Tictail Enables Small Businesses To Join The Mobile Revolution

Tictail, a DIY eCommerce platform, wants to enable small merchants to set up their online commerce. Tictail’s claim to fame is allowing these small businesses to create and manage their online stores entirely from a mobile phone, reports Mobile Commerce Daily.

Tictail was founded in Sweden, launched in May 2012 and moved at the beginning of the year to New York. According to AM New York, the number of U.S.-based Tictail vendors grows roughly 120 percent year-over-year.

The trend to move online can be intimidating at best, mission impossible at worse. An easy setup via smartphone eases the process for non tech-savvy retailers – for free and in a just a few minutes. Tictail claims to be the first to offer this service. And it has the numbers to prove its success.

There are now more than 75,000 retailers in 140 nations using Tictail’s app to create free online stores for selling everything from hand-made wooden items to clothing to watches – with a total of 1 million products.

How does it work? The merchant downloads the free mobile application and creates a profile. The setup is complete once product photos are uploaded and descriptions and pricing are added. Merchants can manage all their logistitcs (orders, shipments, returns, email newsletters, discount codes, international pricing, etc.) via Tictail mobile. Online help on the Tictail website is available in order to eliminate friction points and increase conversion rates.

“This is revolutionary when you think that the future of eCommerce – the future of business as a whole – is rooted in mobile,” said Carl Waldekranz, co-founder/CEO of Tictail, according to Mobile Commerce Daily. “In five years, I have no doubt we’ll be seeing entire companies thinking mobile-first with small retailers being able to completely run their companies directly via mobile.”

For Waldekranz, this unique possibility reaffirms Tictail’s goal to empower online retail success for smaller merchants seeking to grow from a mom and pop store to a large brand identity.

“Merchants have independent URLs for their stores, so rather than driving traffic to Tictail, they are able to drive eCommerce traffic directly to their own websites. ”

“We want to give retailers the tools to graduate from the kitchen table and grow from a one-man or one-woman company to a larger brand,” he said. “To help with this, we want to take all the unnecessary risks for a retailer to get started right away and be a resource for tips and tricks around email newsletters, Facebook advertising integration, pricing, tech setup, and more.”

Currently, there is room for improvement in the U.S. in terms of mobile commerce. According to a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. eCommerce professionals by eBay Enterprise in September 2014, respondents said that mobile commerce was their top competitive weakness.

Two research studies by Accenture on what the consulting company is calling “seamless retailing,” published in March, showed a significant disparity between what consumers want (in terms of products and pricing) and what retailers are currently able to deliver across multiple channels. Of the 750 shoppers surveyed by Accenture, only 42 percent reported that they found it easy to complete a purchase on a mobile device. In fact, only 19 percent of U.S. retailers facilitate in-store shopping via mobile phone.

“Mobile commerce is growing like crazy worldwide,” Waldekranz said. “Speaking specifically to Tictail’s network, we’re seeing over 50 percent of our orders coming in from mobile (a 75 percent jump since 2014) and site visits from mobile now surpassing desktop site visits.”

“We’re inspired by this consumer shift to mobile, and as such wanted to create a new product offering that could reach not only our consumers, but our merchants on the go,” he said.