Hong Kong retailers should go mobile if they want to reach more consumers this holiday season as a recent Google survey finds Hong Kong citizens are among the world’s savviest mobile shoppers.
Earlier this year, Google teamed up with IPSOS Research to conduct a survey among 30,000 people in 30 countries about how they use their smartphones. The survey found that Hong Kong has the third highest smartphone penetration in the world, ahead of the US, UK and Japan. Hong Kong residents are in the top 10 for consumers likely to have made smartphone purchases.
Ryan Hayward, product marketing manager of Google yesterday said in a media briefing that smartphones are now an important part of shopping in Hong Kong, as they now start more purchases, guide in-store shopping behaviour and complete more transactions.
"Smartphones now start more purchases as shoppers begin researching and planning purchases via mobile phone. We found about 34 percent of Hong Kong citizens have used smartphones at the very beginning to look for inspiration," Ryan Hayward, product marketing manager of Google said in a media briefing yesterday. "Nearly two in five have actually bought that product using a desktop computer, and 56 percent have headed to a retail store to buy something they started researching on their phone."
The survey also found that 38 percent of Hong Kong shoppers said they had used their smartphone in-store to compare prices between competing retailers. "One in five has actually changed their mind about purchases in store as a result of what they found online, Hayward said.
One third of the surveyed Hong Kong smartphone owners said they had made a purchase via their mobile phone, while the same number plan to use their phone for more purchases in the future.
Hayward said the findings of the survey shows that retailers have new opportunities to reach and engage shoppers and as the Christmas holiday is coming, retailers here should consider to mobilise for the peak retail season.
He suggests five ways to help businesses go mobile:
1. Do a "mobile health check"
A mobile-friendly site is necessary to engage customers. Google’s howtogomo.com provides a quick and easy tool that shows you how your current site looks on mobile and provides a personalised report on what’s working and what could be improved. Alternately, open your company’s website in a smartphone’s browser and start exploring. Can you read the text without squinting, zooming, or scrolling? Are any of these images slow to load on your mobile connection, or event broken? Do you have to pan around to view the whole page? If your answer to any of these questions is "yes", then your site isn’t mobile friendly.
2. Diagnose what you want your customers to do on mobile
If you’re worried about the time or effort it takes to make your site mobile-friendly, don’t be. You don’t have to redo your entire website: just think about how your customer will find and use your site, and focus your efforts on the parts of your site that meets their immediate needs. Do they need to be able to browse through your goods and buy them online? Or do they just want a phone number and a map?
3. Build a mobile-optimised website
Once you’ve decided what you want your customers to be able to do, it’s easier than you probably think to start building your site. For example, studies show that customers often use their smartphones to research, call, and visit physical businesses. That means that for many retailers, the best thing to do is create a mobile-friendly landing page with focus on the basics, like location, hours, and contact information. Free tools such as Google’s mobile site builder (http://www.howtogomo.com/en/#build-your-site) can help you build a simple site with ready-for-mobile-templates.
4. Educate yourself about mobile ads
If your mobile-friendly website is up and running, you can start thinking about advertising on mobile phones. Mobile ads offer lots of capabilities that more traditional digital formats don’t. For example: Google’s click-to-call ad format enables users to tap a phone number to call a business directly from within an ad. Hyperlocal features tell customers how close they are to an advertiser’s physical location, within the ad.
5. Build your mobile ads strategy – based on what your customers want
Getting started is easy: if you’re a Google AdWords customer, you’re automatically opted into mobile ads on smartphones. If you’re new to mobile ads, ask yourself when your customer actually uses their mobile, and how you can best reach them. For example, if you want to drive foot traffic to your store, location is especially relevant. Choose an ad format that includes directions and a map within the ad to direct prospective customers to your store with directions and a map within the ad. Or, choose a hyperlocal ad that shows distance information within the ad, alerting customers that they’re close enough to your business to drop by.