31% UK shoppers pay more if mcommerce experience improves

Online retailers could sell more to consumers who shop from their smartphones, if they would offer a better shopping experience via the mobile app. Especially in the United Kingdom, the mobile shopping apps could really use an upgrade.

That can be concluded from a report called ‘The Mobile Payment Journey‘, written by Worldpay after surveying over 16,000 consumers across ten different countries. It found out, among other things, that British consumers have just seven apps downloaded on average, while the global average is ten. And 37 percent of UK consumers prefer to shop via the mobile browser over a mobile app, which is more than any other country.

Mcommerce in UK is very demanding market

So, online retailers in the UK still have lots of work to do when it comes to their mobile offerings. “The mcommerce market in the UK is one of the fastest growing in the world, but it’s also among the most demanding”, says Shane Happach, EVP, Head of Global Ecommerce at Worldpay. “Consumers are reluctant to download new apps, and quick to axe those that don’t prove valuable, meaning it’s no longer enough for brands to develop an app for purely functional purposes”, he comments.

Latest technologies could reduce shopping cart abandonment

According to the research, the number one reason for shopping cart abandonment on smartphones in the UK is a long checkout process. “This serves as an important reminder to merchants that the latest in smartphone technology, from fingerprint scanning to facial recognition, can help create a faster and friction-free user experience.”

It’s not only UK consumers who are selective about the apps they will use, they are also increasingly demanding from brands to offer a more luxurious and personalized shopping service via their mobile app. About three in ten shoppers in the UK are willing to pay more for a product if the mobile shopping experience is better.