Amazon has always been something of a leader in mobile retailing, being one of the first retailers to have an app. More importantly, it was one of the first to have an integrated website and app approach that remembers baskets, wishlists, login details and more across the app and the site – log in to both and stay logged in, and details moves from app to web (and across devices seamlessly).
This alone counts, in our book, as multichannel retail, but the retailer – which shifted $100bn of goods for the first time in 2015 – also uses third parties to fulfil and so, again, is a multichannel retailer of note.
But Amazon hasn’t stood still in innovating around online and mobile – and hence its own form of multichannel operations. One of the most impressive mobile features that Amazon has added to its mobile offering is the use of fingerprint ID to pay, making one-click payments even easier, which marks it out as unique in retail – for now.
Another development that sets Amazon apart is in using Apple universal links. This means that a shopper searching on an iPhone and clicking a retailer link will be taken straight to the relevant page in that retailer’s app. For Amazon, this allows for it to have a seamless journey from search to app, and being an early adopter here has given it a great advantage – again for now – as it will drive mobile conversion and helps get users into the app.
The advantage for Amazon is that taking searchers into the app rather than the website means that one-click fingerprint ID touch can be used. Together, these technologies streamline the process for shopping on Amazon and increase mobile conversion rates.
Where Amazon has also done well – and helped it rank highly in the IRUK 500 Mobile and Cross-channel Dimension – is in how it has started to use mobile with great effect in the fulfilment part of the shopping process.
The retailer has not only invested in showing when goods are despatched and offering a timeline, but increasingly uses SMS to inform users when the goods will be delivered and reminds them to be home. It also lets users know when the delivery has been made – and if it’s not to the home, where it is.
Its pages load quickly. Its html homepage loaded in just over a second, and was fully loaded in between three and four seconds, despite having as many as 35 page elements.
