Most UK merchants expect mobile commerce to be part of their main strategy within the next 12 months, and more than 40% plan to have a transactional mobile site or application within the next year, according to a survey carried out by eDigital Research for the Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment (AIME), the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).

Researchers asked 140 marketers associated with retail, advertising or mobile services about their attitudes to mobile commerce. Of the senior-level representatives from UK retail brands, 94% said they considered m-commerce a significant business opportunity, and 59% said they expected their mobile revenues to increase over the next 12 months.

Current m-commerce revenues in the UK are relatively small; 63% of merchants polled by eDigital Research said they made less than 1% of their total revenues from mobile, or did not even measure income from the mobile channel. But retailers are beginning to recognize the emerging demand for mobile shopping. According to comScore and the GSMA, 4.2 million UK consumers per month are using the mobile internet to visit retailers’ websites.  Moreover, Brandbank’s “2010 mCommerce Content Report” noted that growing numbers of UK smartphone users are engaged in shopping behavior on their handsets; just 19% of smartphone owners surveyed in May 2010 said they did not use their mobile phone to help them shop.

Retailers will also be encouraged by recent growth in UK e-commerce overall. Online spending by UK consumers reached £5 billion ($7.9 billion) in July 2010, according to the IMRG and Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. That marked a 14% rise on June 2010 and an 18% increase on July 2009—as well as the highest leap in ecommerce spending since 2007.  Average spend per person was £81 ($127).

All market sectors recorded higher sales in July 2010 than in July 2009, the index reported. Wet weather at the end of the month contributed to internet sales by keeping many shoppers indoors. Rain also drove visits and purchases at travel websites as consumers arranged escapes to sunnier destinations. Many travel operators had pushed their prices to rock-bottom, too, because the recession and flagging consumer confidence left many flights and package holidays unsold at the start of the summer.

The summer of 2010 is emerging as a time of major moves in the UK’s online grocery sector.

In early July, Amazon UK surprised many observers by entering this market, offering 22,000 popular grocery items and household goods. Delivery options include those already familiar to Amazon customers, such as express, super saver and evening rates. Amazon Prime, which provides unlimited free one-day delivery for an annual fee of £49 ($77), can also be used for the grocery service.

Amazon’s move is a clear signal that the internet grocery business is ripe for growth. Another sign is the proliferation of mobile apps and website improvements from leading players. In fact, mobile platforms look set to be a crucial battleground for grocery retailers, as smartphone use continues to rise in the UK.

At the end of July, Waitrose unveiled a new iPhone app and mobile site. The app is free, and can be downloaded to the iPod Touch and iPad as well as the iPhone. The mobile website will showcase in-store offers, and recipes from two celebrity chefs, Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal, who are already associated with the Waitrose brand. Both app and website incorporate location-based technology enabling users to find convenient stores.

Not to be outdone, the retail giant Tesco—which saw £136 million ($217 million) in profit from online sales last year—announced on August 4 that its first fully transactional mobile app would launch on Nokia’s Ovi Store within a week. Registered members of Tesco.com will be able to browse a full list of goods available in store, and update their shopping lists.

As of May 2010, groceries had barely registered on the radar of most mobile phone users in the UK. A YouGov poll for Brandbank found that just 17% of smartphone users said they were likely to buy groceries via their handsets—compared to 26% who said they were likely to purchase clothing or accessories, and 53% who said they were likely to buy CDs, computer games or other physical entertainment products.

But grocery buying via mobile has enormous potential in the UK. The country’s leading grocers hope to boost take-up of their new services with highly visible promotion and word-of-mouth, and clearly expect significant growth in the number of mobile buyers during the next year. As Nic Howell of nma magazine commented on August 5: “When mobile becomes a story about the weekly shop, rather than trendy people becoming mayors of their favorite Soho bars, then it gets interesting.” In turn, mobile purchase of groceries should reinforce ecommerce as a growing habit among UK consumers.

For a current overview of online shopping and buying in the UK, see the eMarketer report “UK B2C Ecommerce: Consolidating the Gains.”

The Daily Telegraph has released results of a TNS study into consumer spending intentions, following government announcements of public sector budget cuts and a rise in value-added tax (VAT) to 20% from January 2011.

Almost three-quarters (73%) of UK adults polled said they planned to curtail their spending as a precaution. At the start of 2010, 44% of consumers said they intended to tighten their belts.

Richard Hyman, chief retail adviser to the accountancy firm Deloitte, commented: “Since the Budget [in June 2010] reality has kicked in for many consumers. … If interest rates go up, alongside an increase in VAT in the new year, suddenly people will be feeling a lot less wealthy and they will spend less. This is going to make life awfully tough on the high street.”

The Telegraph reported that adults with children were even more worried about their immediate financial future, with 82% of respondents in this category saying they would buy less.

The Internet will play a vital role for consumers hoping to stretch their buying power. According to Fleishman-Hilliard and Harris Interactive, 30% of UK Web users polled in January 2010 said the Internet was “absolutely essential” or “extremely important” as an information source. No other source—including family, friends and colleagues—came close to this level of authority.

We can also expect to see more of the attitudes noted by the e-Dialog Center for Digital Marketing Excellence in Q1 2010. The Center asked UK and US Web users what information they most wanted to see in e-mail marketing messages. Top of the list were discounts on future purchases and advance notice of money-off sales.

For retailers in particular and advertisers generally, the message is clear: until confidence levels rise, most consumers in the UK will want to see value for every penny.

Last week saw the annual Future of Digital Marketing conference in London, presented by Econsultancy. For me, a long day’s exposure to many stimulating speakers boiled down to a multifaceted take on the concept of value. How can marketing deliver value for advertisers in 2010? What value (and values) do consumers look for when they consider the options presented to them? What new behaviors made possible by digital media are attaining value? Below are a few points raised or prompted by the occasion.

Value comes in many forms these days.

At the most basic level, there is value in technology itself, including Internet access and mobile devices. These things make it easy to get information, find products and services, save time and save money. A milestone in this appreciation of technology as value, as keynote speaker Gerd Leonhard reminded us, is that from July 2010, access to broadband will be a legal right in Finland.

While some things are gaining value, others are losing it. A corollary of recent technological development, Leonhard observed, is that the intrinsic value of copies (such as songs, video and written content) has declined, turning many old business models on their heads. Now it is often the context of information or creativity that makes it valuable, and those who can create a compelling context will attract audiences.

One of the greatest sources of contextual value is online community. Facebook is the headline example—demonstrating that not only the site itself but advertisers who use it well can reap big rewards. But there are countless examples of smaller communities creating value through shared interests.

One speaker, Rowan Gormley of Naked Wines, has built his business on a blindingly simple win-win premise: Wine lovers get together to support independent winemakers with a proven pedigree, and commit to buying specific wines before they are made. Because the winemakers effectively pre-sell those wines, they don’t need to market them, and many upfront costs are also met. For their part, buyers save an average 33%—often more—on the wines themselves. The earlier they commit to buy, the lower the price.

Of the 80,000 members of Naked Wines, 20,000 also spend £20 per month to support winemakers who need modest investment to launch a new wine or begin a new project—perhaps buying an additional parcel of land to cultivate. In 2009, Gormley noted, Naked Wines was the largest single investor in new wine ventures in the world. Beyond this, the company works to harness the full value of users’ comments and to provide good customer service.

It’s not difficult to see the concrete value in Gormley’s business: for winemakers, for wine drinkers, and for Gormley himself, who clearly loves his job. Tom Savigar of the Future Lab discussed value in a broader sense. Savigar aimed to look “beyond retail” in his keynote speech, and ask questions that are fundamental in the multichannel age: “Why do I go to a store? Why do I go to a Website?” What are the differences, and how are these categories blurring as we all learn to shop in different ways?  More importantly, how are retailers recognizing the value they provide, and using that knowledge to rethink their businesses?

Angela Maurer, senior marketing manager at Tesco.com, lifted the lid on the grocery giant’s API strategy to reveal another win-win situation. First, Tesco managers spent some hours together brainstorming ideas for online and mobile applications, and drew up a list of priorities in various areas. These were written on Post-It notes and stuck to the walls of their very large meeting room. That same evening, the firm threw open the doors to interested programmers recruited online.

Browsing among the posted ideas, programmers could choose the projects they wanted to tackle. Tesco managed the assignment process, and gave programmers all the information they needed about the store’s API and related infrastructure. Result: Tesco is taking advantage of some of the best brains in the field, programmers get payment and credit, and the customer gets better service. Moreover, said Ms. Maurer, the entire process of brainstorming, commissioning and delivery took a tiny fraction of the months that older processes would have required.

Marks & Spencer is also squeezing extra value from existing assets—in this case, its branded video content—according to Chris Gorell Barnes. Barnes is CEO of Adjust Your Set, which helped the retailer launch M&STV. The site is now populated with more than 1,000 pieces of intelligent content, and has generated over 4 million minutes of views.

Much of the content is also syndicated for broadcast on video sharing sites, social networks and other content and media portals. Crucially, these videos incorporate a click-to-buy facility, taking viewers straight to M&S for purchase. So far, data shows customers who viewed M&STV spending 23% more. And, said Gorell Barnes, video delivers value in other ways. His firm has seen e-mail response rates rise by up to 300% when outgoing messages contain video elements.

Inevitably, Facebook plays a growing role in any assessment of value on the Web. Beyond its importance to users and product advertisers, however, is its growing value as a broadcaster. As Gerd Leonhard noted, even content from major media owners is increasingly seen within this social environment, as a currency shared between friends or given new meanings by Facebook groups. Content owners are just beginning to think about how this may raise or lower the value of what they produce, and how their business models need to alter in response.

The emerging mobile arena was another key topic of the day. Douglas Orr of price comparison engine Sccope discussed the rapidly growing market for mobile commerce. His firm is the global m-commerce partner for BlackBerry, which aims to launch mobile buying facilities from this August. Orr and other speakers on mobile were joined on a panel by Jo Vertigan, Head of Digital at England 2018 (promoting England’s bid to host the FIFA World Cup eight years from now) and Patrick Mork, CMO of GetJar, a site offering “appsolutely everything” in the way of applications for mobile handsets.

M-commerce promises greater convenience for buyers and a new revenue stream for sellers. But what other values attach to mobile? Are apps better value for advertisers and consumers than mobile Websites? Advertisers often opt for a site strategy, which removes the need to cater for different handsets. But will the mobile Web win out in the long run?  

Mork, not surprisingly, favored apps over sites. Apps offered deeper brand engagement, he said; users experienced no network delays, and payment was (at the moment) easier and more secure from within an app. But he acknowledged that advertisers interested in reach probably find better value in building mobile sites.

A final insight agreed by all the FODM speakers: The pace of change in the industry, though frightening, is also inherently valuable, keeping marketers on their toes and sparking innovation.

A big day: Experian Hitwise announced that social networks attracted more UK online traffic than search engines in May 2010. Since May of last year, social network visits have climbed from about 10% of all UK site visits to 11.88% of the total. During the same time, traffic to search engines fell from about 12% to 11.33% of all visits.

Google UK remained the most popular site overall among UK Web users, representing more than 90% of searches in May, said Hitwise. But Facebook ranked second in popularity, and accounted for 55% of all UK traffic to social network sites. YouTube claimed 16.5% of social network traffic, and Twitter placed third, with just over 2%.

These Hitwise results bear out some of the first rankings from the recently launched UK Online Measurement company (UKOM), which bases its audience estimates on Nielsen panel data. UKOM found that Google was indeed the top Web brand in April 2010, attracting 35.3 million unique visitors. The combined audience of Microsoft’s MSN, Windows Live and Bing search engine registered 28.3 million users, ahead of Facebook with 25 million.

These audience figures go some way to explaining why Facebook is also being widely credited with saving the display ad industry virtually single-handed. According to comScore’s Ad Metrix, the leading social network delivered almost 21 million display impressions to UK Web users in March 2010. That was more than 30% of all display ads served that month, comScore reported.