76 per cent of SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) retailers do not yet have an mCommerce site, according to research from MoPowered – but 89 per cent think that mCommerce is necessary for growth in the retail industry.

The research, carried out by OnePoll, surveyed 300 higher managerial professionals from SME retailers, showed that retailers expect that mCommerce sales to increase by a third in the next five years.

“The retailers that we spoke to are right in thinking that mobile commerce is essential for their growth,” says MoPowered chief executive Dominic Keen. “We have created a mobile commerce platform to enable SME’s to quickly, easily and cost effectively integrate onto the channel. Research from Google shows that 15 per cent of all online traffic is now coming through mobile. This means that not having a mobile-optimised site is equivalent to shutting your online store for one day every week.”

The survey also took the opportunity to quiz respondents on their experiences of mCommerce as a customer, and found that 27 per cent had abandoned transactions on their mobile due to a site which wasnt optimised for mCommerce. 79 per cent, meanwhile, said they had found shopping via mobile on non-optimised sites slow and difficult to navigate.