Helen Leggatt reports that a social media presence is quickly becoming a necessity rather than a marketing option. And because smartphones and tablets are dominating the consumer technology market, it also means that e-commerce merchants who have social and mobile presence will have more chances of dominating the market. The study made by Gartner foresees that by 2015, 50% of Internet sales will come from the combined forces of social media marketing and mobile technology. The article further notes that customers do not just look at their mobile devices and think of them as tools for calling and sending SMS. Today, it’s all about using mobile devices as an extension of the shopping experience and making it easy to interact with businesses. This is the trend that entrepreneurs need to address if they want their businesses to survive.
eBay recently changed its worldwide mobile commerce spending forecast for this year–from $1 billion to $5 billion. Mobile sales now account for more than 10% of all purchases on eBay’s UK operations and internationally, an item is sold via eBay’s mobile platforms every second.
So if you’re an e-commerce merchant and you are neither social nor mobile, then you have to some serious business planning to do.