By Barney Larkin

The importance of this platform can’t be underestimated. A recent whitepaper by Coremetrics, included some interesting statistics highlighting just how important marketers are starting to treat the mobile platform. Of the 250 marketers surveyed, just over 80 per cent said they thought the return on investment on mobile marketing would be higher this year. As if to highlight the importance of this channel, the mighty Google has launched a new product called “Mobilize” that makes it easier for companies to create high quality mobile commerce sites.

Despite the enthusiasm of marketers around mobile, the Coremetrics research makes it clear that many are still not prepared to invest in mobile. 57.5 per cent of respondents hadn’t yet created a version of their site optimised for the mobile platform, and 66.1 per cent hadn’t created a mobile app for their product. Considering how ubiquitous smart phones are becoming, these statistics are very surprising.

Even more shocking is that implementing a mobile e-commerce platform doesn’t appear to be a priority for those surveyed; only 10 per cent said they had a mobile payment mechanism. On a more fundamental level, less than half of the respondents felt confident enough in mobile marketing to integrate it fully into the marketing mix.

Mobile Reality

This research shows that while marketers can see the potential for mobile, they are struggling to turn their ideas into reality. Brands need a way of ensuring that information about their products can reach their audience no matter what platform they are using. This is where high quality product data feeds can make the process of mobile marketing much more straightforward, ensuring that the right product information is available in a format that can be used by mobile technology.

When coupled with a mobile commerce platform, these applications can add another profitable revenue stream. By extracting product data directly from the merchant’s e-commerce website (front end), it is possible to create an accurate feed comprising rich product information encompassing the merchant’s entire inventory. This feed can then be used to power rich product information very simply into an m-commerce site.

Be Creative to Drive Interaction & Customer Engagement

Rather than rebuilding a conventional browsing or navigational experience, mobile-friendly formats can be created directly from a product feed using filters and categories to present the exact product information and images the consumer is looking for. This approach has successfully been adopted by m-commerce sites such as ShopStyle. However, feeds can be just as effective in simplifying the mobile browsing experience by presenting product information trimmed from the data feed.

Regardless of whether the mobile website includes m-commerce functionality, the key factor is that product information reaches the consumer properly presented and rendered in mobile browsers. By incorporating or using product attributes, that are also extracted in the feed, the site can be made more user friendly and engaging. Visitors can select products by effectively answering series of questions, for example in fashion, by 'creating a look' using a slider bar to dictate price, size, colour, occasion etc.

Data feed technology may be relatively unknown outside of technical circles, but its commercial application in mobile is already delivering impressive results in terms of driving incremental revenue for many of the largest and well-known brands.

About the author and FusePump

Barney Larkin is Marketing Manager at FusePump. FusePump creates, manages and integrates product data feeds to maximise revenue from online marketing and eCommerce applications. High-quality data feeds increase product visibility and sales conversion for clients and enable consumers to find exactly what they’re searching for. We partner with affiliate networks, digital marketing agencies and publishers, and serve clients in the retail, travel and mobile sectors – including Argos, John Lewis, lastminute.com, Orange and Thomas Cook. FusePump is experienced in the following channels: Affiliate Marketing, Google Shopping, Dynamic Advertising, Comparison Shopping Engines, PPC Automation, Social Media and Mobile Commerce http://www.fusepump.com/.