Retailers generate sales with mobile commerce: Mobile Marketing Day panel

By Dan Butcher

February 27, 2009

From left to right: OpenMarket's Nick Macilveen, Siteminis' Marci Troutman, Usablenet's Jason Taylor and R/GA's Richard Ting

NEW YORK " For smart retailers, mobile commerce is a key complement to ecommerce, catalogs and stores, according to a panel at the Direct Marketing Association's Mobile Marketing Day in New York.

With more smartphones on the market -- from Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry to models from Nokia, Samsung, HTC and LG -- the potential to browse, search and shop via mobile is vast. Consumers are already using GPS and maps on mobile phones to search for local stores, and retailers are launching mobile-friendly sites to anticipate shopping on the go.

"Buying ringtones, wallpapers, games and other downloadable content is popular now, and in the near future you'll be able to buy more products using your mobile phone as a billing mechanism," said Nick Macilveen, senior director of strategic corporate development and industry relations for aggregator OpenMarket.

"Partner with a company that can help you bridge that gap between the many different devices," he said. "Outsource to a company that makes it their one-and-only mission in life to adapt for the different platforms.

"On mobile phones, consumers' usage is dramatically different -- they need to find the closest location or compare pricing, and those features are well integrated into the GPS capabilities of the iPhone."

Panelists after the mobile commerce session Feb. 26, 2009

Moderated by Siteminis founder/CEO Marci Troutman, the panel on mobile commerce's potential related to catalog, stores and ecommerce comprised Usablenet's Jason Taylor, R/GA's Richard Ting and OpenMarket's Nick Macilveen.

In the United States, the mobile Web is a much more common platform for mobile commerce than SMS, in large part because carriers take huge cuts of SMS transactions and the mobile Web lets consumers view what they're about to buy.

In addition, most people are familiar with ecommerce, which is similar to mobile Web transaction in some ways.

Marci Troutman is founder/CEO of Siteminis

"We started with the traditional way of Web-based commerce, letting consumers review and buy products, and brought that to the mobile Web," said Jason Taylor, vice president of mobile products for Usablenet. "It's going to be used in different ways on mobile than the wired Web."

Sears launched a mobile site and found that consumers are using it in-store to get product reviews and information, search availability and for comparison shopping -- comparing prices while in competitors' stores.

The point is that consumers make a purchase, either in store or via the mobile Web.

"We're using the mobile phone to collect information on consumers and deliver it to retailers, who can then say ‘We found a product like the one you want to buy' and send them a link to purchase it via the mobile Web," Mr. Taylor said.

"We use brands' existing wired Web site as a source, and we don't need anything else," he said. "It's important to have one architectural place and use that to leverage across mobile, so that prices are the same on mobile as it is on the Web and you only have to update once."

Fragrance and cosmetics retailer Sephora launched a mobile campaign that featured in-store product reviews and information which led to more retail sales.

"Mobile can be a shopping tool helping consumers educate themselves when they're standing in a retail environment, maybe not a transaction via mobile, but ultimately leading to a sale," said Richard Ting, executive creative director/vice president of mobile and emerging platforms for R/GA.

"People want to actually see what they're buying, so while brands are sending out targeted deals to consumers via SMS, the mobile Web is better for commerce because it can support graphics," he said.

The best mobile commerce experience is facilitated by getting consumers to put in their credit card information online so they don't have to type in their billing, shipping and credit card information into their mobile phone. That way, it's easy to enable one-click mobile purchases.

"We have to be smart about how we roll out the mobile medium," Mr. Ting said. "It has to be a holistic solution so you're not maintaining two or three separate properties -- there has to be one set of core data that spits out in different presentation layers.

"Brands have to properly invest enough money so it's built in the right way," he said. "Mobile has to be different from the PC/Mac experience, because people are looking for snack-sized bits of experience -- they're not going to spend hours and hours browsing articles or products."

ESPN Mobile, Facebook and The New York Times are all examples of brands offering abbreviated, scaled-down mobile content to fit the medium.

"On my mobile phone, I want sports scores, late breaking news, who got injured, who got traded -- time-sensitive information that I would want when I'm moving around," Mr. Ting said. "Providing context and information based on where they're standing in the physical world -- that's huge."

Comments on "Retailers generate sales with mobile commerce: Mobile Marketing Day panel"

1. Gerald Hewes says:

   March 6, 2009 at 4:55pm

   Just noticed this article. I agree with the above posters, that retailers are just starting to leverage mobile. In 2009, it seems to be an essential channel to consider if the 18-35 demographics is key to your business - even in these difficult times. There are many solutions available to retailers to get into market. My company is one, you can read more about it at http://www.UnboundCommerce.com, but there are other providers out there too, some which were mentioned in the article.
   
   -- Gerald

2. Text U Save says:

   February 27, 2009 at 5:17pm

   There is definitely a lot of room for improvement by retailers here. More and more people are doing research while shopping but they still have very few mobile sites built especially for them. A mobile site could very well become as important as your standard website is to business.

3. Michael Durwin says:

   February 27, 2009 at 9:37am

   I was just talking about this on my blog. Sears was the only retail brand mentioned in this article with a mobile site. Mobile promotions are much different. Hundreds of millions of people have mobile phones and a growing percentage of them are accessing the web with it. Why aren't more retailers building mobile websites? I even have a mobile version of my blog, it's not that complicated!
   I've developed several mobile sites now and all of the companies have seen a growth in web visits. It's not just college kids either. Gen X is the most prolific at doing banking and purchases online. Are you really going to let your competitor beat you to them?