Mobile ecommerce in 2016: Why the mobile web vs. mobile

app battle will become obsolete

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With the rise of omnichannel came great mobile responsibility.

Needless to say, the consumer journey nowadays is all about micro-moments.

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Our main takeaway from our recent participation at the Mobile Shopping Conference in Palm Springs, California, is that retailers are currently struggling to nail cross-device

and cross-channel attribution.

Because a consumer will have multiple digital and non-digital interactions before making their purchase on any channel.

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Some retailers have even stopped caring about conversions on mobile, and instead, chose to focus only on mobile

engagements that can ultimately drive in-store sales.

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FIND STORE

So the more channels a retailer owns, the more complicated it gets. Not to mention the costs to maintain multiple channels:

apps, mobile-friendly website, desktop website etc.

And while mobile ecommerce is here to stay - with more than 2 billion smartphones in the world in 2016 - the question arises:

Mobile Web or Mobile App?

Well, it won't matter anymore.

There used to be a great divide between the advantages and disadvantages of having an ecommerce on

mobile web or mobile app.

ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES

Apps were preferred for being able to send push notifications.

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Mobile-friendly websites were preferred because their content was easily discovered by search engines.

And the list can go on and on.

But with recent technology developments you can have it all, anywhere.

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1. Web push notifications are here

So bye bye to building an app just for the sake of push notifications.

Beyond The Rack, a North American online shopping company offering clothing, beauty and home decor

products, uses this Chrome functionality to send messages to consumers who don’t have its app.

With mobile devices accounting for 52% of Beyond the Rack’s online traffic and 50% of the revenue, the company reports that after implementing web push

notifications on mobile to increase repeat visits, they witnessed 50% increase in mobile site visits.

So now both mobile web and mobile app ecommerce can enjoy the benefits of push notifications.

2. Content inside apps now appear in Google and Spotlight search results

Back in the day, SEO was only for web content. But not anymore.

Both Google and Apple made app indexing possible, using deep linking. Google will basically show in its search results relevant content from both Android and iOS apps, while Apple made iOS 9 Spotlight Search like a proactive assistant showing relevant

content from apps when swiping anywhere on the phone.

You’ve probably heard that a mobile app can give you more of the phone’s functionalities,

like opening the camera to take a photo. Well, mobile web

can do that just fine too.

3. Camera opens in mobile web too

At ViSenze, our technology needs camera functionality to do visual

search inside the ecommerce platform. This allows consumers to

take a photo of any inspiration around them and find similar items

inside an online store.

The future of mobile may not look like apps or mobile-friendly websites anyway

“In the future, content, products and services will find you, rather than you having to find them. Puma will let us know to replace our shoes and Marriott will automatically present you room options if you missed your connecting flight. Instead of visiting a website, we will proactively be notified of what is

relevant and asked to take action.”

Matt Asay, the VP of Mobile at Adobe, summarised well the mobile trend in his TNW article:

Think Google Now On Tap. That’s precisely where we are heading.

“The current Web is "pull-based," meaning we visit websites or download mobile applications. The future of the Web is "push-based," meaning the Web will be coming to us. In the next 10 years, we will witness a transformation from a pull-based Web to a push-based Web.”

Cheers to the future of mobile ecommerce!