Archive for the ‘Multichannel Marketing’ Category

Borrell: 20% of Local Marketing Budgets Planned for Mobile

Posted: August 17, 2011 in Ad Industry, Digital Display Advertising, Digital Marketing, Display advertising, Industry News, Location Based Services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Industry News, Multichannel Marketing, Online Advertising
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Borrell Associates, which specializes in research covering local and online advertising, issued a new report this week called  “Main Street Goes Mobile” that examines the role that mobile media is projected to play in  local business marketing over the next five years.

Pointing to a business and consumer environment ready to embrace mobile advertising, Borrell cites statistics indicating that a full third of website readership already accesses information via mobile devices. Meanwhile, half of local businesses report plans to engage in mobile marketing.

These local marketers plan to commit roughly 20% of their budgets to this effort. Will they follow through? While mobile marketing (and hyperlocal efforts in general) can be turnkey in some respects, there are still costs to consider, along with the navigation of complex technologies and new business relationships.

The difficulties most local (and national) businesses encounter with online and mobile implementation have led directly to the rise of a media middleman — Groupon is a well-known example. Whereas traditional ad agencies and marketing firms handle creative and placement, taking fees directly from advertisers, many local advertisers are opting for promotions and other efforts that come without a clear price tag attached. Using the model embraced by many group deal sites, advertisers actually receive money from these middlemen (albeit much less than they would from traditional customer engagements) rather than doling it out.

Borrell projects that, by the end of 2011, 1/3 of all mobile phone users will have smartphones. Soon, mobile capabilities will be the price of entry for marketers. Advertisers are looking to firms like Groupon, LocalUp and GeoIQ to keep their advertising efforts streamlined, transparent, and supported on multichannel platforms.

We’re talking about real money here. Borrell projects that local online advertising will reach $18 billion by 2016, with local mobile couponing at $3 billion. While this growth is occurring at a rate much faster than the slow initial shift to online advertising, we need to remember that there is already what Borrell calls an “installed base”: advertisers and consumers comfortable with online marketing, for whom the addition of mobile is simply a shift within a familiar environment.

In an important divergence from ads of the past, “the medium is no longer the message,” according to the report.

Borrell asserts that “mobile is not a channel — it’s a [series of] platforms,” allowing real-time engagement with consumers. Within mobile usage lie options for email and paid search advertising. Both of these highly popular functions provide a fertile environment for mobile advertising. But advertisers are also examining text / SMS, downloaded apps (a key opportunity) and in-game environments. And not all these channels will grow at the same rate.

In an important divergence from ads of the past, “the medium is no longer the message,” according to the report. With content and channel decoupled, advertisers need to consider that communication can be delivered in a number of ways at a number of different moments in a consumer’s day, and need to plan their messaging accordingly. Even the way the industry measures and tracks marketing success will need to change, since we are going beyond eyeballs and “impressions” to assessing the distinct action a consumer takes (or doesn’t take).

The research firm notes that local radio companies have largely missed the boat when it comes to online marketing opportunities, leaving the spoils to companies like Pandora and Slacker. This is a useful observation, as local radio really does seem half-hearted about its online presence; it will be interesting to watch future activity in this space.

The report includes a number of insightful charts projecting revenue and growth rates for components within mobile advertising. While national ad spending continues to rise in some channels, it drops in others, and local ad spending is projected to rise across the board.

An especially interesting point is the blurred point of difference between promotions, which have traditionally been more B2B-focused, and advertising, historically a B2C effort. Driven by coupons and discounts / deals, mobile marketing is starting to move across each category of US promotional spending.

Coupons, discounts and deals have “evolved,” Borrell says, to a balance point where they are both easy to execute and appealing to consumers. Other, more complex promotions prove to be more challenging to implement. An example: proximity marketing is enjoying press exposure right now. Borrell projects that the nascent marketing structure will hit its stride about two years from now. For the moment, promotions involving geolocation and “fencing” are too complex, data-driven and expensive for all but large national advertisers to take on.

It would seem that there is a major creative opportunity for middlemen — or traditional ad and marketing firms — to help develop effective and simple creative to push through these new channels, allowing advertisers to retain their hands-off status. Gradually, however, the creative quality will be forced to improve, based on consumers’ heightened expectations and the risk otherwise of saturation.

Borrell’s report effectively illustrates the skyrocketing growth of mobile marketing and advertising, as well as clarifying the multiple channels that fall within our current definition of “mobile.” They do remind the reader, though, that this all exists within a much larger bucket of money still being spent by national advertisers on traditional marketing and advertising efforts. Mobile marketing is an infant: tiny, but loud, and getting louder.

Via: http://streetfightmag.com/2011/08/12/borrell-report-local-marketing/

Mobile advertising: profit at your fingertips

Posted: June 10, 2011 in Digital Display Advertising, Digital Trends, Display advertising, Industry News, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Smartphones, Tablets, Technology, Telecommunications, Television, Wireless Technologies
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Posted By ] James Robinson

Expensively produced adverts that were once only seen in glossy magazines are now being produced for many tablets and smartphones. Photograph: Jim Wilson/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

Mobile advertising is finally beginning to come of age as phones transform the relationship brands have with their customers in new, and sometimes unexpected, ways. The rate of growth is astounding, and the pace of change so rapid it is now difficult to believe that many companies greeted the predicted inexorable growth of mobile advertising with barely disguised scepticism a decade or so ago.

The UK market was worth £83m in 2010, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), up from £37.6m the previous year, an 116% like-for-like increase. Online market research company comScore says that in 2010 there were 19.1 million monthly mobile internet users in this country, up by 4.6 million from the same month the previous year. US investment bank Morgan Stanley said this year that “online advertising may finally be entering a golden age”.

The bank believes that the mobile advertising market in western countries is set to reach the recent growth rates seen in Japan, where mobile ad spend rose threefold from 2006 to 2009, to stand at $1bn (£610m). FirstPartner, a consultancy company, predicts that the UK market will be valued at £992m by 2015.

Much of that growth has been driven by the mobile internet and, latterly, by smartphones. Jon Mew, head of mobile at the IAB, points out that 41% of the population already have a smartphone. “By next year that should be half of the population,” he says, “and it shows no sign of slowing.”

Rik Haslam, chief creative officer at leading digital advertising agency RAPP, says: “Clients sometimes ask me whether mobile advertising is really something they should focus on. I tell them that right now more smartphones are being built than laptops and desktops combined, that mobile internet use is ramping up almost 300% faster than desktop internet access did, and that more than 50% of people use a mobile device while watching TV. So yes, it’s something clients should focus on.” He adds: “If the internet revolution disrupted business norms, then the smartphone revolution is devastating business norms.”

Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that by 2020 there will be about 10bn mobile internet devices worldwide – 10 times the number of PCs currently in use.

But the story can’t be told by statistics alone, as compelling as they are. The arrival of tablets, Apple’s iPad in particular, and the popularity of location-based services, which use the GPS functionality of a smartphone to offer users services based on their location, have transformed the user experience – and the aesthetics – of mobile advertising. Put simply: it has become sexy.

“Traditional brands didn’t do much on mobile, but it’s changed dramatically in the last year,” says Mew.

In recent years, around two thirds of online advertising spend has traditionally been on ringtones and downloads, but 12% of spend last year came from companies that sell fast-moving consumer goods.

The look, feel and size, of the iPad, one of the fastest-selling new computer devices in history (it took just one month to sell 1m iPads; the iPhone reached the same target in 74 days), has prompted fashion brands and car companies to create sumptuous online campaigns that were only seen in glossy magazines or expensive television adverts until recently.

Generating a response

Although they have been talked about for some time, location-based services have only really started to take off over the past 12 months, aided by the launch of Google and Facebook products, such as Facebook Places. Those services are powerful, allowing carefully targeted advertising campaigns that generate far better responses among consumers. Research published by location data firm Navteq in August 2010 found that 41% of consumers who saw a specific mobile advert went into one of that retailer’s stores – and 53% said it was the advert that prompted them to visit.

Text messaging and advertising campaigns have become more targeted and more sophisticated. More people are using their phones rather than PCs to search the internet (10% of all UK traffic now comes through mobiles) and new mobile technology is enabling big corporations to experiment with reward schemes designed to attract and retain customers, which may, ultimately, make loyalty cards obsolete. M-commerce also continues to grow: mobile-generated sales at online giant eBay tripled to nearly $2bn in 2010, with the UK the fastest adopter.

Challenges remain for advertisers, however. The lure of the iPad and the iPhone, with their hugely popular apps, can make companies who want to establish a mobile advertising presence lazy. According to mobile marketing company 2ergo: “A lot of companies launch a mobile app and think they’ve ticked the mobile box – but an iPhone is only 11% of the total [mobile] market. You’re missing out on the bulk of your target audience.”

If a company wants to reach all of its target audience, it has to create content that can be used on all of the popular operating systems, which combined make up the vast majority of the market. Google’s operating system for mobiles, Android, is growing market share, and Android-powered phones recently overtook iPhone sales. BlackBerry-maker RIM has won a new audience of young enthusiasts who use its instant- messaging service.

All of those platforms are likely to enlarge, but there are lingering concerns among consumers about privacy and there is still some resistance about using services such as mobile internet at all. According to a recent IAB survey, 21% of respondents said they only used their mobile phone for texting or calling. That seems set to change, however, as mobile phones become the next link in the internet’s evolutionary chain. There have been several false dawns, most notably when WAP-enabled phones, which allowed users mobile access to the internet for the first time, became available at the end of the last century and failed to live up to the hype that surrounded their launch. This time around, the hyperbole seems justified.

Via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile-marketing-2011/mobile-advertising-profit-fingertips

Number of mobile advertisers jumps: report

Posted: June 9, 2011 in Digital Trends, Display advertising, Industry News, Information communications technology, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Industry News, Multichannel Marketing, Smartphones, Strategy and Planning
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Posted by ] Patricio Robles

For many years, mobile has been the ‘next big thing’ for advertisers. And to be sure, the market for mobile ads has grown by leaps and bounds in dollar-terms.

The latest figure evidencing the growth of mobile as an advertising medium: according to comScore, the number of advertisers in the U.S. running mobile campaigns has grown exponentially in the past two years.

When comScore looked at Ad Metrix Mobile data for 600 of the mobile internet‘s properties in April, the number of advertisers was 689, an increase of more than 120% from two years ago.

Needless to say, if the market for mobile advertising to grow rapidly into the future, larger numbers of advertisers need to buy into the medium.

In theory, mobile will have a key role to play in most multichannel advertising strategies in the future, and the timing appears to be right now. Thanks in large part to the rise of smart phones and greater use of the mobile internet, advertisers are increasingly experimenting with mobile ads. And in many cases, they should be liking what they see.

According to a recent study, click through rates on mobile search ads are 2.7% higher on average than their desktop counterparts.

But there’s still a huge amount of room for growth. Right now, comScore says that the mobile content and publishing category accounts for 50% of mobile ads served, with consumer discretionary representing another 26%.

That means more than three-quarters of mobile ads cover just two categories. Lucrative categories, like financial services, aren’t as prominent — yet.

The key to continued growth of mobile advertising would appear to be continued smart phone ownership. According to comScore, smart phone users access their mobile browsers and mobile apps at much greater clips than their feature phone-owning counterparts, 82.3% and 85% to 19.1% and 15.9%, respectively.

Currently, 31% of mobile phone owners have a smart phone. But that number is increasing rapidly; last year, just 20% of mobile phone owners in the U.S. owned a smart phone.

The numbers make it clear: if the number of smart phone owners keeps going up, so too will the number of advertisers spending on mobile ads. In turn, publishers already active in mobile will see more opportunities to build ad revenue, and publishers not active in mobile will have greater incentives to develop a mobile strategy.

Via: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7623-number-of-mobile-advertisers-jumps-report?utm_medium=email&utm_source=topic

M-commerce industry “on verge of four-fold increase” says eBay

Posted: June 3, 2011 in E-Commerce, Industry News, M-Commerce, Mobile Broadband, Mobile Industry News, Multichannel Marketing, User Experience & Usability, Wireless Technologies
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Mobile shopping activity is on the verge of a four-fold increase and will be worth an estimated £19bn in the UK by 2021, according to research by eBay.

Findings by Verdict, which carried out the research on behalf of the internet auction site, predicts that the m- commerce sector could deliver as much as £4.5bn to the economy by 2016, and a further £13bn by 2022, as consumers become more comfortable with their smartphones and increasingly use them to make purchases.

However, the same research suggests that the mobile commerce industry is being held back by poor mobile broadband services, with more than a third of consumers apparently failing to complete a purchase due to poor broadband coverage. Verdict suggests that UK retailers are mssing out on £1.3bn worth of transactions because of this.

The research, based on a poll of 1500 consumers, showed that mobile spending is at least 20% lower than the national average in certain areas in the UK such as the Scottish highlands and rural Wales. More than 23% of those polled said they’d like to see improved coverage in less urbanised areas of the UK.

eBay is now calling on telecommunications regulator Ofcom, which is currently deciding how to auction the next generation of faster, more reliable 4G mobile licences, to support the m-commerce sector.

Angus McCarey, UK retail director for eBay UK, said, “Mobile shopping represents a massive opportunity not just for retailers, but for the economy as a whole.”

McCarey added that high quality and reliable mobile broadband is needed around the UK to give consumers more choice over when and how they shop.

Ofcom recently found that around 3.6 million UK households (17% of the total number of UK households) use their mobiles for broadband access.

Via: http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=21249&Title=M-commerce_industry_

Half of smartphone owners now shop online via a mobile device

Posted: May 23, 2011 in Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, E-Commerce, Industry News, Information communications technology, M-Commerce, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Multichannel Marketing, Online
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Posted By ] Paul Skeldon

Half of smartphone owners have now completed some sort of purchase on their mobile, increasing by 20% over just nine months, with 11% of smartphone shoppers now using the device to make a purchase on a weekly basis, according to research by eDigitalResearch and Portaltech.

The study also finds that smartphone owners are increasingly using their phones to shop, browse and research for products via their phones. More than a quarter (28%) now use their smartphone to find product information on a regular basis and remains one of the most popular shopping activities to complete on a phone.

The study looked at the increasing role of mobile in retail commerce and surveyed both smartphone and non-smartphone users. The results clearly show the continuing shift in consumer behaviour as more and more shoppers are adapting to new technologies, browsing, shopping and interacting with brands on the move.

Chris Russell, Director at eDigitalResearch, tells us: “This second study reinforces what our previous results have shown; that the dramatic increase in Smartphone use is fundamentally affecting consumer behaviour. We are entering into an age of MEcommerce; a shopping revolution where the consumer now has the power to dictate to retailers where, when and how they want to shop and interact”.

The results clearly indicate the growing trend that smartphones are being used more and more as an essential lifestyle accessory, with almost a 15% rise in the number of consumers interacting with mobile applications on a daily basis.

The results also show that consumers expectations of mobile websites have dramatically increased since the first research results last year; 31% of users now say that quick browsing should be an essential feature of mobile websites, compared with just 20% who said the same last June. Other significant factors that people see as essential include security, fast loading images, zoom functions and a professional looking site, reaffirming that consumers expect to find the same coherent retail message across channels.

Smartphone users who said that they never shopped online reduced from 70% last June to 49%, echoing the overall trend of growing consumer acceptance of m-commerce. Similarly, smartphone owners who said that they expected to browse and purchase more on their phones in the next 12 months more than doubled from 20% to 46% and firmly establishes the importance for retailers to continue to develop and invest in mobile.

Rachel Wilkinson, Head of Brand and Retail at Portaltech, explains: “I hope this research reassures reluctant retailers that mobile is not a flash in the pan, but a rapidly increasing channel that should be integrated into wider marketing, social and commercial strategies. Mobile is unique in that it is the most portable and accessible channel to a consumer – you are literally in the palm of your customer’s hands and this level of accessibility 24/7 allows retailers to deliver messaging, marketing or unique experiences in a totally different way from any other channel.”

Andrew Walker, CEO or Portaltech adds: “In the last year, mobile has gathered pace with retailers reporting traffic of between two and 12% via the mobile channel and Morgan & Stanley predict that by 2014, sales via a mobile device will overtake sales from a PC. The trends in multi channel and convergence within retail, are reinforcing the importance of a single integrated platform that can manage and support all the channels, including mobile.”

Via: http://www.internetretailing.net/2011/05/half-of-smartphone-owners-now-shop-online-via-a-mobile-device/

Shoes.com: 85pc of purchases come from mobile Web, not apps

Posted: May 11, 2011 in Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, E-Commerce, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, M-Commerce, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Search, Mobile Technology, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Retail, Search, Smartphones, Strategy and Planning, Technology, Telecommunications
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My Comments on the below:

I am a bit late finding this article but there you go.  I find the stats really interesting.  Despite the fact they offer shoes for all, I am guessing here that their main user base is made up of Women.  I can instantly relate to their experience.  If I look at my partner who since purchasing her an android phone (6 months ago), who by the way is a kind of techno-phoebe, has moved from a 0 to a 10 user of the mobile internet (0 being not at all and 10 being everyday more than once).  However, despite this amazing change of her use of phones not once has she been bothered by apps.  This is not because she is not aware or has not tried them but she is used to searching for content when she wants.  She finds it easy.  She already knows which sites she has interest in and what sites she would buy clothes/shoes and whatever other flavour.  It is interesting as her peers also share the same thought process, yet their male counterparts and very engrossed into both mobile internet & apps.  In fact the more I think about it especially apps that help them not have to think for themselves or games of course!  Anyhow, before I digress, this supports the experience shoes.com has described.  As women, being the main demographic (again this is an assumption) of shoes.com, they are comfortable and familiar with SEARCH (and aren’t we all, no matter our gender) hence making more purchases via the mobile site than apps.  Therefore, as long as the e-commerce site is mobile optimised and the URL re-directs are in place then their customers will happily discover and purchase via the mobile internet site (as we in the industry call m-commerce, a transaction made via the mobile device).

In the early adoption days of mobile internet we saw that many publisher, media owners and e-commerce sites were receiving anywhere up to 5% of their users online coming from a mobile device.  Whilst with one hand this was positive news, with the other it was bad. As the sites that were not optimised for mobile you can start to work out the potential loss of revenues and/or damage to the brand/media owner by delivering a poor user experience and/or no real payment flow.  Traditional publishers and media owners quickly woke up when they saw these stats.  However, the retail industry was very slow to react.  It wasn’t until Steve Jobs created the iPhone and apps that they retail sector started to take the space semi-seriously.  It is great to see now how retailers or e-commerce sites are starting to understand and experience this space better and as the article suggests ‘not just jumping on the app-bandwagon’.

Posted By ] Rimma Kats

Shoes.com's mobile site

SAN FRANCISCO – A Brown Shoes Co. exec at the Mobile Shopping Summit said that 85 percent of mobile purchases come from the shoes.com mobile site and not its applications, proving that retailers should focus on having a Web presence before jumping on the app bandwagon.

Panelists during the “Mobile Roadmap Part I: Key Evaluation Criteria For Developing Your Initial Mobile Platform – The Keys To Mobile Merchandizing” session discussed the challenges and success their companies face with mobile. The panel was moderated by Marci Troutman, CEO of Sitminis, Atlanta.

“We had a strong ecommerce platform,” said Pete Hogan, vice president of ecommerce at Brown Shoe Co., St. Louis. “We were seeing a lot of agencies contact us about mobile and there were few players in the game two years ago.

“Eighty-five percent of our mobile sales come from the mobile Web and not apps,” he said.

Future of mobile
According to Mr. Hogan, the company’s long-term mobile strategy will involve the use of HTML5 to provide a richer experience to consumers on their mobile devices.

For companies that are looking to develop mobile sites or apps, it is important to keep the consumer in mind and try to make the overall mobile commerce experience as seamless as possible.

“Think about your business and how many times people touch your business,” Mr. Hogan said. “If you’re Starbucks then it’s daily, if you’re McDonalds it’s weekly.

“If our customer is a registered customer, we wanted to make sure we auto filled their shipping information,” he said. “That’s where you help them save time.”

A majority of consumers who download applications to their mobile devices do not use most of them.

A mobile site is an ideal tool to capture that consumer at the point-of-sale, per the panelists.

However, companies wanting to enter the application space should make sure that their apps provide a different experience than the mobile site. A lot of the time, mobile apps are geared towards loyalists, pushing deals and alerts to them daily.

There needs to be an incentive for consumers to click on that app icon when they want to shop instead of going to the company’s mobile site.

The mobile site, on the other hand, is an access point for existing and potential customers and should be treated with that in mind.

Brown Shoe first developed a mobile site and then an iPhone application.

Currently, the company has three iPhone applications, three mobile-optimized sites and three Android apps.

According to Mr. Hogan, the company’s mobile site mimics its ecommerce site and now features personalized recommendations and ratings.

“We tried to add most of the bells and whistles,” Mr. Hogan said. “However, there are still a few missing things.

“Tracking is also important – we can see when customers are coming to our mobile properties,” he said. “The ROI is trackable.”

Mobile extension
Dale Monson, senior vice president of operations at The Sportsman’s Guide, said that the company is currently working on a second version of its mobile site.

Although the company has a mobile presence, Mr. Monson said that it has not invested in marketing efforts to promote its applications.

“When we launched our iPhone app, we wanted to make sure we were in the market,” Mr. Monson said. “The main challenge we had was a lot of items on our Web site and it’s difficult to push that into the mobile and have consumers shop easily.

“However, we have not had a good marketing program yet to push the downloads,” he said. “We have not invested in marketing efforts for our apps.”

Via: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2011/04/28/shoes-com-85pc-of-purchases-come-from-mobile-web-not-apps

Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily and Mobile Marketer. Reach her at rimma@mobilemarketer.com.

UK retailers aren’t ready for mobile commerce: survey

Posted: April 14, 2011 in Digital Trends, E-Commerce, Industry News, M-Commerce, Mobile Industry News, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Retail
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Posted by ] 14 April 2011 11:23am by Graham Charlton

Though the majority of retailers are convinced that mobile commerce will eventually become as popular as e-commerce, just 16% have a strategy in place, and 28% have no plans to implement one.

The findings are based on a Vanson Bourne survey of 100 marketing and IT directors at UK retailers, and 1,000 consumers.

Here’s a few highlights from the study…

Retailers’ attitudes to mobile commerce

The timescales vary, but 83% believe mobile commerce will be as popular as e-commerce within five years, though the 6% who think it already is perhaps need to check some recent stats. Popularity is growing, but it’s not near e-commerce just yet.

Mobile commerce and retailers

Compared to US firms such as eBay and Amazon, many UK retailers have been relatively slow to react to the potential of mobile commerce, but that has changed over the past 12 months.

Whereas a year ago, only a small number of UK retailers had some sort of m-commerce offering, big names like Tesco, M&S and John Lewis have a successful mobile presence.

With these examples, and a number of success stories, from Debenhams, Ocado and others, it’s likely that more retailers will follow suit.

16% of retailers have a mobile commerce strategy fully in place at the moment, a further 18% have implemented some aspects, while 8% have yet to implement it.

So 42% have a strategy at various stages of development, and a further 30% plan to develop an m-commerce site or app at some point. Clearly, the 28% with no plans remain to be convinced.

A mobile retail site doesn’t have to cost the earth, and it can provide an opportunity for smaller retailers to compete with big guys. For example, retro t-shirt and gifts site TruffleShuffle developed a mobile website for a just a few hundred pounds.

I asked Pat Wood of TruffleShuffle how the mobile site had worked, and the early results are very promising. Conversion rates are relatively low, but have jumped from 0.32% in Q1 2010 to 0.46% in Q1 2011.

While in Q1 last year, mobile sales accounted for just 0.3% of turnover, in the first quarter this year, this figure was 3.95%. Considering that the site was implemented at a low cost, and just by following some basic mobile commerce best practice guidelines, it proves the value of a mobile strategy.

The debate over whether retailers should develop a mobile site or app is an interesting one, and it seems the retailers in this study are split more or less down the middle on this issue.

Slightly more (45%) feel the apps are the most important mobile channel for them, an 40% think mobile sites:

I think a mobile site is perhaps the best first step in a mobile commerce strategy, as they can appeal to the broadest possible customer base, though there are still things that apps can do better, such as barcode scanning.

Whether retailers have a mobile commerce strategy in place or not, more and more customers are buying smartphones, and many of those will be looking to make purchases.

There is still an opportunity for retailers to launch mobile retail sites and apps, and to gain a head start on competitors in this channel.

Via: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7418-uk-retailers-aren-t-ready-for-mobile-commerce-survey?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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