Member Article

Consider Points When Choosing Mobile E-commerce Development

Phones with internet connectivity have zoomed mobile based ecommerce market. Using mobile phones and WAP devices, user can supply and access to a variety of stuffs online. Here, a really big break is available for mobile based ecommerce applications and web developments. Although, it seems trendy to use mobile phones for online business activities but in future, phones, particularly smartphones are going to be the major medium of ecommerce activities.

The term mCommerce (mobile commerce) was first tossed in 1997 when two Coca Cola vending machines, enabled with SMS Payment system, were installed in Helsinki, Finland. In the same year Merita Bank of Finland also launched first ever mobile-phone based banking services.

mCommerce provided multiplied opportunities to online businesses, helped brands amplified there online presence. It also facilitated cycle of demand-supply and offered instant way to send & receive information. mCommerce provided a rapid online business mode to access to huge customers globally. Diverse business communities quickly adopted mCommerce technologies for business transactions such as mobile ticketing, mobile vouchers, coupons and loyalty cards, Content purchase and delivery, location-based services, information services, mobile banking, mobile brokerage, auctions, mobile browsing, mobile purchase and mobile marketing and advertising.

Online platforms that support ecommerce activities are designed and developed according to the type of business, business-model and demand-supply chain. Technical terms like OS and handset-type are equally considered before beginning mCommerce development. Other things can be:

-Security against hacking, viruses, fraudulent transactions, and data corruption

-In case data gets crashed or becomes corrupted, how quickly, easily and economically can it be rebuilt? -Facility to promotional tool e.g. to put products on discount, new arrivals, (%) off, and to offer coupons -Flexibility to add infinite products’ ranges -Facility to add categories, subcategories, and sub-subcategories -Capacities to handle large traffic -Facility to customize templates’ look -Facility to export and import data using desktop -Support to various payment modes like Google Wallet, PayPal, and LevelUp. -Support to multiple sales tax levels and shipping cost calculations -24x7 support to web hosting, updates and customer support

To cut the development cost to some extent, you may also opt to open source mCommerce development but forget not to check the developer company, and does it provide proper customer support too? Also check how the open source is doing in market and does it properly address to issues like security, design, patches and constancy and feature add-ons.

You can ask the mobile ecommerce developer to optimize your site the way you want and the business you are in because optimized sites earn better business and deliver desired performance even in slow data connection. Stuffs followed in mCommerce development can broadly be mCommerce theme design and development, mCommerce website development, mobile CRM development, mobile commerce application development, mobile shopping cart design and development and mobile e-booking site development.

Also, look-on broader accessibility, outflow of information and trade conversion rates related issues as these will quit often popup because in future, the number of users using mobile phones for online activities is going to be higher than laptop or PC.

One more thing to be considered is cross-mobile-platform support. There are different operating systems like Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, RIM’s BlackBerry, Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’ Windows Phone and the devices installed with these operating systems may respond differently to a mobile website if it is not optimized according to specific OS’s environment.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mobilmindz .