The magicians of mobile commerce want you to believe. They conjure up whiz-bang scenarios of the future and tout the amazing adventure of shopping on the Internet using wireless devices.
You’ve probably heard this one: Walking down the street, you approach a Starbucks coffeehouse and your cell phone automatically rings. On the screen, up pops a coupon for a $1 latte.
Or this one: You stride into a department store and slip into that perfect pair of jeans. A bit pricey? No sweat for your wireless device. Punch the bar code of those must-have jeans into your cell phone and receive a 20 percent discount from an online retailer.
Sounds great but don’t be fooled. Today’s reality of mobile commerce or “m-commerce”–online shopping done on the run–is a disappointing shell of what’s to come, though most experts agree that the future is bright for making purchases on cell phones and hand-held computers.
The number of U.S. households with Internet access through wireless devices climbed to 7.4 million in July, up 12 percent in just four months. Americans will spend $21 billion shopping with mobile devices by 2004, predicts International Data Corp., a research firm.
Today, the shoppers are few and far between. Even those with access to the wireless Web haven’t completed a purchase, mostly because the experience is entirely too troublesome.
This first attempt at “m-commerce” by retailers and service providers is just that–a practice round.
Amatvia Ben-Artzi seems like he’d be one of the first to get his toes wet with m-commerce. His job as chief executive of Netpost, a Mountain View, Calif., start-up, is to help people buy things from their wireless Internet gadgets. The company makes software for sending information to devices.
But Ben-Artzi avoids the wireless Web.
“It’s frustrating. It’s slow. It’s not really helpful,” he says. “It’s a toy for those who are Internet freaks, but it’s not for regular working people.”
Between cell phones and hand-held organizers, phones are the second-class shopping option.
For the most part, today’s attempts at m-commerce are a repeat of what’s worked in the PC-based Internet. The blue chips of the stationary Internet are also making forays into the mobile Web: online stores Amazon.com Inc. and Barnesandnoble.com Inc., portals America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. and auctioneer eBay.
They sell books and music, and they auction off collectibles and trinkets. Standard stuff, for now. Companies are clamoring to figure out what sells well on mobile devices, things that you need to grab on the run or services that are convenient on the go.
First, they need to make the experience better.
Cell phone users rightly bemoan the tiny screen, the difficulty of entering text, the slow Internet connection and the limited number of sites written with the wireless Web in mind.
These shortcomings are especially glaring when it comes to m-commerce.
The tiny screens typically scrunch text into four or five lines in a menu-like list. Each line has enough space for a couple of words. Phrases that exceed the width of the screen are forced to blink the first segment, then the next.
Small screens limit the amount and quality of information that can be presented to inquiring consumers. Merchants are trying to figure out the best way to convey vital information–item descriptions, prices and sizes–in the tightest of spaces.
A great deal of data entry is required to complete a transaction. At a minimum, you need to input the shipping address, billing address, credit card number and password for authentication. The keypad is great if you’re dialing a phone number, annoying if you’re groping for long street names like “West Charleston.”
Companies such as InfoSpace.com in Bellevue, Wash., and Qpass in Seattle are gathering customer preferences and personal information so the carrier has much of that data already stored in its computers, smoothing out the transaction process.
For example, a person who wants to purchase a one-day subscription to the Wall Street Journal’s online edition can punch in a personal identification number on his cell phone to place an order because Qpass has already recorded the user’s credit card and billing information.
The first two problems–screen size and text entry–are issues that phone manufacturers must address, and there are a number of new devices about to hit the market with improved displays and new handwriting functions like those on Palm and Handspring hand-held organizers.
More Top Picks Best Gaming Headsets Under 100 Dollars
After gliding around the Web on a high-speed connection, the shift to the plodding wireless Web is the equivalent of hitting gridlock. Information that zooms through telephone or cable lines to a PC slows to a crawl when it travels without wires to a cell phone–at best, 19 kilobits a second, compared to 384 kilobits a second for a standard high-speed connection. That makes m-commerce both tiring and costly for consumers whose service plans tally up the minutes of airtime.
Data speeds will eventually improve. The next-generation network, promoted as “3G,” for third-generation, promises to deliver streaming video and other data-rich experiences in an always-connected service. Think home-shopping channel on your phone at a flat monthly rate. But U.S. carriers won’t be ready to deploy the extremely expensive network for several years.
Telecom carriers AT&T Wireless, Pacific Bell Wireless, Sprint PCS Corp. and Verizon Wireless give preferred online merchants such as Amazon top billing on their menus in exchange for a fee or a cut of the revenue. A great deal of dot-coms are effectively shut out, sometimes by carriers that make it difficult to travel beyond their suite of preferred Web sites.
The fight for precious real estate on the scrunched screens means that the consumer is largely restricted to those companies favored by the telecom giants, often called a “walled garden” of content.
Jakob Nielsen, who runs a Web design consultancy, likens it to being force-fed Pizza Hut when you actually want Domino’s Pizza.
Few Web sites are configured specifically for wireless devices, and many aren’t even accessible. The industry’s clunky language, the wireless application protocol, is partly to blame. But improved versions of WAP and rival standards based on the Internet’s HTML hopefully will make navigating the wireless Web more like the PC-based version, with links and graphics.
Despite all the drawbacks, there are flashes of m-commerce’s potential even in today’s meager offerings. The best applications understand the user’s immediate needs and deliver familiar products on the fly.
Purchasing movie tickets is one of the best examples. After surfing the wireless Web for a nearby movie theater and finding out show times, Moviefone allows consumers to pay for tickets through their cell phones. Skip the long lines on a Friday night and guarantee yourself a seat in the theater. It almost makes today’s frustrations with m-commerce worthwhile.
Trying to catch the m-commerce wave, several companies are pushing wireless initiatives for consumers to do shopping on hand-helds or cell phones. Here is a sampling of companies embracing the wireless Web:
Godiva Chocolatier. The scrumptious confection is addictive, but are chocoholics really so desperate for Godiva that they have to immediately satiate the craving? The Godiva site offers directions to its 232 retail outlets and the 2,500 department and specialty stores that carry their morsels. Coming soon: purchase a box of chocolates over the wireless Web.
Progressive Corp. This car insurer is going where the customer is–in the car by the side of the road. Request a quote or locate a nearby agent by typing in a ZIP code on your cell phone. Of course, it’s probably quicker to call than plod through the wireless Web. Coming soon: make insurance payments and check car recall information.
AX Armani Exchange. If you can’t find the marble-and-mortar store while vacationing in Bali, then try shopping from your cell phone. Shop for that “Relaxed. Casual. Basic. Yet never routine, never predictable” outfit, track the order and locate the 55 worldwide stores. Coming soon: read Giorgio Armani’s corporate magazine.
Here are a few familiar faces from the PC-based Internet shopping mall that are heading to m-commerce:
EBay Inc. and Yahoo Auction. Place bids with the online auctioneer anywhere, anytime. Receive alerts when someone tops your bid or just before the auction closes. Verdict: Great if you absolutely must win the Pez dispenser auction.
FTD. Now there’s no excuse for forgetting to send flowers. Long-stemmed roses for dates and big bouquets for anniversaries. Verdict: Use as a last resort because the alternatives–voice call or PC–are less frustrating and time-intensive.
Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com. You can buy books, music and videos through the wireless Web, but why? It’s much easier to search and type in your billing information on a computer. And the items don’t arrive any sooner. Verdict: If you’re in such a rush, what you really need is a leisurely afternoon in a bookstore.