On multiple occasions at today’s Mobile Boot Camp, mobile retailing was referred to as the “wild, wild west.” Here are seven tips Sitemini’s Marci Troutman and the expert panelists from Wet Seal, Netbiscuits, Digby, and Zumobi shared to help attendees navigate (and thrive) the newly-charted territory.
1. Customers are expecting a rich experience, so retailers need to figure out how to deliver.
2. Make the experience frictionless – minimize the clicks, give them a buy button and make checkout simple. Keeping it simple, easy, and fast will improve conversions.
3. Prioritize what things you want to accomplish, because you can’t get them all done. For example, if you want to sell, make sure you are tracking conversion rates. Alternatively, if you are optimizing the in-store experience, focus on making product information easily accessible.
4. Consider all platforms. You might miss out on most of your customers if you focus only on delivering to high end devices.
5. Know where your customers are going on your site and make that easy. Whether its a store locator or a specific category of items, help your customers get there quickly.
6. Know your customers. Wet Seal knew that their customers were fashion focused, and so focused on imagery and featuring products.
7. Don’t check “mobile strategy” off your list and walk away. Never stop working to make it more effective.
As a bonus, discussion included how to make apps effective. Speakers all agreed that having an application is an ongoing relationship. Applications can have really high initial download numbers and be a great source for a press release, but studies show mobile users really only focus on a few applications even though they might have a hundred different apps on their phone, so figure out how to use the application to retain customers. One way to do this is keeping the application fresh.
So, does strategy and implementing the mobile site and the application overlap? Thankfully, yes. While Netbiscuits’ Ran Farmer recommended that retailers not ignore the browser experience in favor of an app, there was a general consensus among the panelists that hybrids will be a big trend. Hybrids allow retailers to have a rich application that integrates phone information like location, camera, and address book, but don’t give up the benefits of a mobile site like measuring user analytics.
If your customers are ready to shop in the wild, wild west, be ready to meet them their with your mobile site. Westward ho.
2 Comments
Why does it have to be the wild, wild west?
Hybrid products such as SmartSymbols Marketing Platform already exist that could a unified Internet/Mobile strategy (no new app to download, then later forget) and address the 7 points outlined. Fewer strategies and fewer apps means fewer development, advertising and support cost and higher adoption/conversion rates. In addition, real-time delivery of content to all distribution points, including social media updates (i.e., Twitter, blog etc) translates into higher customer engagement, increased product interaction and higher conversion. This takes at least one if not both of the “wilds”.
As a longtime mobile developer with years in SMS, WAP and IVR, it’s amusing — and poignant — that we’re now in the fourth straight year of experts telling us that this year is “The Year Mobile Finally Makes It”. Leave it to a Scandinavian – whose culture is light-years ahead of ours in mobile adoption – to provide a really fresh take on mobile. The link goes to a video that summarizes a 84 page deck that lasts about 8 minutes.
http://media.connectme360.com/#455191003
One Trackback
[...] our time in San Fran with a one-day Mobile Boot Camp which covered basic topics of designing and deploying effective mobile sites, using SMS to increase sales, and what the future holds for this digital [...]