Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant (Part 6)

Rick Wilson: The trend we see there is that they want to go direct. They want to build a community around their product. I think Kickstarter has really brought that down even from the million dollar plus range to the zero dollar plus range where you can do a product video, get a personality out there, and build a community. Once you build a community, you have enough momentum to go figure out the logistics. If you’re selling a single SKU, outsourcing fulfillment is easy. If you’re selling jewelry and you have 5,000 SKUs, it gets a little more challenging. Even all of those problems are now solvable by one to five person teams, which was impossible a decade ago.

Sramana Mitra: I would say e-commerce is probably the domain that is seeing the maximum impact of ultra-light startups. Would you agree with that?

Rick Wilson: I think I would. The only color I would add to that is, obviously in the world of iOS apps, there are people who are wildly successful. It’s either there or e-commerce. Those are the spots.

Sramana Mitra: That’s true. What are you seeing in the mobile commerce area? We’re hearing from a lot of merchants that mobile sales are a very big component. Are there segments where mobile commerce is bigger than in others?

Rick Wilson: We don’t aggregate the data that way to look at the segments, so I don’t have the visibility to say that clothing is selling better on mobile. I can say this. What has become routine for us is that roughly 30% to 40% of customer traffic is from phone or tablet. As a rule, you’ve got to have a well-built website that has been thought through for usability. It doesn’t purely have to be responsive. That’s too much of a buzz word. Generally speaking, tablet conversion rates can be near or identical to your desktop conversion rates. I think that will improve.

Apple Pay is likely to eventually come to the browser. If Apple Pay succeeds in the browser, then Google Wallet will get some attention. Tablets are already competitive with desktop and I foresee a world where they actually can be better than desktop. In mobile, what we normally see is you lose about 20% of your conversion rate on a phone. It’s hard to tell. Most of the analytics products’ attribution model is broken.

This is what I personally do. I will look at something on my phone. I will save the tab in Safari and when I get to my computer or iPad, I buy it. I think the attribution model on the conversion from phone to tablet is a little wonky. I think that there’s no question that if we’re having this conversation in seven more years, instead of 40% of the traffic, it will be 70% to 90%.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant
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