Don’t Forget Data Entry With M-Commerce

Retailers have spent millions of dollars and countless hours ensuring consumers are able to view pages and navigate their e-commerce site on a mobile device. This is all very well, but the minute a consumer decides to make a purchase it becomes clear that the attitude of facilitating mobile commerce hasn't yet permeated to the checkout page. Consumers are still required to enter their billing and delivery address details on an awkward mobile keypad or screen, making the risk of lost patience and abandoned carts very real.

Ensure that your website is sufficiently geared up to allow for not only smooth presentation and use, but also effective and rapid online data entry before you put all your eggs in the m-commerce basket.

Just Not Thinking
M-commerce is a massive opportunity for retailers, but the potential to get it wrong is enormous. Get it right by allowing customers to easily enter their name, email address, home address and payment details. Get it wrong by expecting them to type several lines of address details on a tiny screen keypad and a market set to explode will pass you by.

With a small screen and keyboard, it can be incredibly difficult to enter several lines of an address on a mobile device. Even if completed, the opportunity for people to make mistakes is very high. This likelihood only increases in the gifting market, where customers aren't always completely sure of the recipient’s full address.

Mobile web and application developers should therefore be looking for ways to make it easy for retail customers to input and verify address details, such as ZIP code lookup software, where the simple entry of a ZIP code results in an address being pre-populated. This instantly removes the need to enter full data and also provides a verification process between ZIP code and intended address.