Mobile marketplace Wish, the growing importance of mobile e-commerce and how you can benefit

In December we’ve connected ChannelEngine to Wish. Although we are happy with every partnership and every channel we can add to our list, Wish might be one that comes at the right time for a lot of sellers. Wish is a mobile-optimized marketplace, and with the fast growth of mobile use and sales, it’s worth it to take a closer look at this marketplace and the mobile growth. We give you a few tips on how to reach this growing mobile audience.

Mobile marketplace Wish

Wish is the number one mobile marketplace in Europe and North America and active in over 70 more countries with an estimated current value of  $8.5 billion. With 150 million daily orders from 300 million customers. Over 150 million of these customers are European but only 2% of the current sellers are. This means customers now buy from other countries, which means shipping mostly takes weeks, while orders from European sellers could arrive within a few days. When you are able to ship your products in 5-7 days or faster, you can use “Wish Express”. This will give your products better exposure and customers can even search for fast shipping items. They will see your products, whether they want to or not. So selling on Wish offers great opportunities to reach this big European audience, and to even grow your cross-border sales to over 70 countries worldwide.

Mobile optimized

Another important fact about Wish is that it’s a mobile-optimized marketplace. With this, Wish is benefitting from growth rates that are 3x as high as traditional e-commerce growth. Wish uses advanced personalization formulas based on Machine Learning AI to curate product ranges for each individual consumer. This means that all users see different products in their feed, based on their interests (like the products they’ve bought before, saved for later or related to their profile). Impulse driven purchases, created by showing the right products, also enabled the growth of Wish. Half of the customers are under the age of 30, covering the most frequent mobile users. But with the growth of mobile, more people are able to find apps like Wish. So this might be the best time to sell on a mobile only marketplace like Wish. Let’s take a closer look at this mobile growth, and how you can benefit from it.

Mobile is growing

Do you remember this time, long ago, when people didn’t have a mobile phone? Mobile importance is growing, and especially under the millennials and generation Z it’s rare not to have your smartphone within reach at all time, let alone not even having one. 2017 Was a great year for mobile growth, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

Research states that this year’s holiday season is going to be the first year in history where more people will buy online than in actual stores. Most of these sales are still done on desktops but mobile is catching up fast. Last Black Friday desktop lost 6% of sales compared to last year while mobile increased sales by 19%.

The general importance of mobile

But besides the actual sales, mobile is important in multiple ways. Because even when shoppers go to stores, 1 in 5 states they will pay for their purchases using a mobile phone. Phones are also used to research products and look up product information and competitors prices while in-store shopping. Turns out that customers are even more willing to consult their phone than a store associate while shopping. Mobile is the only thing with internet access we have the moment we leave home or work. So even when somebody left home, you will still be able to reach them by using mobile apps, ads or websites.

Improve your website

So what could you do to reach this big mobile audience? First of all, make sure your website is compatible with mobile (and tablet). It turns out that mobile users are really impatient and websites with a loading time longer than 3 seconds raise stress levels to the same level as when watching a horror movie. Needless to say, loading times on mobile are really important. If your website takes too long, you lose your potential customers. And since normal websites take longer to load on mobile than mobile compatible websites, having a good website is crucial.

How to be successful with apps

Second, you could build an app. Over half the time people spend on a mobile phone is spend on apps. But it turns out that just a few apps are successful in creating a connection with a brand. Most users use only 5 apps on a regular basis and those are mostly social media and messaging apps. So, spending a lot of time and money on building a great app, might not get you anywhere. Luckily, you can invest in those apps in multiple ways

1. Join in on social media apps

First of all, you can join them. If you haven’t already created accounts on social media websites, you might want to start. People are already using their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn apps so why not make sure you are visible on those media? Build a band with your public by showing them the ins- and outs of your business. Share some behind the scenes secrets and maybe even discounts. Make them like you and make it easy for them to interact with you. Examples of easy interaction are chatbots and digital assistance. Chatbots are integrated with message apps like Facebook messenger while Digital assistance is built in in your own website. Both offer easy opportunities to contact you, without having to find contact information and call or e-mail. 

2. Advertise in social media apps

Second of all, advertising. It’s not the easiest job to get followers, likes and any form of interaction on social media because everybody tries to win over the crowd and you really have to stand out. But it’s especially hard to become visible by just posting messages and even discounts. So advertising can help you with that. Promote your discount or create a giveaway when you reach a certain amount of followers for example. People will have to follow your page to have a chance at winning and are probably sticking around even when your giveaway ended. By using advertisement, you instantly reach your wanted audience and everybody will see your advertisement, whether they want to or not.

3. Optimise your mobile search

Third, which is slightly the same as advertising, is optimising your mobile search. The volume of mobile search queries surpassed desktop more than a year ago. Because of this, Google is going to launch a mobile-first index in 2018, which allows you to optimise mobile search. It turns out that mobile search differs from desktop search. People search more nearby and direct results on mobile than on desktop. Finding a quick answer to a question or searching for a nearby bus station is more common on mobile than on desktop. Optimising your search to mobile search optimises your reach to both mobile and desktop shoppers.

4. Join the big brands

Last but not least, join in on big brands. Besides Wish, big marketplaces like Bol.com, Amazon, Miinto and Spartoo all have apps. One more successful than the other of course but they’ve all built their own customer connection. All of the above-mentioned marketplaces are easy to connect to your own system using ChannelEngine. Selling on these marketplaces, automatically means you’re reaching their mobile audience. So, selling on marketplaces doesn’t only help you reach a bigger audience in general, certain marketplaces also help you to easily reach the growing mobile audience. No matter what you’re selling, there’s probably a marketplace that fits your needs and also has an app. This saves you the time and money to build your own.