Unleashing mobile commerce-driven revenue opportunities for Yahoo! Stores
Unbound Commerce announces the availability of its new mobile commerce service: Mobile Presence™ for Yahoo! merchants. Developed with the support of Yahoo! Small Business, this new offering makes it easy and cost-effective for merchants to deploy a mobile commerce site, and is seamlessly integrated with their Yahoo! store. Mobile Presence from Unbound is a complete service, including mobile-optimized product catalog and shopping cart, and is cost-effective for almost any merchant. Fees are $50 – $125 / month, plus a one-time fee of $300 for basic implementation.

“Our merchants are very aware of the growth in mobile internet usage among their buyers. Mobile commerce came through as one of the top priorities in our market research,” said Paul Boisvert, Director of Product Management at Yahoo! Small Business. “Unbound Commerce’s platform has proven to be a great fit with Yahoo! Merchant Services. We received very positive feedback from the market trial we just ran with Unbound. We are delighted that Unbound Commerce is now releasing the product to all interested Yahoo! merchants.”

SERVING THE ANYTIME/ANYWHERE CUSTOMER
More Selling Opportunities, More Revenue

Mobile commerce lets your buyers reach your store – any time and any place a need or urge arises. Online retailers will fall behind if they insist that their customers can purchase and interact only when they are behind a desktop or a laptop computer. Unbound’s new mobile commerce merchants report on their experiences:

“Cyberweld’s customers are professionals and hobbyists, working in the field or in the shop. They aren’t spending a lot of time behind a PC,” notes Bob Goodliffe, President of J.W. Goodliffe & Son, who operates http://www.Cyberweld.com. “Our mobile site lets us reach them where they are doing their work, and when they are most likely to find that they need the products we sell.”
“Our customers were telling us that their computer usage at work is being monitored, cutting down on personal use. Including buying our candy!” reported Pam Macharola, a partner at Blair Candy (http://www.BlairCandy.com). “We have so many more chances to interact with customers if they can check out our products on their breaks or at lunch.” Blair Candy sells bulk candy, and candy not often found in local stores, online to both retail and wholesale customers. “Our new mobile site is so easy to browse by phone, and our customers have really taken to it. It’s been profitable for us since the very start.”
The Director of Retail & E-Commerce at a prominent DC-based Museum notes that “Our customers are into technology and gadgets, so mobile is a must for us. The initial response is beyond what we expected. For example, visitors to the Museum purchase items from our Museum Store on the way out, but sometimes there’s not enough time to shop. Our new mobile site lets them take our product catalog along with them in their pocket, allowing us an opportunity to engage with them, and for them to make purchases on their way home.” “We’re surprised at how much traffic we’re seeing from smartphones,” says Mike Eldridge, President, Safety Glasses USA (http://www.safetyglassesusa.com). “Our customers are at job sites. I really like the idea that they are able access us from anywhere.”
EASE OF DEPLOYMENT, EASE OF OWNERSHIP

Unbound’s mobile commerce solution for Yahoo! merchants is designed to be very easy to deploy. “Going mobile has been really hands off for us,” reports David Hauser, President of ABC Underwear (http://www.ABCUnderwear.com). “All we’ve had to do was to make sure our product categories lined up with what we wanted. Easy for us, and ten times easier for our mobile customers. The integration is absolutely seamless.”

“It’s been really easy,” says Mike Neff, Director of E-Commerce at Sports Unlimited, a full line Internet sporting goods retailer (http://www.SportsUnlimitedInc.com). “It’s clear that Unbound has done all the leg work for us. This is one of the easiest e-commerce initiatives we’ve ever done.”

Srinivasarao Nandiwada, CTO of Unbound Commerce, points to the importance of the seamless integration with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions. “We’ve taken great pains to make certain that this is painless for our customers. Merchants only have to manage their products on Yahoo!, just as they already do, and the mobile site automatically stays up to date with new products, prices and availability. Orders placed on mobile use the Yahoo! shopping cart, but formatted for mobile, so that merchants can handle their mobile-generated orders just as they do their online ones.”

The Director of Retail & E-Commerce at a prominent DC-based Museum summarizes: “This has been a BIG win for us, and a very positive experience to date. It was very smart of Unbound Commerce to develop a cost-effective solution for this customer base, and definitely a win for Yahoo! store merchants.”

THE 3X EFFECT: MOBILE-INFLUENCED SALES

Merchants want to see a hard ROI from their mobile commerce initiatives and Unbound Commerce’s customers are getting that. Mike Neff of Sports Unlimited offered: “Of course, we’ve noticed the growth in our mobile visitors over time. Since we’ve deployed our mobile site, not only have visitors greatly increased, but mobile conversion rates have gone up 500% and AOV increased by 27%. Mobile is giving us a 1.25% cost of sale for mobile-competed orders. I’ll take that any day!”

But looking only at mobile-completed orders misses a big part of the story. “Retailers that deploy mobile-optimized sites benefit all their channels,” notes Keith Lietzke, Marketing VP at Unbound Commerce. “Our customers find their mobile product catalogs are an on-ramp to their call centers. One of our largest retailers reports that nearly 1% of mobile site visitors place calls to their call center. Mobile retailers also observe their customers using their mobile phones to find products that interest them, and then buy them later online.”

“Our call centers are now getting inbound calls from customers who found us through mobile search,” reports David Hauser, President, ABC Underwear. “We never got these calls before we deployed our mobile site. The other benefit we’re seeing is that customers at our competitors’ brick & mortar store can check our prices before making a purchase there.”

A prominent DC-based Museum notes that their mobile site has lead to increased responses from their email marketing campaigns. Compelling e-mail offers opened on mobile devices are often saved to “favorites” so that orders can be placed at a later time, resulting in a longer order cycle and slightly higher sales conversion.

At the recent Mobile Commerce Forum, sponsored by Internet Retailer, Forrester estimated that the value of mobile-influenced sales exceed mobile-completed orders by at least a factor of 3 for most retailers.