• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, April 2, 2013

The overwhelming majority of retailers surveyed by mobile experience management platform Artisan say they expect mobile commerce to grow at a faster pace in their organization than online commerce once did.

Of 200 retail executives working in the mobile marketing and mobile commerce areas of their company, 84% said they anticipate the growth curve of mobile commerce to outpace the historic growth of e-commerce. More than half -- 56% -- say they were are investing more this year in mobile development and mobile marketing than they did in 2012. And a strong majority -- 71% -- say their native mobile app development will be the strongest touchpoint for engaging consumers in the next one to three years.

There is an ongoing debate, of course, among mobile marketers and retailers over where to focus efforts -- the mobile Web or native apps. Mobile Web sites traditionally have been especially strong in acquiring new customers, because they are discoverable via search engines, and end-users themselves tend to look for brands by typing in the brand as a dot-com address in a mobile browser. Native apps, on the other hand, have proven to be much stickier than mobile Web sites, engage the loyal user more deeply, and offer a more seamless path to conversion and the sale.

Among the 200 retailers surveyed here, 72% agreed that investing in their mobile app experience would be among the top three priorities this year. Artisan, of course, is a company that develops a platform for mobile apps, and so the research is focused on this aspect of mobile marketing.

In their plans for managing and developing native apps, 67% of retailers said they would like to further personalize the experience, while 60% said they would like more capabilities for collecting user analytics.