Advantages of Mobile Retailing

Mobile retailing is a very young practice – the practice of using mobile web and messaging service to increase purchase rates and lengthen the average customer lifetime in ways described below. Also check out the Mobile Retailing Blog for updated commentary.

Key Advantages
Advantages for Store-based Retailers
Competitive Position
Reasons Why the Mobile Web Sucks

There are very many business benefits to using mobile to extend your reach to your increasingly mobile customers. Here, we focus on 3 principal benefits for almost any retailer:

The ability to serve the rapidly growing number of mobile customers who come to your web site,
Deepening your customer relationships by fitting better into their lifestyle, and
Increase your access to new customers by tapping into your existing customers’ networks.

Your customers are going mobile; it represents a growth market. The #1 reason to deploy mobile web services is that your existing customers are adopting smartphones, and are coming to your website via these mobile devices, seeking service there. For most companies, the customer gets a lousy experience – most commonly, a painfully slow-loading home page. Once loaded, it’s clear that the site wasn’t built with mobile usage in mind.

According to Nielsen, the mobile internet has reached “critical mass,” with 40 million regular users of the mobile web, representing a 50% increase over 2007.¹ The graph below from M;Metrics shows usage greatest among younger segments, but even age groups 35-44 and 45-54 have many millions of users.²

Mobile Web Users, US; M:Metrics, July 2008

Mobile Offers the Opportunity to Fit Better into Your Customers’ Lifestyle. Thus driving up the average lifetime value of your customers to your company.

Start with the fact that, for most people, their mobile phones are always on and always at hand. Consumers clearly prefer the convenience of anytime-anywhere. Companies with effective mobile offerings are in reach of their customers at all times, not just when they are in front of a computer. They can serve their customers any time that a need or urge arises.

The key challenge for any retailer is to understand how their particular target customers want to take advantage of this new medium. Consumers today are finding the nearest Starbucks, researching autos on the showroom floor and making dinner reservations on their mobile devices. Retailers who think the technology is “not ready” are simply not stepping up to the challenge.

Mobile-active customers embrace their mobile devices and the services offered on them. Sometimes to the point of addiction, as the term “Crackberry”implies. If you can deliver something of value via the mobile browser, you have the opportunity fit into the mobile lifestyle.

Younger segments, of course, lead the way. According to Jim Gregoire of MocoSpace,³ “The mobile device is the first screen for Generation Y. It’s their lifeline and a significant opportunity for brands that covet this audience. For Gen Y, mobile is a fun, social place so brands that create a genuine dialogue on mobile can win.”

But mobile is not limited to youth. Unbound customer Moosejaw Mountaineering has built a lifestyle-focused community around its market-leading outdoor recreation stores and website. Robert Wolfe, founder and chairman, says:

“Moosejaw is successful because we’ve built a personal connection with our customers through our stores, website and catalog. Unbound Commerce enables Moosejaw to translate our brand into a compelling mobile experience for our customers – which we use to drive traffic to our stores, improve the shopping experience and deepen our interaction with the Moosejaw community."

What’s the value to fitting in to your customers’ lifestyle? Simple:
- The more time they spend with you, they more they buy;
- The more you are part of their life and their community, the less likely they are to switch to a competitor; and
- The more they hear about your products from their community, the more comfortable they’ll be purchasing them.
Increasing Your Ability to Acquire New Customers via the Social Networks of Your Current Customers. Mobile is about networking, about keeping in touch and sharing information and happenings. Texting and emails are precursors to mobile web usage, which complements this networking via the sharing of web content and links. Such sharing is the contemporary form for “word of mouth.”

Social shopping web sites are very popular; see www.Stylehive.com, as just one example. By adding anytime-anywhere, social shopping becomes real time, supported by images and text descriptions. A customer can bring a shopping buddy along, even if she’s not there in person.

One Unbound customer (who cannot be named because they are not yet launched) is deploying mobile capabilities in support of its one- and two-day sale events of high-end fashion items. This retailer loves the use of mobile to help its current members share their finds with their friends, so that the friends will also want to join in the hunt.

Advantages for Store-Based Retailers

Retailers with stores have some special additional advantages, briefly summarized here.

Store Locator – Drive traffic to your stores by making it easy for mobile users to find the nearest store. An enhancement to this offering is to let customers find the nearest store with the desired product in stock.

Improved In-Store Experience – There are several ways to help shoppers using existing online assets, such as customer reviews and detailed product descriptions and comparisons.

Electronic coupons and receipts – Will customers purchase specially-priced items if they left their coupons at home? Let them access electronic coupons via their mobile device to reap the benefit of these special promotions. And let them opt to receive their receipts in electronic form – easy record-keeping for warranties, taxes and returns.

Competitive Position

Maybe you think your customers aren’t requesting mobile web services. Maybe you don’t think your customers will make purchases via their mobile phones. Maybe you think you can just wait.

Maybe your competitors think otherwise. Many of them do.

As of the beginning of 2008, top e-retailers have already deployed content for mobile users. Cisco reports that nearly 50% of the top 50 have done so.
Top retailers providing services for mobile users include: Amazon, eBay, Best Buy, Ralph Lauren Polo and Footlocker, to name just a few.
In November 2008, retail giants Walmart and Sears both launched their mobile web initiatives.^4 5

The obvious question: if your customers are adopting mobile and your competitors are deploying mobile, can you afford to lag behind?

Reasons Why the Mobile Web Sucks

A surprising topic for a discussion of mobile retailing advantages? We think it important for retailers to understand the limitations involved in use of the mobile web from the end customer’s perspective. In the Publishing 2.0 blog, Scott Karp posted an article he entitled “Five Reasons Why the Mobile Web Sucks.”⁶ Some of the reasons are not entirely relevant; for example, complaints about slow speed fall away as users upgrade to 3G networks. But many remain relevant.

In Reason #3, Sites Aren’t Formatted for Small Screens, Karp writes:

You would think that most sites would be technologically capable of sensing when they are being loaded by a mobile browser and deliver a site optimized for that use.
Yeah, well, remember when everyone had a 800×600 screen resolution, and we used to design websites to fit that width? Why was that? Oh, right, because scrolling is annoying.
Looking at a normal web page on iPhone’s 3 inch screen is like surfing the web through a keyhole.
When I visit Costco on a mobile device, what are the chance I’m going to shop? Almost nil. I want store locations, phone numbers, and hours of operation, and I don’t want to stumble through four slow-loading screens to get that info.

And in Reason #4, Mobile Device Screens Are Too Small, he notes:

But even the glorified iPhone’s screen is still tiny. There are many things I simply won’t bother to do on a small screen, and will instead wait until I have access to a large screen — like shop, bank, blog, etc.
Much of what I’ve read about the future of mobile assumes we will do everything on a mobile device that we do on our desktops or laptops, but even if my complaints #1-3 are fully addressed, technology can’t fix the limitations of human eyesight and hand size — at least not for a while.
I think the mobile web will continue for some time to be about getting done what can’t wait until later — like email or looking up store hours or checking headlines or seeking idle entertainment to pass the time.

These are highly relevant critiques to keep in mind in deploying mobile retail sites.

Advantages of Mobile RetailingMobile retailing is a very young practice – the practice of using mobile web and messaging service to increase purchase rates and lengthen the average customer lifetime in ways described below. Also check out the Mobile Retailing Blog for updated commentary.

Advantages of Mobile Retailing

Mobile retailing is a very young practice – the practice of using mobile web and messaging service to increase purchase rates and lengthen the average customer lifetime in ways described below. Also check out the Mobile Retailing Blog for updated commentary.