It was predicted that this holiday season was going to see a huge jump in the number of smartphone users for holiday shopping.
Predictions from Google Think Insights and from data presented at the Mobile Marketing Summit in NYC on September 8, 2011 both stated that mobile would be a big player this year.
We decided to check in on the stats now that we are 2 weeks into the season.
75% increase is what we're seeing right now!
The actual numbers we're tracking are showing approximately 25,300 mobile users from a current total 38,300 mobile users. To put it differently, that's about 5.7 mobile users to your jewelry website right now.
Is your website mobile-ready or are you suffering your users through the pinch-zoom madness? Whether you have a mobile site or not, we'd like to give you a quick tip for your mobile strategy, which is to look at your website on your smartphone and then compare it to how the website of all your local competitors look on your smartphone.
With this in mind, let's look at what the big players are doing.
BlueNile
m.bluenile.com
Yeah, they have a good looking mobile website. They even have an iPhone App. Let's consider them to be the goal we all strive for. They invite users to sign up and immediately receive $25 off their order. They also have their holiday exclusive offers and a full product catalog.
Kay Jewelers
m.kay.com
The most prominent feature of their website is to find a local store. They also have the ability to browse categories but it's not a very attractive mobile website.
Tiffany
m.tiffany.com
These guys have a mobile pop-up page inviting you to download the Tiffany App. Once you lose that window, they have a store locator feature and then a "Shop Tiffany Gifts" button that brings you into an easy-to-navigate method of finding gifts by price.
Zales
m.zales.com
These guys have a fully tied-in marketing campaign this year. Their full website, their mobile website, online PPC ads and their email marketing are all tied closely together showing the same message everywhere. They are a great example of who to look at when you need ideas for unifying all of your own online marketing. Their mobile site has a very large image showing their current special and then right below that they have a large red button announcing their HOLIDAY SPECIALS.
Taking the time to view our own local SERP on Google mobile we didn't find any local jewelry stores with mobile websites. We even took the time to check the first 2 pages of the SERP on our Android and iPhone for comparison shopping.
No mobile sites were found.
What we did find was a lot of websites that appear very small and ugly until you pinch-zoom in and out and scroll up and down.
If you're reading this and don't yet have a mobile website, you really need to get on the ball. If you think your customers are not using phones to look at your site, you need to be slapped back to reality and start planning your mobile site soon.
BlueNile recently announced a $300,000 diamond sale through a smartphone. People don't randomly find mobile websites and immediately make a purchase. Instead we see that all studies show how effectively visitors are using the mobile website to help them make long term educated purchase decisions.
So go create your mobile site. If you already have one then ask your customers for feedback, perhaps even invite them to use it while in your store. Observe how they use it and ask them what would make the site very helpful for them.
