“Merchants have seen an uplift in conversions, many reporting a 50-100% increase.”

Satya Krishna Ganni is the Founder and CEO of MartMobi. Satya and his team founded MartMobi because they believe that mobile is the present, not the future. MartMobi is a mobile e-commerce platform that helps online retailers dramatically improve their conversions on mobile, by enabling merchants to go mobile instantly by seamlessly integrating with their back-end systems (Magento, Bigcommerce, Shopify, Volusion and custom-built sites). Merchants go live with mobile sites and mobile apps in 2-3 days without writing a single line of code, giving them new channels of revenue and customer engagement. MartMobi is headquartered in Chicago and is part of the Techstars family.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you elaborate on the importance of having a multi-channel presence?

Satya: Shoppers are getting increasingly impulsive. If they like something, they need to have it right then and these impulses can occur anywhere – on a train, in a restaurant or sitting in front of the television. Mobile devices are the one item that people have with them at all of these locations, so it becomes an essential channel for retailers’ sales. A multi-channel presence is not just important, it is imperative for retailers of all sizes.

BusinessInterviews.com: What makes MartMobi unique?

Satya: MartMobi is a turnkey solution for retailers to go mobile that seamlessly integrates with a wide selection of existing back-end systems such as Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento, Yahoo Stores, Volusion and more. Our platform provides beautiful and customizable designs and automatically syncs a retailer’s mobile store with their online store, providing analytical insights and a marketing toolkit. Retailers can go mobile on Android, iOS and mobile web in a matter of days without the overhead cost.
Everything we do at MartMobi is to improve mobile conversions for our customers. We optimize every step of the consumer journey to ensure that their mobile store is highly engaging and minimizes dropouts. Merchants usually see an uplift in conversions from day 2 of their mobile site or app going live and soon after many have reported a 50-100% increase in conversions.

BusinessInterviews.com: What tips would you give to someone who is about to use MartMobi for their first time?

Satya: I would recommend that merchants start small. Start with a mobile site, verify whether it improves your mobile user experience and thus conversions. Then, consider rolling out apps across different platforms.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you walk us through the thought process of choosing between mobile site and native app and the most important aspects to consider?

Satya: The choice for retailers between a mobile site or native app boils down to the kind of user engagement the retailer wants, and the objectives for having a mobile store.

If the store sees large amounts of traffic from one-time visitors who are directed by search and social media, then a mobile site would be the best bet. However, if the retailer is focused on customer engagement and wants to retain customers for future purchases, having a native app would be more apt. If the retailers objectives are combination of both acquisition and retention, then the retailer should consider both a mobile site and an app. In such a case, the app should be promoted prominently through the site.

From a functionality standpoint, mobile apps have better speed and can leverage native capabilities of the device, but a retailer’s choice should be made based on the nature of user engagement, not on the basis of features.

We recently dove into this topic on our blog here.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you talk about the importance of securing $118K from Techstars Fund and how their support has influenced the direction of your company?

Satya: The past couple months at Techstars have been an eye-opening experience for MartMobi. Techstars is a mentor-driven network and the advice we have received from our mentors has helped us rapidly validate and scale our mobile commerce platform. Further, their funding has helped us hire the right resources to make this possible.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people make when it comes to building their mobile site and how can they be avoided?

Satya: Some of the biggest mistakes retailers make in building a mobile site are trying to force content to fit, not optimizing the checkout experience and not doing real-world user testi