Adobe has published the results of the first annual Adobe Scene7 Mobile Commerce Survey, detailing leading businesses’ strategies for leveraging the mobile channel over the coming year.

Respondents across several industries indicated an overwhelming preference for developing websites as their predominant mobile commerce presence, with more than 80 per cent planning or having already deployed a mobile website compared with other types of mobile properties, including downloadable apps. Only 8 per cent of respondents cited a downloadable app-only mobile commerce strategy.

The survey uncovered four key areas of focus for businesses’ mobile strategies: promotions, commerce, product information and branding. 75 per cent of respondents named promotions as the core of their mobile strategy, validating the mobile channel as an important method to drive traffic and support multi-channel commerce.

“Multichannel shoppers tend to purchase more; therefore, companies must effectively engage customers by delivering consistent, rich experiences across all channels – including mobile – to maintain and fuel current double-digit e-commerce industry growth rates,” says Sheila Dahlgren, senior director of product marketing at Adobe. “The survey results demonstrate the opportunities that exist for companies to fully leverage rich visualization features to improve their emerging mobile presences and drive cross-channel sales.”

Mobile user experience findings from the survey point to full-screen image zoom and videos as the most important way to browse or display products on mobile devices, specifically:

• More than 55 per cent of respondents cited full-screen image zoom and videos as indispensable viewing features for driving conversion
• 96 per cent of respondents asserted the most effective visual merchandising features were catalogues and brochures, alternative images, and zoom & pan
• While only 18 per cent of respondents currently utilize rich visual merchandising features for mobile commerce, up to 81 per cent of respondents cited plans to deploy these features, thus implying richer mobile experiences will be created and offered over the next 12 months.

The Adobe Scene7 Rich Mobile Commerce Survey was conducted between 6 and 23 July, 2010, to identify businesses’ strategic and tactical plans for mobile commerce over the next year. The survey received 446 responses from representatives at leading enterprises worldwide.

The top six industries for respondents, representing over 50 per cent of the total, included retail, agencies (advertising/interactive), computer hardware-services-software, and media. Retail was the highest segment to respond with over 20 per cent. Approximately 75 per cent of respondents were from N. America. A complete detailed summary of the report is available here.