Insider tips to capture mobile dollars this holiday season
Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from Retail Dive, an e-newsletter and website providing a 60-second bird’s eye view of the latest retail news and trends.
While actual sales conducted on devices are expected to be a minimal percentage of overall sales, this holiday season will be a key indicator of whether or not m-commerce is headed for the big shopping leagues.
Retail Dive spoke to industry experts who shared some best practices to capitalize on mobile commerce this holiday and ways to skirt the pitfalls:
Make sure associates are just as helpful as smartphones: While shoppers are researching sales, products and reviews on their smartphones before and during their time in stores, "they still want sales associates to be knowledgeable about products and to inform them of discounts," Lokesh Ohri, senior manager of Deloitte’s digital retail practice, told Retail Dive.
Engage, don’t sell, with mobile: While consumers are opening up e-mails at a high rate and mobile traffic continues to grow, m-commerce still has relatively low conversion rates. As a result, mobile shouldn’t be purely used to drive e-commerce. Rather, according to Andrew Wong a partner with Kurt Salmon Digital, retailers should view their mobile holiday efforts "as part of a holistic digital strategy to drive continuous engagement throughout the season and into next year in stores, online, on social media, etc."
Personalize offers to complement omnichannel behavior: Recommend related products to accompany the item a customer may be picking up that they bought online, or send them specific notifications prior to their store visit. Consider the context as well. For example, said Ms. Ohri, if a lady purchases a tie, "it’s fair to assume it’s a gift. Retailers [should] then recommend other products that would go well with the tie to either complement the gift or add to the overall experience."
Create local store websites with inventory listings: Offer granular data on the inventory available in a particular store, or even nearby stores. Consumers are using their phones in stores to add products to their virtual shopping carts, often motivated by "line avoidance," Yory Wurmser, an analyst with eMarketer, told Retail Dive.
Discussion Questions
What advice would you give retailers on how to prepare for the early days of m-commerce this holiday season? Which advice mentioned in the article will be the easiest as well as the most challenging to orchestrate effectively?
Poll
BrainTrust
Chris Petersen, PhD.
President, Integrated Marketing Solutions
Ralph Jacobson
Global Retail & CPG Sales Strategist, IBM
While the purpose of m-commerce is to “sell,” the customer first has to be able to use the appropriate tool, whether it be a retailer app or website.
I’ve yet to see a retailer train floor staff on how to engage customers by showing them how to use their phones while shopping in-store.
Some might argue that showing customers how to more effectively use their phones in-store would promote “showrooming.” It happens already, get over it. Besides, if the retailer does not have the ability to create a powerful, compelling experience in-store, customers will showroom or simply leave.
The most phone-savvy people in the store are the RSPs, and almost all of them carry or could carry a smartphone on the floor. But they don’t even need their smartphones! They should be working with customers engaging them on how to use THEIR phones to shop and explore more.
A challenge is that RSPs don’t often “think like their customers from a shopping point of view.” If m-commerce is important to the retailer, this issue can be addressed via training.
John Lewis in the U.K. has successfully adopted this holistic approach as part of their omnichannel strategy. And unlike the other department stores mentioned in the other discussion forum today, John Lewis is successfully growing its department store business by engaging shoppers in multiple ways — when, where and how they want to shop.
The global retail marketplace is quickly becoming not a matter of which device, but a mobile-only trend. A huge percentage of retail transactions take place via mobile, so retailers must capture the short attention spans of shoppers now. When the retailer develops a concise, seamless and intuitive shopping process, aligned with compelling promotional offers, true brand loyalty should follow. My recommendation is for the senior retail execs to try to shop on their own sites and see where the process breaks down.
Some core truths about holiday are that stores get really busy and that shoppers are more likely to convert than at other times of the year. All the suggestions in the article make sense, but I would focus first on the ones that make holiday shopping more efficient. Empower store associates with information and mobile tools that allow them to get out from behind the cash wrap and truly serve as many customers as possible and create consumer-facing versions of the same tools that enable self-service for those consumers who prefer it.