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A recent report by MarketingSherpa found that many marketers’ understanding of how their business’s customers use their mobiles to generate sales is still in its early stages. 27% of respondents surveyed said that their organisation didn’t know the customers’ adoption rate, while only 8% thought that their organisation knew it very well.

Meanwhile 22% of respondents said they presumed that their customers would adopt mobile devices early on in the conversion path, but that they didn’t understand it very well. 17% claimed this wasn’t applicable or that they didn’t know, while 16% believed that mobile adoption could be used somewhat well.  Finally, 10% presumed that customers wouldn’t use mobile devices in the conversion path.

Overall, these figures suggest that organisations need to take the time to understand customer mobile adoption and how it can generate sales. This is particularly important as internet usage on mobile devices is increasing and by 2014, the estimated number of mobile users worldwide is set to overtake desktop internet users.

Why marketers will have to move fast in the mobile age

According to Torni Ahonen of Mobile Web Africa, “The average person looks at their phone 150 times a day, or once every six-and-a-half minutes of every waking hour.” Taking this into account, it’s vital that organisations learn how to expand their sales by keeping hold of their customers during this fast paced digital age.

As customers are increasingly using their mobiles to make more purchases, the organisations who stand out against their competitors are the ones which know how to optimise their web pages for fast and efficient transactions.

MarketingSherpa asked organisations which factors would prevent them from allocating more resources towards gathering this information, or whether a lack of internal resources is preventing marketers from understanding the mobile market. Does your organisation know how to collect data on customer mobile preferences for example?

Then there is the issue of updating your website to make it more mobile friendly. There are many tools you can use to optimise your web pages and make them easier for the average mobile user, but many organisations might not be aware they can do this.

Do you understand customer mobile adoption?

According to the MarketingSherpa report, of the 34% who did understand customer mobile adoption, only 8% claimed to have a strong understanding through internal data collection. While encouragingly, many within this category knew this topic ‘somewhat well’, which suggests they were using outside research to create a company mobile strategy.

Of the 10% of respondents who presumed customers wouldn’t use mobile devices to make sales, it could still be worth implementing some mobile tactics to see if it makes a difference to your conversion path. If it does, you can then start deciding if your organisation sees mobile sales becoming a big part of your sales strategy in the long term – which is looking likely given the future direction that information and sales are being directed.

By Chelsey Evans

Follow @AmpheonLtd