How PayPal’s Global Initiative is Helping Merchants Increase Mobile Commerce Sales
Are you wondering how to increase mobile commerce sales? Look no further than PayPal’s Mobile Optimization Initiative.
Mobile Commerce Trends
Mobile Payments Users Around the Globe
More than
Expecting
As the leading digital payments platform in the world, PayPal knows a thing or two about the latest trends in eCommerce and mobile commerce. These days, one of the biggest mobile commerce trends is the growing presence of mobile payments. In 2018, there were some 550 million mobile payments users around the globe — with some projections expecting this number to reach close to 750 million users by 2022.
Despite this growth, mobile revenue continues to lag significantly behind desktop eCommerce sales. Seeing the enormous potential of mobile eCommerce, PayPal has set out to close the payment gap between mobile and other devices.
A Bold Idea For Mobile Commerce Change
One man who is particularly passionate about closing the mobile eCommerce gap is PayPal Solutions Engineer, Jon Higby. Despite his passion, Jon also knew that solving a challenge of such a large magnitude would require an enormous collective effort.
Which lead to the birth of his vision — to create a global community of payment platform System Integrators and their eCommerce merchants who could collectively work together to increase mobile commerce sales.
But to bring his vision to life, Jon knew that he would need to create some sort of digital presence where participants could collectively join and learn from each other. And to create that community, he would need to find a unique digital agency that could turn his vision into a reality. An agency with a strong technology marketing skill set, strategic expertise, and who had the bench strength to get projects done quickly.
Enter Total Product Marketing, a referral Jon Higby received from a PayPal partner.
Bringing A Vision To Life
Meeting with TPM’s Principal, Dean Ara, Jon shared his vision and his desire to bring it all to life through a digital community. While Jon had a ‘big picture’ idea of what he wanted to achieve, he understood that he needed a great deal of help in creating a strategy that could help him hit his target.
With deep experience in full strategic marketing services and digital design for both SMBs and enterprise-grade marketing objectives, TPM was up to the task.
Following that first meeting, Jon connected Dean and his team with the project’s stakeholder group — a large group of five different PayPal departments and consultants including the PayPal Solutions Team, PayPal’s Partner Team, eCommerce merchant platform Magento, and hiConversion, a digital analytics and optimization consultant.
As the lead strategist on the project, TPM first began by helping the group define the audience, purpose, and desired outcome of the project — which included:
With the strategy defined, TPM next set to work on solidifying the project’s concept into a marketable product that would be easily digestible by the targeted audience.
Meanwhile, PayPal and hiConversion began working with a small group of Magento System Integrators and their merchants to run mobile eCommerce experiments on the merchants’ websites. This early group would be the first participants in what would become known as PayPal’s Mobile Optimization Initiative.
Working in close collaboration with Jon and the other stakeholders, TPM’s team of strategists, designers, SEO experts, and content writers began formulating a narrative that would serve as the basis for the Initiative’s interactive and animated website.
In designing the structure of the website, TPM applied its XYZABC Methodology to help visitors understand:
- The key services and products offerings of the Initiative — including the key drivers of the project (lagging mobile sales)
- The main users who would benefit from the Initiative and how they could measure those benefits, both subjectively and objectively
- Why the Initiative is unique from similar initiatives in the marketplace
- How to easily sign up and become an Initiative participant
The Results
Working under an extremely tight project schedule of just six short weeks, TPM delivered not only a full strategic plan but also the entire site in time for PayPal’s big debut of the Initiative at Magento Europe in the fall of 2018.
In addition to the website design, TPM also provided a full suite of content marketing tools to help PayPal, the System Integrators, and their merchants promote the Initiative. These included:
An enormous collaborative effort between PayPal’s stakeholders and TPM, the Initiative started with 75 participants since launching in October 2018 and continues to grow. Together, all participants are actively discovering new ways to increase mobile commerce sales.
“Since launching, the Initiative has attracted 125 merchants and the community on average has received a 9.3% RPV list across their sites in 2018.”
Currently working on the Initiative’s second phase — that’s now moving the Initiative from a thought leadership exercise into a strong lead generator — TPM has become a trusted advisor and partner to the PayPal team who credits the agency for successfully bringing their vision to life. In addition to TPM’s ongoing work on the Initiative, the agency is also currently involved in numerous other PayPal and Magento projects.