Motoring accoutrements retailer Halfords has become the latest in a growing list of retailers to go down the mobile optimized website route, rather than simply building an app, with the launch this week of its revamp mobile offering.
Five per cent of traffic to www.halfords.com is from internet enabled mobile phones. Visitors to Halfords.com using any popular mobile device will automatically be directed to the new mobile platform where they can search for products, read customer reviews, make product comparisons, locate their nearest store that stocks the product, then “Reserve and Collect.” Customers will benefit from the same common design elements and features that make Halfords.com so successful.
Chris Corbin, Head of Halfords.com said: “The internet enabled mobile is becoming the essential tool for shoppers. We are seeing a huge increase in customers who are researching products and making shopping decisions while on the move.
“We see a huge opportunity for growth of our online business by improving the shopping experience for mobile visitors. So we are aiming to make our site more relevant to the way people want to shop.”
Halfords.com is already growing fast, online revenues were up 70% year on year in the first quarter, with visitor numbers now running at over one million people a week. Early results from the Halfords mobile platform show that visitors really appreciate the new lay out and easier access to essential information and conversion rates are significantly up.
The mobile optimized site was built for Halfords by Salmon, a specialists in delivering eCommerce solutions. Sue Pratt, Account Director at Salmon said, “Halfords continue to innovate in order to stay and we are delighted to be working with them to deliver their mobile strategy. Essentially Halfords will now be in their customers’ pockets wherever they are, allowing customers to interact with Halfords far more easily.”
Salmon have optimised Halfords’ mobile platform and developed it using the same underlying architecture and sales catalogue structures as Halfords.com, displaying only the products that are available for “Reserve and Collect”.
Salmon has been helping Halfords implement their eCommerce and multi-channel strategy since 2005, delivering “Reserve and Collect”, “Home/Work Delivery”, “Text and Reserve” and more recently “Free Delivery To Store”; all of which leverage Halfords’ existing IBM WebSphere Commerce based architecture.
