December 29, 2011
By 2015, companies will generate 50 percent of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications, according to Gartner, Inc. Vendors in the e-commerce market will begin to offer new context-aware, mobile-based application capabilities that can be accessed via a browser or installed as an application on a phone.
Gartner analysts discussed the future of e-commerce at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in October. As the number of mobile phones overtakes PCs, customers will use mobile browsers and applications as the main points of interaction.
"E-commerce organizations will need to scale up their operations to handle the increased visitation loads resulting from customers not having to wait until they are in front of a PC to obtain answers to questions or place orders," says Gene Alvarez, Gartner VP/research. "In time, e-commerce vendors will begin to offer context-aware mobile-shopping solutions as part of their overall Web sales offerings.
"Customers are clamoring for new and easy ways to interact with the organizations they deal with, and no company should think itself immune to this new business dynamic," Alvarez says. "As more people use smartphones, they will expect an extension of their customer experience to be supported by this kind of device while demanding that social aspects of the Web be intertwined with this experience. "
Such industries as entertainment, software development/publishing and media are being driven by fast-moving changes in their businesses, such as mobility, and the increasing number of mobile devices available to their buyers. Others are finding that sales of additional services and products can be added to their customer-service-focused websites. Due to consumerization, sites in all industries are being impacted by customer experience delivered in the retail space, as customers continue to use their online experiences as the benchmark by which to evaluate all others.
E-commerce managers in Type A (leading) organizations and industries, such as travel, hospitality, retail, consumer electronics, media and entertainment, will begin to take advantage of GPS location services enabled by phones to push personalized, location-based content to mobile devices for users who have subscribed to these services. This content will be created via the use of customer patterns and their link to driving sales. These organizations will also have connected (via Web browsers and mobile applications) to many social communities, enabling the organizations to tap into customers’ social networks and leverage the wisdom of the crowd.
