Dive Brief:

• Dynamic Yield has announced a new mobile web personalization tool designed to help retailers increase mobile commerce conversion rates, as mobile traffic to retailer sites continues to rise, but purchasing remains low, according to a press release emailed to Retail Dive.

• Mobile accounts for 60% of online traffic, but contributes to only 16% of purchases due in large part to consumers being turned off by lackluster and cumbersome mobile shopping experiences, according to Dynamic Yield’s on research on 50 million shoppers in the U.S. and Europe.

• The capabilities of Dynamic Yield’s mobile web personalization engine include united customer profiles; native mobile navigation; product recommendations; personalized mobile layouts; and omnichannel synchronicity.

Dive Insight:

Dynamic Yield is not the first company to point out the gap between use of mobile devices during shopping activities and actual sales conversion via mobile. As mobile shopping activity grew over the last year, the increasing excitement was always tempered by the fact that only a small percentage of mobile shoppers were completing purchases via mobile.

Many studies have come to the conclusion that mobile commerce site performance is the biggest reason for that gap. A report from performance analytics company Soasta last year sized up the issue with a shocking stat — a 2-second delay in mobile site load time can hurt conversion rates by 103%, while just a 100-millisecond delay in load time can bring down conversion rates by up to 7%.

Dynamic Yield seems to agree, but its mobile web personalization engine also gets at another aspect of the problem that can't be overlooked: Many shopping sites don't have mobile-friendly personalized experiences, and the customer experience overall doesn't integrate well from channel to channel as shoppers switch shopping modes.

The new personalization engine tackles the problem in a number of ways, with customer profiles able to be segmented by user behavior, device type, element clicks, geo-location, local weather forecast, past purchases and more. It also allows for cross-device data to be applied to product recommendations, and enables mobile-friendly and personalized page layouts. The omnichannel synchronicity capability means that users who visited a retailer’s mobile app or opened a promotional e-mail, but did not complete a purchase can be uniquely targeted with personalized offers on desktop and mobile web.

Other research has suggested that big mobile sales numbers are just over the horizon (at least for certain giant e-commerce sites), so some retailers may think this is a game of patience. But, retailers shouldn't expect mobile users on their apps and sites to lead to mobile sales. Customers have quickly developed habits of using mobile for certain product search needs and price comparisons while shopping, and then moving to another channel to make the purchase. Switching channels leaves retailers at risk of losing sales, but high performance and a highly personalized experience just might save them.