How to Increase Sales with Mobile Ordering

By Phil Talbot – go to guy | mobile ordering | saavi

Mobile Ordering use is rapidly growing

Increasing sales with mobile ordering simply means you take advantage of recent (and predicted) trends in mobile use. “Mobile is going to be big,” that’s what the trends say. So if you want to grow with it, roll with it. Consider the following statistics:

— Right now, 65 percent of U.S. shoppers who use a PC to look for products and services end up buying in actual stores. This means PCs help shoppers make better decisions on what and where to buy.

— But 48 percent of consumers use or would like to use a smartphone for shopping while they are inside a store or on the go. That’s natural. The portability of smartphones make them ideal as shopping aids.

— 4 out of 5 consumers already shop using smartphones. It won’t be long before almost everyone gets a smartphone.

— There are now 1.08 billion smartphones out of 4 billion mobile phones in use. And that number is rapidly increasing.

— Mobile internet (smartphone) users are expected to overtake the number of desktop users by 2014 That’s just a year from now.

Have a mobile ordering presence

Since people are flocking from PCs to mobile ordering in their shopping habits, it makes sense for businesses to have a mobile presence. Having a mobile presence means people can easily look for products and services and order them from your business site via mobile. Because people have their mobile phones within easy reach, even while in bed or the bathroom, your site should be ready with a mobile ordering system 24/7

Your site should already have a page where people can place orders. To make it mobile friendly, your site can be optimized for mobile use so it resizes and adjusts well without losing usability from a desktop-size screen to a 4-inch mobile screen. This kind of website is also called responsive.

Mobile ordering app

You can also provide a mobile ordering app. This is a mini program that allows shoppers to browse for products and prices and order them even without opening an Internet browser in their smartphones.

Mobile ordering apps may be native (you have different app versions for each mobile app platform—iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile for example), HTML5 (works for all platforms with good HTML5 support), or hybrid (HTML5 plus native, for more functionality). Whichever approach you select depends on what you want to achieve—just work with experts to get the right app.

Either or both options (mobile friendly site or mobile app) can help you increase sales by being where the people are—on their mobile.

Phil Talbot is founder of SAAVI, the mobile ordering specialists and the resident expert in mobile ordering systems. You can follow SAAVI on Facebook.