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A new study from rich media mobile and social merchandising provider Zmags reveals some interesting insights about the top 100 retailers’ readiness for mobile and tablet commerce.
As most Website Magazine readers know, 2012 is predicted to be the year of mobile. But according to the recent Zmags study, less that one-third of the leading online retailers are ready for tablets.
Other key findings include:
- While 68 percent of the surveyed retailers have developed smartphone apps and 59 percent have smartphone-specific sites, less than one-third have optimized their sites for tablets.
- Smartphone mobile sites typically have little dynamic content and focus on search and category navigation, while tablet browsing is often flawed with technical glitches such as slow loading times, unavailable content or Flash related issues.
- More than two-thirds of the surveyed retailers have iPhone apps, with only half offering the ability to make purchases through the apps.
- About 40 percent of the surveyed retailers have iPad apps, but 25 percent don’t offer purchasing capabilities.
- More than one-third of surveyed retailers offer the ability to purchase on Android apps.
According to the IBM Benchmark December holiday report, iPad shoppers drove more retail purchases than users of any other device. This is why it is important for merchants to optimize their sites not only for smartphones, but for tablets as well. Best practices include de-cluttering the website, focusing on easy navigation, reducing load times and ensuring all video and animation translates to various popular device types .