RWD vs Dedicated Mobile Site

The Great Debate: Responsive Design VS Dedicated Mobile Commerce

June 25, 2015 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Great Debate: Responsive Web Design (RWD) vs Dedicated Mobile Commerce.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a hot topic. On one hand, the appeal of “one site fits all” is understandable. But retailers should take a careful, deeper look before jumping on this bandwagon.

We speak with retailers every day and the two most common claims we hear in favor of responsive are:

1) Google recommends it, and

2) One, single site displayed on all devices will be easier to manage.

In this post, we’ll address these two points head-on.

1) The Google SEO Recommendation Fallacy

Advocates and solution providers that sell RWD happily spread the claim that Google recommends it. It’s true that Google once stated that it recommends responsive, but they’ve never connected this to a negative implication regarding SEO rankings and they certainly have never called out the profound differences between content sites and commerce sites. Google makes its billions off advertising and it’s easy to see how responsive makes THEIR job easier. But, obviously, the real question is what is right for you, as a merchant.

Plus, Google almost immediately backtracked from this recommendation. Maile Ohye, SEO lead at Google, clarified that Google is neutral among the 3 different approaches: responsive, dynamic content, or a dedicated mobile site. What he said, regarding best practices from the perspective of Google crawlers & algorithms, was, “All three options work well for users and for Google, so use the best implementation based on your infrastructure, content, and audience”.

Again, retail sites and content sites are NOT the same. You can read more about this in The Definitive Guide To Technical Mobile SEO from SearchEngineLand, a major authority in this space. The key to understanding here is the use of alternate/canonical tags on the desktop & mobile sites respectively, as recommended by Google.

Of course, Unbound follows this best practice, while delivering a custom mobile experience built from “whole cloth” specifically structured for maximum mobile conversion rates, delivered to a (growing) mobile audience.

In fact, there are times when RWD actually hurts SEO rankings, as noted in this article, titled “When Responsive Web Design Is Bad For SEO”.

“The one URL argument for dynamic serving and responsive design’s superiority is moot with the introduction of switchboard tags, as Google can now understand which site should appear when regardless of URL structure.”

2) The One-Site-Fits-All Fallacy

The promise of RWD is that a single set of HTML codes can serve all device sizes. This is possible because the site is able to adjust itself for that screen size.

While it’s a neat trick and an easy, quick sell, we assert that this approach is actually a significant disadvantage, especially for retailers. And top e-commerce retailers seem to agree. Amazon, Walmart, Staples, Zappos, (and Google). All of them could employ any approach they want and have decided that responsive is not for them. Why not? Here are some key reasons:

  • RWD sites are slow.

    All the code (for mobile & desktop) is delivered to the browser. The browser has the responsibility to sort it all out based on what kind of device is using it. This takes time and every second a page loads kills conversion rates.

  • Mobile is so much more than just a difference in screen size.

    Mobile is personal, and it is always on. Mobile commerce is conducted in different ways for different reasons, at different times. Mobile consumers behave differently, so why offer them the same experience as desktops, shrunken down? Mobile is FAR too important to be thought of this way. And will only become more so.

  • Is RWD really simpler?

    Rather than being simpler, responsive is actually more complex in many ways. If you want to make a change to the desktop experience, you need to test it on ALL leading mobile devices too. This is because mobile & desktop are inextricably entangled.

  • RWD costs more.

    Retailers that investigate quickly find out that the site build costs for responsive far exceed the cost of a typical dedicated mobile site. And for the reasons stated above, the long-term implications add even more. Content and visual assets are often built twice. This adds unexpected time, effort, and… cost.

  • Mobile is trapped.

    The requirement for using the same code base for mobile and desktop is really a limitation, not an advantage. Mobile is “trapped” and sentenced to always be a “necessary derivative” of e-commerce.

Simply put, if you want to create a distinctly mobile experience for your growing mobile customer base, designed for maximum conversions and fast page load times? RWD is NOT the right choice.

Summary

RWD has no SEO advantage. It’s clearly more expensive up front, and we don’t think there’s any ongoing cost of ownership advantages. And in our view, it’s not really mobile optimization. Because it’s dependent on the desktop site code, it’s more of a mobile compromise, rather than any advantage.

At Unbound, we employ RWD in select circumstances (usually in the checkout flow, when required). But we don’t think that merely resizing a website based on screen size is a sufficient methodology for mobile optimization. Very different settings use mobile. This leads to different use cases and priorities. Maintaining the ability to cater specifically to this rapidly growing audience is KEY.

The mobile experience needs to be much more than the shrunken version of your desktop retail offering. We think the best way to achieve that is by using distinct, mobile-optimized templates and built-in mobile features. We can design & develop them for the mobile user, to achieve maximum page load times and conversion rates.

Plus RWD is typically more expensive to implement and negatively impacts site performance.

As mobile grows, so do the negative implications of locking yourself into a single code base that is trying to be all things to all people.

Is Responsive Overhyped?

April 28, 2015 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is Responsive Overhyped?

Responsive Web Design is all the rage.  All of a sudden, we hear advocates asserting that “responsive is the way to develop sites.”  Or “Google recommends responsive for SEO.”

Observers might think that this approach has become the de facto standard among e-commerce leaders.  But a close look at the top companies in the Internet Retailer rankings, reveals a surprising reality:

Responsive Adoption among Top Retailers March'15

Among these top 16 retailers, only 2 have gone with responsive, despite obviously having the resources to do so if they wished.

So, what’s the disconnect here?  Why hasn’t this hot-trending technique taken hold among the industry leaders?  Are we confusing mobile-friendly as mobile-optimized?

Pros & Cons Summary

The table below summarizes the key advantages and disadvantages of responsive and dedicated approaches to mobile.

Responsive Dedicated
Advantages
  • Satisfies Google’s mobile-friendly requirement
  • Only 1 site to maintain leads to a low cost of ownership
  • The mobile experience is not tethered to the desktop experience
  • More cost-effective if you want to maintain mobile as a distinct experience
Disadvantages
  • Slow performance
  • Higher one-time cost
  • Disruptive to the desktop site
  • Two sites to maintain

What Is Responsive Web Design?

We can answer this from 3 vantage points:

  • Technical: Responsive is the use of a media query in a website’s HTML, giving formatting instructions to the browser, and instructing the browser how to reformat the page to fit the width of the screen.
  • Design:  a design approach that allows different device types to be served by a single set of HTML pages.
  • Strategy:  an approach of “one site fits all” for handling different types of devices.

Responsive Technique

Another way of looking at responsive is how Google positions responsive alongside the 2 other recommended approaches to mobile:

  • Responsive web design: Serves the same HTML code on the same URL regardless of the user’s device (desktop, tablet, mobile, non-visual browser), but can render the display differently (i.e., “respond”) based on the screen size.  Responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern.[1]
  • Dynamic serving [aka Adaptive]: Uses the same URL regardless of device, but generates a different version of HTML for different device types based on what the server knows about the user’s browser.
  • Separate URLs [aka Dedicated]: Serves different code to each device, and on separate URLs. This configuration tries to detect the users’ device, then redirects to the appropriate page using HTTP redirects] along with the Vary HTTP header.

[1] Google goes on to say that they do not favor any particular URL format as long as the page(s) and all page assets are accessible to all Googlebot user agents.

Responsive Strengths

Responsive is an elegant solution for handling small screen sizes.  By reprogramming the desktop site’s HTML and redesigning the layout, site owners can deliver pages that know how to adjust for screen size via a media query, that lets the html respond to the browser’s screen width.

Responsive meets the standards Google has set for being mobile-friendly.  Due to this, responsive sites, properly done, will be saved from Google’s Mobilegeddon.

And because of the “one-site-fits-all” approach, there are fewer content elements to control and therefore fewer management tasks.  Advocates of responsive say this leads to a lower cost of ownership.

Responsive Weaknesses

Responsive has one glaring problem:  slow page load speeds.  A responsive page works by delivering more content to the smartphone, and then asking the mobile browser to sort things out based on its screen width.  This performance gap was reported by Internet Retailer:

It turns out responsive design sites are slow on smartphones, very slow. That’s the conclusion that emerges from an Internet Retailer-exclusive, monthlong study of 12 e-retail responsive design sites conducted by web and mobile performance testing, monitoring and analytics firm Keynote.

A secondary weakness is that deploying responsive is complex and can be disruptive to the main website.  As a result, responsive deployments tend to be more expensive than dedicated projects.

Dedicated Strengths

Dedicated is the better choice when a retailer actually wants to have the mobile experience different than the desktop experience.  The “one-site-fits-all” advocates might ask why you’d ever want to deliver different experiences. There are several compelling reasons because – as we all know – mobile is so much more than just a small screen:

  • Mobile UI Capabilities – Mobile brings enhanced capabilities for interaction – such as location, touch, voice, camera, fingerprint, and motion. All can add richness to the mobile experience.  Today’s desktop site does not support these capabilities, nor does it need to.
  • Different User Circumstances – Consumers have their phones in many places and settings that the desktop site needn’t worry about:  in stores; on sports fields, in the garage, where the retailer’s product is being used; or in social settings.  Most retailers can find new advantages here.
  • Different Desired Outcomes – Because of its omnipresence, mobile is the ideal omni-channel device.  We know consumers use mobile for product discovery & research, even when they complete the purchase in a different channel – online, in-store, or call center.  Why wouldn’t the mobile UI help facilitate this in a way that’s different than the desktop?  Different calls to action; and different ways to prioritize them.

Dedicated Weaknesses

The conventional wisdom is that a dedicated site is something else to manage and that it represents an additional cost of ownership.  Conversely, the counter view is that dedicated is a more cost-effective way to manage your mobile customers.

In addition, it is often asserted that Google will give an advantage to responsive sites.  But, as discussed in the What Is Responsive section above, Google states that it does not favor responsive over dedicated.

Perspective

  1. Responsive is a good choice for adapting a desktop site for the small screen.
    As a web development technique, it’s an elegant way to deliver a small screen experience.
  2. Dedicated sites are the better choice if the retailer wants the mobile experience to take full advantage of uniquely mobile capabilities.
    For retailers who want to get the most out of mobile, dedicated sites make it easier to build a mobile-specific experience — one that takes advantage of unique mobile capabilities that the desktop site isn’t geared for.  And to deliver different calls-to-action that optimize across all channels.

Responsive is a very useful technique for adjusting web pages to screen size. Due to this, developers love it as a tool.  Unbound uses it as one of several methods for integrating the mobile experience into the retailer’s web infrastructure.

But that doesn’t make it a good mobile strategy.

If mobile-friendly is good enough for your company, then responsive is a fine choice.  Comparatively, a better choice for your company might be to take full advantage of mobile-unique capabilities and deliver a distinct mobile experience.  Unbound loves working with retailers who want to make the most out of mobile.

 

Keith Lietzke is the Co-Founder of Unbound Commerce.  You can reach him at [email protected].

mobile commerce gap

Understanding The “Mobile Commerce Gap”: 5 Things Every Online Retailer Should Know

April 6, 2015 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2011 BUT REMAINS RELEVANT TODAY. The numbers projected in this post have virtually ALL been exceeded. Some, by a wide margin. It’s exceptionally important to understand the Mobile Commerce Gap.

_____________

From May 24, 2011, by Wilson Kerr.

Understanding the “Mobile Commerce Gap”: 5 Things Every Online Retailer Should Know

 Sometime this year, 50% of Americans will own a web-connected smartphone. Yet less than 20% of online retailers optimize their websites and format them to serve these mobile consumers.

I am calling this the “mobile commerce gap”. The reason for the mobile commerce gap, this inequity between demand and supply, in my opinion, is because the internal resources required for online retailers to properly develop a mobile commerce site have been pulled in other directions, even as smartphone adoption rates have exploded. As a result, a majority of online retailers are offering their mobile customers a very poor online shopping experience. This, in turn, results in poor conversion rates and missed sales. Not to mention the fact that consumers are left with the general impression that the retail brand is not serving their needs.

Think about it. How many times do you visit a site on your smartphone and immediately leave when you see it is not optimized for mobile? According to Google, this happens 79% of the time! That’s the mobile commerce gap.


Why this Gap?

The first distraction came in 2009 when retailers and brands alike were told they must “drop everything and build an iPhone app”. While apps are great for some things, a vast array of surveys and studies have concluded that consumers much prefer a mobile site over an app for commerce. The second was the social media craze of last year, as Facebook, Twitter, and the rest dominated headlines and became “must-haves”. Both soaked up internal IT resources and distracted online retailers from building the mobile-optimized sites needed to serve their increasingly mobile customers.

So, what are the factors online retailers should consider, as they investigate offering their customers the ability to convert sales from their mobile devices via a mobile commerce site? I hope the following 5 points will clear some things up:

1) There is No “Mobile Web”

While it is true that most “standard” websites are capable of being viewed on a web-enabled phone, few consumers are willing to “pinch and zoom” their way into a converted sale on a standard site jammed into a small screen. Ever tried this? It’s not fun.

While the need for mobile-optimized sites might seem obvious, many retailers justify not investing in mobile commerce by citing low mobile-originating traffic to their current site (usually 2-5%).  Of course, the fact that mobile customers seldom return to a site after such a poor user experience greets them causes this low-traffic negative feedback loop. The retailer then concludes there is no need to invest in the “mobile web”. Again, there is no “mobile web”.  There is only the web, that you view on a mobile device.

2) Mobile Commerce is NOT Mobile Payments

There is a lot of “noise” right now regarding mobile payments at the point of sale when the phone is used as a “mobile wallet” to pay for coffee and the like. While mobile payments might well emerge as an issue retailers need to address, this is not the same as mobile commerce. Mobile payments involve banks, credit cards, investments in point-of-sale infrastructure, coupons, NFC,  loyalty cards, and a whole array of complex issues.

Mobile commerce is simply the act of ordering something online, from your mobile phone, via a mobile-optimized version of a website. Retailers should not confuse the two, or delay the launch of a mobile commerce site while trying to understand mobile payment options and what uniform technology may or may not emerge victorious.

3) Mobile Commerce “Actualizes” Mobile Marketing

Remember, every time a consumer clicks on a marketing or advertising link to your website on their mobile phone, they should land on a site that is optimized for the device they are accessing that message on.  Whether a tweet, a Facebook post, a banner ad, a QR code, an SMS message, or an email.  The mobile consumer who acts upon the message should be able to convert that action easily into a sale, via a mobile commerce site. If you are a retailer and do not have a mobile commerce site and are spending money on social media marketing or mobile advertising? You are likely paying to promote links to a very poor customer experience.

4) Integrate, Don’t Duplicate

There are several options for creating a mobile commerce site. You could use a transcoder to “screen scrape” your standard website and shrink it to fit a mobile screen. One method is, that you could “sub-out” your mobile commerce efforts to a third party. You could do this by letting them “handle it” with their own separate and duplicative mobile store. You could also leverage and extend your current, proven, and trusted e-commerce operations into mobile via an integrated solution.
This is a superior approach, in my opinion, as it means you are avoiding duplication. You do so while also maintaining full in-house control and fueling mobile commerce from the same infrastructure you trust today for your e-commerce operations.  A software-based integration approach takes a bit more effort on the front side, but the long-term benefits are significant, as this single effort if done properly, can serve as the foundation for not only mobile commerce but also Facebook commerce and commerce-enabled iPhone and Android apps, as needed.

5) Devote IT Resources, Plan For Growth

The single biggest reason I hear retailers give for not moving on mobile commerce is a lack of IT resources. Simply put, this is a poor excuse. While it may be true that IT is backed up, the measurable, tracked ROI that mobile commerce offers should elevate this to the top of the list. The ROI is extremely rapid, by even the most conservative estimates of the resulting tracked, incremental mobile commerce sales. Retailers and brands that are out ahead of the curve will be the biggest winners. As long as they plan for growth and choose the right approach.

Fixing the Gap creates Growth
Compelling Numbers

Still not convinced that mobile commerce is a “must have”? In recent weeks Google and other mobile marketing players have begun encouraging retailers to sit up and take notice of this gap. They can’t sell online retailers mobile marketing campaigns if they have no place for the target audience to “land” when they click through a mobile campaign ad/link.

Fix the Mobile Commerce Gap

Google and others are pointing to studies and reports that contain numbers that are hard to ignore. Here is a sampling:

  • $1.9 Billion: Worldwide online mobile sales in 2009.
  • $23.8 Billion: Expected worldwide online mobile sales in 2015.
  • 61%: The percentage of mobile users unlikely to return to a site not optimized for mobile.
  • 79%: The percentage of Google retailer advertisers who DO NOT have a mobile site.
  • 78%: The percentage of consumers who prefer a mobile site over an app.
  • 62%: The percentage of smartphone owners who have purchased physical goods via their phone in the last 6 months.
  • 2-5%: The typical percentage of mobile traffic coming to a non-optimized retail website.
  • 5X: The typical increase in conversion rates, upon the launch of a mobile commerce
  • Sources: Adobe-Mobile Shopper Insights, Google, eMarketer, Shop.org, Coda Research, Unbound Commerce.

The Time To Fix the Gap Is Now

Your customers are mobile and they are very likely trying to access your site on their smartphones right now. If they still see your “standard” e-commerce site crammed onto a small screen?  You are delivering a poor customer experience and, as such, miss out on incremental mobile sales. Try it yourself!

Fix The Gap Now

Some experts expect mobile commerce to grow to become as much as 10-15% of online sales. Retailers should weigh the risks of launching a solution that their current operations have yet to integrate with. What might not be a problem at first could emerge as a big issue when mobile commerce makes up a significant percentage of online sales. Find the resources. Take the time, and consider building/launching a mobile site ASAP that leverages and extends current online sales operations.

You will provide consumers with a positive mobile interaction with your brand that also drives significant incremental, tracked revenue. Mobile commerce is here and the time to take advantage via a mobile commerce site is now!

___________________________________

Wilson Kerr (@WLLK) is a former Tele Atlas exec and LBS consultant. He now leads Sales and Business Development for  Unbound Commerce.

Contact him today to learn more. [email protected] Boston Mobile: 303-249-2083.

Contact Us 

The 6 Keys

6 Keys For A Successful Mobile Commerce App

February 10, 2015 , , , , , , , , , ,

6 Keys For A Successful Mobile Commerce App

Mobile commerce is red hot and growing in importance by the day. If you are an online retailer and don’t already have a mobile strategy then you’d best get to planning! Learn about the 6 Keys for a Successful Mobile Commerce App.

While a well-designed mobile or responsive website is an important component of a mobile strategy, native apps also play an important role and excel at driving user engagement, increasing repeat visits from loyal customers, and maximizing cart conversion. For this reason, leading online retailers already have or are busy developing native mobile apps (i.e. – iPhone, iPad, and Android apps).

Following are 6 keys to success that I have accumulated here at Apptive while helping hundreds of online merchants create, deploy, and manage mobile commerce apps for their stores.

I hope you can draw on these keys to manage a successful project should you decide to make a native app part of your online store’s mobile strategy.

The 6 Keys. 

Key #1: Work with a company or app developer that specializes in eCommerce.

eCommerce has unique requirements, particularly when it comes to apps and mobile. Consequently, you want to find a developer with mobile commerce UI/UX experience, mobile performance expertise, and most importantly eCommerce backend integration capabilities.

 Key #2: Think about life after your app is live.

Developing your app is just half the battle. Who will update and maintain your app moving forward? When Apple releases a new version of iOS? Or when you need to make a content update? When you think up a snazzy new feature? If your developer disappears after your initial engagement, you’re stuck. Also, you don’t want to be entirely dependent on your developer – having some degree of self-management capability is ideal.

Key #3: Look for a solution that provides portability between eCommerce platforms.

You may decide to switch platforms at some point down the road. Make sure your app solution is portable between platforms.  As a result, failure to do so could lead you to be faced with a roadblock in making a switch. At the very least it could leave you facing an unexpected development bill to make your app function with a new platform.

Key #4: Analytics.

You need a way to track engagement and usage built into your app from the start. You have to know how many customers download your app.  Understand how customers use this new channel. Know what adjustments need to be made, etc. Just like your website, without analytics, you fly blind.

Keys #5: Include native-specific features.

Just having an app for the app’s sake will only lead to short-term gains, if any. Including native-specific features like push notifications and a native user interface will help drive user engagement. Ultimately this will improve conversion within your app.

Keys #6: Give customers an incentive to download your app.

The value of your app increases proportionately with the number of people you get to download it. You will promote your awesome new app to your existing site visitors, customers, and social media followers. These are folks who already are loyal or have familiarity with your brand. But giving them a little extra incentive to download your app, such as app-only coupons will get you more downloads and will pay dividends far into the future.

Holiday Unbound Commerce

2014 Holiday Mobile Commerce Guide

January 31, 2015 , , , ,

The Holiday season is once again upon us in full force, meaning that the busiest shopping time of the year for e-commerce has hit! Merchants know the importance of a strong showing during this busy season.

Mobile commerce is a large component of the 2014 Holiday shopping season. According to a report from Internet Retailer, mobile shopping will account for over 33% of ecommerce sales.

E-commerce merchants should be ready for the influx of mobile shoppers, or else they could jeopardize up to one-third of their Holiday sales. Fortunately, Apptive is here to help. Whether you are brand new to mobile commerce or a mobile aficionado, this guide will set you up for success this Holiday season!

Streamline Your Mobile Experience

The Holidays are fun and festive, but Holiday shopping can be less appealing than entering a cage with a rabid wolverine. Mobile shopping has been gaining popularity so rapidly because it is much easier to just pick up and order on your phone than it is to brave the wilds of the local mall. This advantage disappears immediately if your mobile experience sucks.

So how do you make your mobile presence not suck? There is actually a lot you can do, but at a baseline, there are two things that will at least establish you as a solid contender on mobile.

First thing’s first: make sure you have a mobile site. At a bare minimum, people need to see an established mobile presence when they navigate to your site through their device’s browser. Fortunately, modern ecommerce platforms realize the importance of the mobile web, and so most of them allow you to enable a mobile site by simply checking a box. Once you do, make sure that you actually visit the site on a mobile device (or ideally, several different ones). Make sure that the site is clear, illustrates your products well, and doesn’t in any way inhibit your customers’ path to purchase. If there are issues, contact your ecommerce platform ASAP and get it sorted out. Alternatively, if you find their mobile experience lacking, there are numerous third-party mobile site providers you can look into.

Second up: get a mobile app for your online store. The Apptive platform makes it quick and easy to get an app. Some people argue that mobile apps are extraneous when you have a mobile site, but that attitude is couched in a time where apps cost tens of thousands of dollars, thus making it hard to generate a good ROI. Now there is no reason to avoid getting an app. Customers who download your app give you the ability to reach them at any time with push notifications, promote deals, and take advantage in the latest native functionality of mobile devices. In short, a mobile app is the best way to engage with your customers, offering numerous options and functionality that the mobile web simply can’t provide.

Drum Up the Hype

Anticipation is a powerful thing, particularly around the Holiday season. Though it can occasionally seem like people are becoming jaded, they generally appreciate getting into the spirit. That means that if you want people to do their Holiday shopping through your store, you will have to build some excitement!

Mobile apps in particular offer a lot of opportunities to help generate interest in your products and events. Leading up to important Holiday events, you can send push notifications reminding your customers about the great deals they can expect. Mobile shoppers respond very well to images, so create some that showcase your products in festive ways.

A tangential but very valuable benefit to building this kind of anticipation through in-app activity is that it shows you have an interest in fostering an active mobile community. As mentioned above, the people who download your app are often your most loyal customers. When you release interesting content through your app they will feel like they are part of an exclusive club (and really, they are!) and will reward you by being responsive and making purchases through your app.

One small word of warning here though. When you deliver content directly to your customers through your app you will need to make sure that it is high quality, engaging and valuable for them. Don’t just send out repetitive messages or spammy content. At best your customers will turn off your push notifications. At worst, they will uninstall your app and may avoid shopping with you in the future.

Capitalize on the Major Shopping Days

For better or worse, retailers and shoppers alike mark Black Friday as the beginning of the seasonal buying rush. It is also widely derided as a madhouse, and consumer frustration has increased as retailers push “Black Friday” back further and further in Thanksgiving. This year that practice has reached ridiculous levels, with many prominent leaders starting their deals at 6PM on Thursday. There has been tremendous pushback on this practice, with many customers going so far as to boycott those retailers that threaten to cut short a traditionally family-oriented Holiday.

Fortunately, mobile commerce provides a way for retailers to take advantage of the buying fervor without angering their fans. Mobile-based Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals allow consumers to browse and buy from the comfort of their own homes. Customers actually enjoy viewing deals on their mobile devices because it relieves the pressure of braving the crowds.

Again, the key here is offering tremendous value for customers buying on mobile. Part of the reason that people dive into the surge of Black Friday is fear of missing out on some spectacular offer. If your deals are not at least as good as those of physical retailers, you can forget it. The good news is that customers who have downloaded your app are much more likely to actually receive your deals. Why? Because push notifications allow you to send them right to their home screen. Those deals will cut through the clutter of promotions sent through email and social channels.

Of course, there are other, more advanced strategies that businesses can take advantage of as well. For instance, if you notice that a big-box retailer has a “door buster” item that you also sell? You can take advantage of the forced scarcity there. Often the chains will have fewer than a dozen of these hot items in stock, and people will be clamoring to get their hands on it. If you send a deal to customers during or shortly after the Black Friday heyday that features the same item, your fans will be very likely to buy it from you.

Final Thoughts and Holiday Cheers

The 2014 Holiday season will see the greatest increase in mobile sales yet. It is also important to remember that mobile commerce as a whole is continuing to grow at a rapid pace, so many of these Holiday strategies can be successfully incorporated into your campaigns year-round!

What Makes a Great Mobile Coupon?

July 17, 2014 , , ,

Mobile couponing is blowing up, but many ecommerce businesses still haven’t captured the tremendous value that mobile coupons can provide. With the right strategy, a mobile coupon can give your sales a much needed boost and increase customer loyalty. Consider these tips to become the master of mobile deals!

Specificity Matters

A mobile coupon is not just a mobile coupon. It is also a fantastic opportunity to highlight a specific product or group of products. While storewide sales have their place, consider featuring specific items in your coupon so you have the opportunity to add descriptive language and make them appealing. You’ll find that customers often respond better to this type of curated approach.

Choose the Right Image

An image is an incredibly important part of your coupon. While it always pays to have sexy product images, coupons benefit greatly from soem extra attention. If you are tying your coupon to a specific event, consider adding a themed image of your product, or an image that features your product in use. Images do a great job of telling a story, and creative images will let your customers imagine what it would be like to own your item.

Concise, Descriptive Copy

The text that accompanies your image is absolutely crucial, particularly considering that your customers will actually see it right on their home screen when you send your coupon through push notifications. You’ll need to strike a good balance here, because too little information focusing on hard facts will make you sound robotic, while too much information will sound flowery and will get cut off. One sentence of informative, descriptive text will make a huge difference where your coupon is concerned.

Correct Timing

Different audiences respond to coupons best at different times, so it pays to experiment and find the sweet spot for your customers. When starting out, try to put yourself in the mindset of your customer. Does your target market work 9-5 hours? Do they have an academic schedule? When do they normally buy from you website? This information will help you get a good idea of the peak time to send mobile coupons. You can hone from there.

Value For Them, Value For You

Mobile coupons can provide a great way to move products, but you’ll need to confirm two things overall: is the coupon valuable enough to be interesting to your customers? Does the coupon also serve to meet your goals? It’s pretty rare that businesses create a coupon simply to liquidate inventory. You want to make sure that the coupon creates value for you. Don’t send a coupon unless you have a clear goal in mind, and then measure against that goal. Whether you want to push a specific product at an intro rate or want to garner return customer loyalty, measure. It is the only way you’ll determine the true value of your mobile coupon.

These items all demonstrate the qualities of a great mobile coupon, but specifics can be useful as well. What have you found to be effective in your mobile coupon strategy? What mobile coupons have you personally responded to?

Three Mobile Hotspots That Could Spawn The Next $100 Billion Company

July 10, 2014 , , , , ,

SONY DSC

Industry analysts believe that the next $100 billion dollar business will be mobile. Already, many of the largest businesses in the technology world have a mobile component and more are being added every day. But amidst this incredible diversity of fields that can benefit from a mobile offering, where will the true titan of mobile emerge? Here are three hotspots that we believe could easily produce the next major business in the mobile field.

Messaging

With Facebook spending $19 billion on Whatsapp, there is no question that mobile messaging has taken off. The big question for mobile messaging, then, is monetization. Whatsapp pledges to never show ads to its users, and charges $0.99/year. Likewise, Facebook has assured Whatsapp that they will not have to compromise their principles.

This presents an interesting problem for mobile messaging companies with ethics similar to Whatsapp. The first to solve it in a financially viable way will likely be the winner, and could definitely be the first massive mobile company.

Commerce

Shopping is transitioning towards m-commerce with new apps that beautifully showcase products. While massive e-commerce sites like Amazon may have a reasonable foothold on the mobile commerce space, there is still a lot of uncertainty in their mobile offerings.

One of the problems with the modern shopping experience is the massive catalogs of products available to consumers. Smaller e-commerce sites can target individuals to a greater degree and offer a more commoditized product than the big guys. Mobile commerce companies have access to more options than their desktop counterparts, such as better location data and the ability to use push notifications.

Purchasing

Mobile commerce isn’t just about the nice shopping apps that are prominent in the App Store, it is also about making payment more seamless, and the startup that can really get the payment system down will be on top.

With iOS 8, Apple is allowing third party developers to begin using the fingerprint sensor found on the iPhone 5S and newer devices. Some mobile commerce startups will be able to use this functionality to make purchases even simpler, all you need is one finger. This functionality could even be used to have multiple payment methods on one device; one for each member of the family depending on the fingerprint.

Mobile is huge, but even though we’re starting to see some front runners emerge, the kings of mobile have yet to be crowned. It is entirely possible that nobody has even heard of the new billion dollar companies yet. The possibilities are endless.

 

Justin Profile PictureThis post was guest authored by Justin Fowler. Justin is a student at the University of Texas at Austin and the co-founder of Audio Press. You can find him on Twitter and on his blog.

The Near Future Of Mobile Commerce: What’s In Store For Us?

March 25, 2014 , , ,

Is Mobile Banking the End of Cash?

 

Photo courtesy of SimpleIllustrations via Flickr Creative Commons

Apart from being a day-to-day communication medium, mobile devices are being used today as an internet device for social networking, product research, and even purchasing goods. Last year, eMarketer forecasted an expected rise of 4.55 million global users of mobile devices this 2014. This is the very reason why many companies are now investing in mobile eCommerce (mCommerce) sites.

But, with the fast paced world of mobile technology, what can we expect from mCommerce’s future? In this feature post, we will give you an idea of the kind of services we can expect from mobile commerce sites in the near future based on the existing trends.

Snap-To-Buy Convience

Imagine that you see a fashionable handbag used by a bypasser down the street. You took a picture of it and scan it with a dedicated mobile application in your smartphone and viola – your phone instantly directs you to a website where you can buy it. Though the idea is still in its infancy, the mobile image recognition (MIR) technology is already here. Google’s Goggles (a functional tool for Android-powered devices) can be used to scan barcodes of international merchandise and popular logos.

In line with this, Forbes reported that LTU Technologies has already launched LTU Mobile application last year to help their partners, Adidas and L’Oreal, to experiment and embed the MIR technology into their mobile apps. Their customers can now scan on their catalogues to purchase their products instantly from online stores. As of the moment, the technology is still limited to two-dimensional scanning, but it’s only a matter of time before 3D MIR scanning enters the scene.

Video Content In mCommerce

Guy Mucklow of Econsultancy has noticed that few businesses have already dabbled with the use of video content for mCommerce sites. The results were phenomenal, since retailers can incorporate rich media content in their consumer pages. With the advent of faster mobile internet broadband and 4G LTE, video clips are now easier to stream than before.

Wise Marketing has also seen the power of leveraging short movie clips as an effective means of engaging customers online, in the form of “advertisements, customer service videos, or how-to instructions.” If companies will realize its full potential, we will be experiencing a lot of it sooner than later.

Peer-To-Peer Sharing Is On The Rise

NFC (Near Field Communication) is a mobile technology that allows peer-to-peer file transferring and mobile payment transactions by tapping two NFC-capable devices together. Right now, numerous businesses are already leveraging the technology in their physical stores. An NFC-powered point-of-sale machine is used by their cashiers to accept payments from their customers’ mobile devices (where a credit card or a bank account is synced).

For mCommerce, we are looking forward to this new era of transaction, where shoppers can pay for their online purchases by tapping their NFC-enabled bank cards on their mobile devices when they are prompted to.

More Functional Mobile Apps

Alex Campbell, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Vibes, studied the existing mCommerce trends and wrote what he foresees in the future of mobile apps the inclusion of in-store personalization. Campbell reiterated that “apps will become personalized and more helpful in-store and will adapt based on a customer’s location.” Say for instance, you are using a retailer’s app named Brand X, the moment you will enter one of their physical stores, the app will present you with the following:

· In-store map or merchant locator

· Push notifications of deals and exclusive promos

· A tailored suggestion based on your past searches and purchases

This shouldn’t be a problem these days, with app development companies like Apptive that are offering solutions for businesses to create their very own mCommerce apps. For the in-store personalization, they can use Bluetooth-powered indoor positioning devices like Beacons to deliver a whole new way of user convenience to their store visitors.

Augmented Reality For Window Shopping

Augmented Reality (AR) will play a significant role in the future of this industry. Using an app configured with the device’s mobile camera, shoppers can try on a product without physically touching it. Some small enterprises are already leveraging the tool nowadays. Web-based jewelers Ice took advantage of the technology to let their customers try on a bracelet, necklace, or a pair of earrings.  Though most of these companies are using PC websites to do the trick, it’s only a matter of time before they get ported to a mobile app.

Because of these innovations, Juniper Research estimates that in 2017, the value of mCommerce transactions is expected to reach 3.2 trillion dollars. What is your insight regarding the future of mCommerce?

 

This post was contributed by guest author Jennifer Birch

myMINIavy Jennifer Birch is a tech blogger with a background in commerce and app development.  She attends various annual tech conferences and events to get the latest report on mobile  innovations for businesses. Get the latest from Jenni via Google +.

Announcing Apptive’s Partnership With Shopify!

March 12, 2014 , , , , ,

Apptive partners with Shopify

We are extremely excited to announce our new partnership with Shopify! While we believe that this relationship will prove mutually beneficial for both Apptive and Shopify, Shopify Merchants stand to gain the most from this combination of top-notch ecommerce and mobile commerce solutions!

Check out more from our press release below:

Apptive, the Austin-based mobile commerce app creation and management platform, is excited to announce their new partnership with Shopify. Apptive has integrated directly with the Shopify API and Shopify App Store to make it simple and fast for Shopify merchants who wish to expand their mobile commerce strategy with an app.

“It has become clear that native mobile commerce apps will continue to grow in importance for our merchants. Apptive offers a compelling option for store owners looking for a convenient, affordable solution that is directly integrated with Shopify”, saysBlair Beckwith, Head of Shopify App Store.

Apptive has found success in the eCommerce sector with its EasyApp platform, a drag and drop app creation and management solution geared towards eCommerce platforms …

Read the rest of the release here!

 

Bigcommerce Launches New Integrated App Store

February 12, 2014 , , , ,

Bigcommerce App Store

 

We are excited to announce that our partners at Bigcommerce have launched their new integrated app store! Bigcommerce customers will have unprecedented access to apps that will assist ecommerce merchants in all of their marketing and selling efforts. Apptive is proud to be amongst the first group of integrated apps for Bigcommerce merchants!

From the Bigcommerce announcement:

“Part of being a true platform means having a seamless and delightful experience for your clients, regardless of what they’re trying to do. While our app store was great, the experience of finding, installing and managing apps was less than ideal. By bringing the app store right into the Bigcommerce experience, we’ve made it easy to browse, search, install and manage all of the apps you use with Bigcommerce.”

Check out the full story here!