This is a guest blog post by Erin Schwartz, the lead marketing specialist behind 123Print. 123Print offers customizable print products for business and individuals, including the ability to make your own business cards and design other promotional items. 

How easy is it to shop online with your mobile device? A couple days ago I was reading an online article on my phone about the favorite authors of several New Yorker writers. One author struck me as particularly interesting and I hopped on Amazon to see if I could buy one of his books, used. Less than a minute later I had received an email with a confirmation number and a “thank you” for my purchase.

When it’s that easy to purchase items on your mobile device, why wait to get home and log on to your computer to make a purchase? In fact, why wait at all? By making online purchases from mobile devices on your website quick, easy and worry free, you can greatly increase your sales potential. And if the growth in use of retailer apps is any indication — growing almost 600 percent over the past year — mobile sales should be the main focus for retailers in the future.

Mobile and Mortar Shopping

Facebook jumped onto the mobile gifting wagon in limited areas this past September 2012 with the reincarnation of Karma, a gift app that the social media giant purchased in May. The feature became available to all Facebook users in December 2012 and functions on the basis of gift recommendations based on your friends’ preferences.

As of 2013, Facebook is taking this gifting feature a step further with the Facebook reusable gift card. Essentially, Facebook users can purchase a gift card for a certain amount from places such as Target or Olive Garden and the recipient is notified immediately of the gift. The gift card is sent through the mail and as the recipient uses it, he or she can keep track of the amount left through the account settings tab on Facebook. The card can be recharged and reused and it can even hold multiple gift amounts such as $10 at Starbucks, $25 at Barnes & Noble and $50 at Olive Garden.

It’s a growing field of commerce that has tentatively been dubbed “Mobile and Mortar”: consumers using mobile devices to send real gifts from online retailers, as well as using their mobile devices to price compare, check reviews and look up item information while in-store. In fact, according to Flurry Analytics, between December 2011 and December 2012, the use of mobile devices for price comparisons went up 247 percent and the use of all shopping apps went up 274 percent. But what many retailers are discovering is that the key to increasing mobile sales is to make it easier to purchase from mobile websites instead of through individuals apps.

Mobile websites more important than ever

More often than not, if you’re looking up an item online, you’re using a search engine to browse the web as opposed to using a particular retailers’ app. Why? Not only is a search engine an automatic go-to for most mobile device owners but using a search engine, as opposed to a retailer app, typically allows you to price compare and find reviews instead of committing to just one store. In fact, 36 percent of smart phone users use them to read product reviews on retail sites while 47 percent use them to learn more about a product (http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Majority-of-US-Smartphone-Owners-Use-Devices-Aid-Shopping/1008971). If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you could potentially be missing out on a good percentage of your customers.

Keeping customers on your site

Once consumers find your site, the last major hurdle is getting them to follow through with purchases. One of the biggest complaints of online retailers over the past year has been shopping cart abandonment rates. About 67 percent of all shopping carts are abandoned at some point in the shopping process.

To cut down on this, online stores have employed several different strategies with varying degrees of success. Some of the main solutions have been consistently assuring customers not only that the purchasing process is secure, but that returns and exchanges are easy and welcome. Many online marketing firms also stress the importance of including privacy and trust information next to personal information fields. Even if it’s just a click-through to legal information, reminding potential clients that their personal information will not be shared or sold is very encouraging and can easily make the difference in a sale.

Lastly, employing little reminders when clients leave your site before making a purchase could help bring them back at a later date. Brief emails such as “Just a reminder that you still have [blank] items in your cart” or even “How might we have made your shopping experience better?” might help to encourage the completed sale of an abandoned shopping cart.

Online retail is a constantly changing landscape and a major challenge for business owners and marketers alike. The best thing you can do to improve sales is to look for overall trends and try to keep up with the curve.

What ways have you found to encourage potential customers to stay on your website? Have any marketing plans worked well for you or failed unexpectedly? What seems to be the number one issue for you regarding shopping cart abandonment? Let me know in the comments below.

PS If you need business cards checkout my website: http://www.123print.com/business-cards

Quick shout out to Vasu Vadlamudi who provided a lot of the great insights below. Vasu was previously at Zynga and now at Delectable. If you are into wine, download his new app – you will love it!

Everyone I know is addicted to Subway Surfers. Me, my 5 year old cousin, my mom, and the parking lot attendant at the mall. It’s nuts!

I found myself playing Subway Surfers more and more and then I realized why. They are amazing at Game Mechanics!

Game Mechanic #1: Easy to Learn

Lets start off with the core game, it is extremely easy to learn but really hard to master. Similar to golf. This makes it easy for anyone to start playing and enjoying in a matter of seconds. The game gets faster and faster so for more experienced players the game remains exciting and challenging.

Game Mechanic #2: Missions

The game has fun missions that keep on changing as you advance. These missions actually teach you how to get better at the game, the first few are super easy and make you feel good about yourself because you can pass them at the first go. You start saying things like this “I’m awesome at the game, maybe this is what I’m destined to do with my life!”

Game Mechanic #3: Coins

Just “having coins” is kind of a mechanical thing. It is the way Subway Surfers designed and implemented their coins system that makes it feel really meaningful to collect. Games that implement a currency well succeed because they either

a) make it so that every time I play actually helps me out with the other times I play (ex. coins I earn today, I can use tomorrow – so I am investing and also excited about the promise of learning or doing new things in the future) or

b) they give me an element of strategy and choice (when should I use my precious coins? on what? how much should I even FOCUS on the coins vs. just surviving).

Game Mechanic #4: Leader-boards

They give you 5,000 coins if you connect to Facebook. That is a lot of coin, on average I collect 200 coins each play so connecting to Facebook is pretty heavily incentivized.

This makes a lot of sense though. A Leaderboard allows you to compete against your friends. One of my cousins was up until 6am playing the game because his friend overtook his high score. (Just in case you are curious he wasn’t able to beat his friend’s high score and is now accusing him of buying coins)

This also adds a viral component to the game, you can easily share your score on your Facebook timeline which serves as a personal endorsement for your friends to download the game.

Game Mechanic #5: Multiple Upgrades

All gadgets can get even better. For example the JetPack allows you to fly for 30 seconds, but if you upgrade the jet pack last for a few more seconds. There are 5 levels of upgrades and each level costs more coins. For example level one is just 300 coins, level 4 upgrade is 10,000 coins. The beauty of this is right after you upgrade is you see a dramatic difference which makes you addicted. All of a sudden you start becoming focused on collecting coins and start thinking of ways to collect more coins. You realize that 10,000 coins is going to take you 10+ hours to, so you decide to take a quick short cut and just buy 10,000 coins for $4.99.

Game Mechanic #6: Collectibles

The game never gets boring. Their is a lot to discover and use. Every few plays you get a mystery box and when you get lucky you can get a spaceship or guitar. I’m not a big gamer but for some reason I really want that spaceship!

Now, getting that spaceship seems next to impossible when you run the numbers. Every 5 game plays I get about 1 mystery box and every 5 mystery boxes I get 1 spaceship card. In order to actually get a spaceship I need to collect 500 spaceship cards. This means I need to play the game at least 12,500 times! As sadly as this sounds this makes me want the spaceship even more!!!! So rare and unique, I must have it.

Game Mechanic #7: Daily Play Bonus

The Subway Surfers team wants you to play everyday… they don’t want to be a “One-Play Wonder”. They have their own type of loyalty program if you play 5 days straight. This alone makes you want to launch and play the app on a daily basis.

Game Mechanic #8: Daily Missions

Along with daily play bonuses they have new daily missions. These missions make me want to play first thing in the morning, similar to my addiction to coffee. The daily missions also vary from the regular ones? It gives the user a different experience to look forward to (but not too different, after all they fell in love with the game as it exists for a reason).

Game Mechanic #9: Limited Time Only Items

You can change your character to different people. This is a lot of fun, I’m not really sure why but it just is. Anyway, they have limited time only characters. This means you have to buy coins if you can’t earn 100,000 coins in 2 day period.

Game Mechanics or Just Good Game Design?

A lot of the mechanics I observed are actually broader than just a game mechanic – they are hallmarks of good game design.

Yes, it’s true. I love Subway Surfers

Subway Surfers is one of the coolest games I have seen and their use of Game Mechanics is executed brilliantly.

These mechanics don’t interfere with the core fun of the game, a lot of them serve to actually ENHANCE it (leaderboards!) or at least make sure that more people get a chance to try out this great game. To me at least it’s always a little sad to see a great product that doesn’t bring as much joy to the world as it could have because not enough people ever saw it.

Do you think Game Mechanics are good or bad? I’d love to know your opinion in the comments below.

PS If you are wine connoisseur or a wanna-be wine connoisseur YOU MUST download and try Vasu’s new iPhone app.