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Are Hosting Providers Benefiting From the Mobile Commerce Boom?
These past few years, the prevalence of mobile devices have led to the rise of mobile commerce all over the globe, as more and more individuals started accessing the Internet and doing their online transactions over smartphones or tablets compared to desktops. This has prompted the need for mobile compatible websites, and many businesses have launched mobile versions of their sites or implemented dynamic layouts that ensure mobile users still get the best possible experience browsing the sites.
While a good number of businesses are starting to reap the rewards of targeting mobile users, it is surprising that mobile users seem to be left behind. For example, many hosting providers provide treat mobile and desktop versions of websites as the same, even though mobile sites need to have much faster caching and load times because the devices used to access them have a shortage of processing power.
Additionally, many web hosting providers – even big name ones – don’t promote their hosting packages on mobile platforms, probably owing to an anachronistic belief that their main customers are only targeting desktop users exclusively. This also explains why a lot of hosting services have online order forms that are not mobile optimized. What they didn’t expect is that there are now customers who do the purchasing on their mobile, as well as some of the basic website maintenance tasks. The desktop is only reserved for times when there’s a need to sit down and wade through mountains of code.
Will Hosting Providers Benefit from M-Commerce?
The long and short of it is Yes, hosting providers benefit from the M-Commerce boom. Online retailers like Amazon and eBay have already realized that the rise of m-commerce is a good thing, based on how they have started releasing app versions of their services and tailoring their sites to be more responsive to small screens.
Giving mobile devices the ability to participate in e-commerce has one significant effect: it allowed more people to participate and it has made things more convenient, which any person with common sense knows will translate to more sales.
Any entity that is selling something online, which includes web hosting, stands to benefit from the popularity of M-commerce, but only if they take steps to cater to this new demographic. This includes, among other things:
Mobile-Friendly Payment Processes
One only needs to look at ticket purchasing sites to see how to do this. Mobile devices have limited screen real estate and input methods so conventional fill out methods with drop down forms and tedious spaces to fill out are not appealing. On the other hand, mobile devices allow customers to make a purchase anywhere and anytime they want, which helps catch more impulse buys. So redoing that payment form (maybe even tying up with mobile-friendly payment processors like Paypal) will be more than worth the hassle.
Mobile-Targeted Plans
As mentioned above, mobile sites have specific needs (faster caching, for instance) due to the limited hardware capability. So if you’re targeting customers who wish to create a mobile site, you can include these features into the pitches. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, would you choose slightly cheaper plan that obviously isn’t targeted to your needs, or shell out a few more bucks to ensure that you’re getting service that is custom tailored to your requirements?
Advertising on Mobile Platforms
Finally, web hosting providers should start advertising on channels that would appear exclusively on mobile devices. Any marketer knows that the ads you commonly see on desktop aren’t exactly the ones being served on mobile apps or mobile versions of popular services. So start creating campaigns designed for mobile so you can get in early and capture an audience that hasn’t been tapped out yet.
