What is m-commerce?

The persistent conversion gap

Mobile has carried the majority of ecommerce traffic for years while converting at a consistently lower rate than desktop. The gap has narrowed and has not closed.

The reasons are mostly mechanical rather than behavioural: forms are harder on a small screen, comparison across tabs is awkward, and considered purchases are frequently researched on a phone and completed elsewhere. That last point means part of the measured gap is not a gap at all — it is a cross-device journey that mobile gets blamed for.

What closes it

• Wallet payments. Removing the card entry form is the single largest improvement available.
• Guest checkout. Forced account creation before purchase loses a substantial share of buyers.
• Fewer fields. Every input costs conversion; most checkout forms collect more than they need.
• Speed. Mobile connections are variable and abandonment rises sharply with load time.
• Persisted state, so a returning user resumes rather than restarts.

App and mobile web

Apps convert better than mobile web for people who have them, and the comparison is misleading because app users are self-selected — they installed the app because they already intended to buy repeatedly.

The practical error is pushing a ready-to-buy web user into an install flow. That trades a likely conversion now for an uncertain one later, and smart banners placed on high-intent pages do this routinely without anyone measuring the cost.

Test the install prompt against the web conversion it displaces rather than counting the installs it produces.