Of Course We Have A Mobile Website

Here's another issue we frequently hear about.

• "We have a nice mobile website, really nice.  Nobody is using it.  We all heard that eBay generates billions with their mobile website, but our customers couldn't care less.  We're generating something like 1% of our sales via the mobile website.  I am tired of the hype."

Maybe we were all spoiled by e-commerce.


Fourteen years ago, e-commerce truly did "change everything".  Honestly, it was a once-a-generation event, blowing up traditional direct marketing.


Since then, each new channel changes things, but not to the level that e-commerce did.  E-commerce changed "commerce".  Search changed elements of commerce among a subset of customers.  Social Media ...  well, it changes how we interact with each other, but it doesn't necessarily change how we shop unless we want for it to change how we shop.  Mobile changes how we interact with each other, it changes how we interact with the internet ... but it only changes commerce for a small subset of customers who have a specific need at a specific time that Mobile is better equipped to solve that e-commerce or traditional direct marketing.


Does that make sense?


So, the question we need to ask is this ... "what problem does Mobile solve, from a commerce standpoint, that we have not previously been able to solve, and what is the sales potential associated with solving that problem?"


If we can't answer that question honestly, then, of course, we have a mobile website, one that will continue to underperform expectations.