I caught this story on Mobile Marketing earlier this week - "New Look Mobile Sales Up 500% Year on Year" - I love these kinds of stories as it only adds more proof to support the fact that mobile commerce is a retail imperative. Sure New Look's young audience is probably more mobile savvy than the rest, which explains the meteoric growth, but it's not just the youth-fashion sweet spot, with brands like Srewfix doing very nicely from mobile too. I'd wager that any retailer with a more mainstream clientele would be chuffed to bits with even modest growth, say 50% or 100%, of their mobile channel. The message is, this is for real; it's happening and there's no getting away from it. So my advice to any brand/retailer is to do something about it now; not in a blind panic kind of way; have long term plan, commit and don't be half-arsed about it. With this in mind, here are four things to consider:
1. You can't really think mobile without thinking multi-channel - the two are bound together. Building a multi-channel retail strategy and experience, by default, defines mobile as integral element to the solution. In-store, online, social and mobile needs to be all joined up. Sainsbury's is now doing with click to collect; Zara do with buy online, return in-store (if you change your mind).
2. Build a retail experience to match the device - trying to navigate around a pc web experience on a mobile is a shitty experience and can be really damaging to the brand. Some folks will persevere but most will get frustrated and move on to a competitor. Optimise the user journey for mobile as it's a different experience from the pc web. Think about the devise and all the functionality that can add value to the experience - the calendar for events or gps for geo-location features. Finally an iPhone app is not an iPad app and if you've gone down the app route then build for both.
3. App or HTML5 - My money's on HTML5 ie mobile sites built for mobile devices rather than apps for mobile devices. Apps can be a useful stop gap while the mobile site is being designed and built but ultimately the app route just adds more barriers such as the download and the fact that it has be built for Apple as well as Android and maybe Blackberry too. HTML5 can do lots of very cool stuff - spinning, zooming etc (see New Look site as a good example); the experience is a rich as any app and can be accessed on any device.
4. Don't ask too much of your customers - this is a general e-commerce and m-commerce whinge. I hate it when I'm forced to register before I can purchase. I'll sign up when I feel like it and not when I'm about to buy something, unless there is a clear incentive for me to do so at that moment. New Look don't make me register to buy, but then I miss out on the on-click buy functionality which is a cool feature if I'm going to do this more than once.
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