When considering the further transition of their businesses from “bricks” to “clicks” in 2010, retailers were challenged to include an understanding of m-commerce and the increasingly significant role it plays in multichannel sales.
Modern customers embark on a complex and progressively non-linear journey, shopping across multiple sales channels but with an abiding expectation of receiving a consistent, end-to-end brand experience. Aside from the operational challenges this means for traditional retailers in terms of stock availability and delivery, they are also required to think about engaging with a different type of customer; one with an unprecedented degree of access to product information before, during and after venturing in-store.
The ROPO (reserve online, purchase offline) effect is everywhere, for example, it is estimated that today some 60% of EU sales are affected by web research prior to their purchases on the high street. The advent of mobile with full web browsers means that this trend is set to only increase. During 2010 the mobile web grew at an exponential rate. Five billion devices were sold worldwide with 250k Android devices activated every day; one every three seconds. It is anticipated that by 2015 mobile will be the primary means for customers to access the web.
The mobile web is a powerful sales channel in its own right and a compelling means of driving new customers to retailers’ online stores. Global technology company Usablenet, posited that a fully enabled m-commerce website gave an increase in traffic to some UK retailers’ websites in the region of 50 to 100% over the Christmas weekend[1].
Published research in Internet Retailing by Forsee Results based on 10,000 visitors to some of the UK’s biggest e-retail websites also confirmed a similar picture[2].They reported 8% of visitors to UK retailer websites on mobile purchased something. 47% used mobile to compare prices and research products. 34% used phones to look up product specifications and 15% to view product reviews[2].
However, mobile’s complex interplay with the offline world can also realise incremental sales and advanced demands and gains for multichannel retailers. The notion of the “connected customer” is a relatively recent but nevertheless transformational concept in the changing retail landscape. A recent article published by the Independent revealed that 55% of surveyed retailers believed shoppers were better connected to product information than the sales assistants trying to help them[3].
Tech-savvy shoppers replete with smartphones and comparison shopping mobile apps visit retail stores primed with a greater awareness of the products they are looking for and the prices they are prepared to pay. Consumers have ready access to retailers’ products and prices at any time, not to mention the freedom to compare items in-store with direct competition just around the corner.
67% of surveyed mobile shoppers in the Forsee Results research said that while in physical stores they used their phones to visit the store’s own website, and 26% used their phones to access a competitor’s website, an increase from only 17% of mobile shoppers who accessed a competitor’s site while in-store during 2009[2].
Developing a good mobile experience with mobile optimised sites or apps or both, can mean retailers attain a vital cross-channel impact in their cross-sales strategy. Again, surveyed results from Forsee Results revealed that shoppers who are highly satisfied with a mobile experience are 32% more likely to buy from that retailer online and 31% more likely to buy offline[2]. In itself this addresses a crucial tenet of the multichannel experience; namely how to engender customer loyalty.
Other benefits for multichannel retailers must surely be the constant access mobile provides to potential customers and the ability to offer them individually tailored promotions. Multichannel retailers already engaging with this concept include Marks and Spencer and House of Fraser, both of whom have ramped up their mobile strategies to include pilot tests of proximity marketing schemes with O2[4].
We believe that in 2011 mobile, ROPO and multichannel will be even more closely interwoven, bringing with it a raft of changes that will revise aspects of the physical shopping experience. In the US Best Buy have already begun including QR codes in their stores to help customers learn about the products they are selling.
Across the wider industry, strategies for how to deliver contactless payments via smart phones are already underway. Plans range from full software-only solutions to hardware which could make generating transactions as easy as tapping a handset against a card reader.
The very near future of many in-store purchases looks set to be dictated even further by online customer research, transparency and personal connections driven through mobile. Meanwhile the primary way of making payments could very well be one that is entirely wireless, seamless and with no bank details required.
[1] Usablenet January, 2011
[2]Internet Retailing January, 2011
[3] Independent January, 2011
[4] Marketing Week January, 2011
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
The Twelve Days of e-Christmas: Day 8 Mobile Optimised Campaigns
The eighth installment of “The Twelve Days of e-Christmas” deals with the benefits of optimising your campaigns for mobile. Make sure you’re ahead of the curve this quarter by separating your mobile campaigns and reviewing bids, keywords, text and performance accordingly. Learn also about our new display opportunity with m.YouTube.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Going Mobile with Online Retail
The increasing rate at which consumers are adopting internet-enabled mobile devices and the proliferation of smart phones has caused content providers to increase not only the breadth of mobile media offerings but also the level of interactivity and utility. In March 2008, Forrester Research predicted that 125 million Western Europeans will have access to internet-enabled mobile devices by 2013 [1], and according to eMarketer 34% of smartphone users have used web search, as opposed to 12% of total mobile phone users [2]. Out of total Retail Google quires 7% are now coming through mobile devices and are growing 100% YoY[3]. These figures are impressive. As this growth trend continues, media providers, e-commerce players and other publishers must adjust to the changing reality and optimise user experience accordingly. There are a few things that online retailers could do today to accommodate changes in mobile landscape.
1. Optimise your landing page for mobile in order to improve consumer experience and facilitate browsing on your site. Use webmaster tools to optimise your website to the m. format. . Whenever a user requests Google.com on a smart phone, we serve an optimised m.google.com webpage. Google has topped a list of top 10 UK mobile website ranked by unique users [3], and driving traffic from the engine to an optimised site, may result in improved conversion rate.
2. Take advantage of Geo targeting on mobile in order to drive relevant, localised customers to your site. This option can be particularly successful for Retailers offering Click and Collect services. In addition, eMarketer [4] predicts roaming charges to come down, which will allow consumers to more easily navigate to retail stores while abroad.
3. One effective way to understand whether mobile is a beneficial acquisition channel and the behaviour of mobile consumers for a given brand, product or service, is to separate desktop and mobile AdWords campaigns. This set-up will allow you to optimise your keyword base for mobile searches as users search differently on mobile. Mobile queries are much shorter and more generic due to limitation posed by the size of the device. According to Nielsen Ratings as cited by eMarketer [5], click through rates in mobile retail can be very high therefore more customised, personal ads may provide a further boost to CTR and conversions.
4. If relevant, use Click-to-call in your mobile ads or carrier target your ads, should you prefer to target users that use a specific mobile phone network.
With Amazon recently launching service to allow purchases from other websites using their Amazon credentials, the proliferation of m-commerce might happen sooner than expected [6]. M-commerce popularity has been studied by Motorola in 11 countries, where 51% of consumers using mobile phones during the Christmas holiday for comparison shopping, reviews, product information as well as coupons. This percentage was 64% amongst younger shoppers [7]. December saw a spike in Google queries, as people were likely to be comparing prices between Online and High Street [8].
Not unlike other channels, mobile campaigns require testing. We recommend starting your mobile campaign early so that you are equipped with robust performance data to facilitate a more informed response to user browsing habits as usage of smart phone continues to grow. Understanding mobile browsing behaviour and propensity to convert should help you optimise mobile campaigns for peak times such as Mother’s Day, Easter or any other relevant seasonal peak as well as to your target demographic.
We hope that you found these tips useful. Please email us if you have any questions or feedback.
[1] eMarketer March 2009 and April 2009
[2] eMarketer – UK Mobile Internet. February 2009
[3] Google Internal
[4] eMarketer – UK Mobile Internet. February 2009
[5] eMarketer – UK Mobile Internet. February 2009
[6] Online Media Daily. Amazon Extends Payment Service to Mobile Devices
[7] M-retailing. from Internet Retailing Multichannel - 2010/1/18
[8] Google Internal
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