!
Mobile subscribers are starting to
significantly impact revenue. This can
M-Strategy
How SMEs can Maximise and Monetise the Mobile Movement
the be seen when eBay President and CEO
John Donahoe said last year that the
mobile sales volume of the eBay site is
experiencing double digits every month.
eBay’s mobile gross merchandise
volume (GMV) equaled nearly $2 billion
in 2010, and eBay previously predicted
that its mobile GMV would double to $4
billion in just one year.
Mobile web and application adoption
is growing at an unprecedented rate
due to rapidly evolving infrastructure,
the availability of more powerful
mobile devices and browsers, more
sophisticated mobile operating systems
as well as higher levels of connectivity
that ultimately raise the expectations of
the average mobile user.
Yet despite this skyrocketing growth
and revenue potential, a key fact
May | Ju n 2013
En t r E p r E n E u r s’ Di g E s t
remains: mobile website and application
users may be willing to trade some
functionality for the “anytime, anywhere”
convenience of being on the move, but
they are not willing to sacrifice site and
application availability and speed.
A recent Compuware study of global
tablet users revealed that there are high
expectations for web experiences and
about 33 percent of users are less likely
to make a purchase from a company
if their website performance does not
deliver the web experience required.
The “Engaging the Tablet User: What
They Expect From Web Sites” survey
reinforced this trend, showing that users
expect websites and transactions to
work flawlessly.
As users gain access to more best-inclass
Web performers like Facebook,
Google and Yahoo and use these as
benchmarks for how fast all sites should
be, they are becoming increasingly
intolerant of delays or slowdowns.
This, of course, is a reflection of the
expectations of today’s Internet user.
The average online shopper expects
Web pages to load in two seconds or
less (down from four seconds in 2006)
and 46 per cent will visit a competitor
website if the experience is less than
satisfactory on the first try.
58 per cent of users expect website
load speeds on mobile devices to be
comparable or even better than their
desktop equivalents. Considering that
today’s Wi-Fi and 3G networks can be
as much as six times faster than their
2G and 2.5G predecessors, this may
not be an unrealistic expectation.
Delay is not the only factor to negatively
impact the mobile Web experience.
Users also expect high levels of
availability and reliability. Even on the
Internet as a whole, availability is not
as high as it should be. The Aberdeen
Research Group did a study which
reveals that the industry average
availability is 97.8 per cent, a number
that seems impressive at first, but
actually translates into a website that is
unavailable for eight days every year or
16 hours every month.
The importance of a website’s reliability
can be clearly seen during holiday
periods, where online shopping peaks
due to the festive season. A report from
Borland showed that many Singaporean
retail websites were unable to cope with
increased traffic during the Chinese New
Year period. Website optimisation is key,
especially during the festive seasons,
in order to capitalise on the rush of
customers looking for a good deal.
Previously, a website was merely an
optional extra for any business, an
additional channel to reach out to
potential customers and partners. That
time has passed, and now this is the
time for businesses to evaluate their
online channels, particularly mobile.
Business leaders must work together
with IT provisioning to ensure that their
online offerings are fast enough, reliable
enough and available constantly so as
not to drive customers to competitors
out of sheer frustration.