Top 5 ways to make the most of the rise of m-commerce in fashion this Christmas Season

The rise of mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has been meteoric. In just a few short years, it has gone from being a niche market to a mainstream way of shopping. This is thanks in large part to the ubiquity of smartphones and the convenience of mobile shopping. According to a recent study, more than 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile in the last 6 months. M-commerce is particularly popular with younger generations, who are often more comfortable using their phones to make purchases than older generations.

Whether you already see the benefits of m-commerce or you are just starting to look into the topic, here are 5 ways m-commerce can help you set yourself apart this Christmas Season.

1. With M-Commerce, offer your shoppers a seamless omnichannel experience

Retailers, and especially fashion retailers, must ensure they are offering their customers a completely seamless and consistent omnichannel experience. This means making all sales channels, whether physical or digital, offer the same level of customer experience. Customer information and purchase history should be available across all platforms, and the customer should be able to move seamlessly between them. This is becoming increasingly important as more and more customers move away from traditional desktop computers and do their shopping on mobile devices. By offering a top-notch m-commerce experience, you are giving your customers the best possible experience on a device they use daily.

2. M-Commerce offers you the ability to quickly adapt to new trends

M-commerce can be an effective tool when it comes to quickly adapting to relevant trends. This is key in the fashion industry, as social media pushes new trends on a near-daily basis. The key to having an m-commerce platform that can be adapted ultra-easily is ‘headless commerce’. Headless commerce is an e-commerce architecture in which the front-end is decoupled from the back-end, and, as such, can be updated or edited without interfering with the back-end. This will enable your marketing team to update your website as new trends emerge, keeping both your desktop and mobile websites’ content fresh.

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3. Offer a flawless online shopping experience

As Christmas approaches, offering a flawless online shopping experience is crucial. Shoppers want to be able to browse gift ideas on their mobile devices when on the move, so ensuring they are able to navigate your website on their mobile should be a priority. Besides, consumers are so over-stimulated that they also have very high standards concerning their user experience. Your mobile website must be responsive, fast loading and easily readable for them to spend any more than a few seconds on it. To help with this, a PWA is highly recommended.

A PWA, or Progressive Web App, is a type of application software that offers users an application-like experience directly in their browser. These web apps work across all platforms, browsers, and connected devices. PWAs are dynamic, fast-loading sites with full-screen mode, push notifications, and replicate the user experience of a native application. Also, as PWAs are built like webpages, retailers only need a single codebase for all platforms, not just the two popular platforms. Instead of developing an app from scratch, brands simply need to configure their current website with help from tools such as Google Lighthouse. So when it comes to offering the best-possible mobile shopping experience, PWAs are a promising choice.

4. Ensure your e-commerce model can handle the rise of m-commerce

Before you start making any sort of m-commerce strategy, you need to ensure that your e-commerce architecture is suitable for handling the new data and traffic load. You must ensure that your backend is able to keep performing despite changes to the frontend, and that the front-end can be updated regularly by marketing teams without negatively impacting the backend. One of the best ways to do this is to switch your e-commerce architecture from a monolithic architecture to a headless one.

Want to know more? Find out here.

5. Meet customers' environmental expectations with a reduced carbon footprint

As people become more conscious of the environmental impacts of their consumption habits, businesses must also adapt to meet these new expectations. For mobile commerce businesses, this means finding ways to lower their carbon footprint. There are a number of ways to do this, from using renewable energy to power your servers to offsetting your carbon emissions. Another way is to switch to a PWA. Did you know that a PWA can be up to 90% smaller than native mobile applications? And a smaller website means less energy and data consumption, leading to a drastically reduced carbon footprint.

In conclusion, you can optimize your online strategy to benefit from the rise of m-commerce by considering three factors: the customer experience, the technical realization and the environmental impact.