The smartphone has become no less than the remote control for the retail business. It’s a remote control that’s not in the retailer’s hands, but under the control of the customer. Shoppers expect to be able to use it whenever and wherever they want to.
From the Editor-in-Chief
Welcome to the latest in our series of InternetRetailing UK Top500 Dimension Reports, this time focusing on Mobile and Cross-channel. Mobile, in particular, is an area where retailers are concentrating a great deal of work. That’s not surprising. After all, if we’d started with mobile commerce, would there have been any need to invent desktop?
The smartphone has become no less than the remote control for the retail business. It’s a remote control that’s not in the retailer’s hands, but under the control of the customer. Shoppers expect to be able to use it whenever and wherever they want to, whether they’re browsing on a commuter train, ordering the week’s groceries at the bus stop, or finding the store that has the item they need in stock. Leading retailers are designing mobile commerce systems for those shoppers, tailoring the services offered to the needs of customers, rather than the priorities of the business. Companies are doing this for pragmatic reasons. Many retailers are now seeing the majority of online traffic arrive via mobile devices, and some are seeing more than half of ecommerce sales through this channel as well.
In this Dimension Report, we’ve taken a snapshot of the current state of the Mobile and Cross-channel Commerce Dimension, defining the leaders in this facet of retail. We’ve analysed what makes them successful – and how others can learn from them. We’ve gone on to look at emerging practices, while our analysis of what app features correlate most strongly with conversion makes a fascinating read.
We’re indebted to our Knowledge Partners in this Dimension. Poq underpinned our analysis of mobile apps, while GTmetrix measured mobile web load times and BuiltWith assessed how closely retailers adhered to mobile web standards.
Over the year ahead we’ll be continuing our research, building up rich data sets in the process. We’re always interested to hear input from industry professionals as to what we should be measuring. If you have ideas or insights that you think would help us with our measurement of Mobile and Cross-channel Performance, do get in touch.
Ian Jindal
Editor-in-chief, InternetRetailing
