Editorial Articles

Jason Cross, Marketing Director at Incentivated explains how mobile commerce can revitalise bricks-and-mortar retail

There has been a lot of discussion, television programmes even, about the decline of the British High Street. Whilst the current recession and economic climate has made things worse, it has been a long term trend exacerbated by out of town centres and the inexorable rise of online shopping in the past decade.

Now we are seeing dramatic growth in online access via mobile phones and retail industry players are not playing anymore - they are looking for robust, high-performing, and enterprise-class solutions to enable mobile shopping sites and apps to “catch-up” with their customers.

Despite the occasional scare stories about shopkeepers shoo-ing customers out the door if they start using their phones (web browsers/apps – not making calls!) whilst browsing the stock, the truly enlightened see the beginnings of an opportunity to reclaim in-store purchases.

Combine mobile search (Google hasn’t become “mobile first” without reason) and location-based tools (FB Places, Foursquare etc) to drive customers in-store.. SMS shortcodes, QR codes, NFC chips can provide links to websites, product information on products, labels, in shop windows (keep your store open, even when it’s shut)..tap into customers knowledge and use of price comparison techniques to check the prices of the physical item in their hand – and then ensure they know you are “never knowingly undersold”, to borrow a phrase.

Retail psychology suggests that once the customer can touch and feel an item, they start to make emotional links with it that gently increase the likelihood of purchase. It’s why car dealers encourage test drives and clothes shops allow you to try items on. Drive customers in-store, help them see that your prices are competitive (provide free wi-fi – in the short term that could be a USP in itself) and then keep the physical sale. The effort of buying online, waiting for delivery, having to go to the Royal Mail depot because you were at work when the post man came - all of this can be overcome with an immediate purchase.

Or you can broaden your stock holdings – not got the item in the right size or colour? Visit m.website.co.uk and we can send it to you. eBay processed US$2billion via mobile devices in 2010 and expects this to be US$4bn in 2011. Amazon sold US$1bn via mobiles last year. M&S recently sold over £5,000 worth of kitchen units via its mobile website and has sold sofas costing more than £3,000 (unlikely to have happened without a store visit to actually touch and feel these items, one suspects). This is on top of the increasing day-to-day purchases that it is generating, or the tracked and measured increased store visit frequency and complementary higher basket values generated by simple SMS promoting their ‘dine in for £10’ offers.

Not optimised your website for mobile yet? Why not?

Jason Cross,  Marketing Director, Incentivated

www.incentivated.com