NEWS ARCHIVE - 2012

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Internet Retailing

O2 embraces proper mobile commerce with its own m-web sales channel

January 09, 2012

Ironic as it may seem, mobile operator O2 has only just embraced m-retailing for its own

customers with the roll out of specially designed m-web pages that let customers purchase

mobile phone accessories on the go on all web-enabled phones.

The fully upgraded Accessories section of the O2 mobile site features HTML5 functionality and

full m-commerce capability. Developed by leading cloud-based platform Usablenet, the new

site works on all web-enabled mobile phones – providing the best browsing and shopping

experience for all users regardless of what smartphone they own.

Highlights of O2 Accessories Site include:

• Scrolling Image Carousel: Using HTML5 technology, a scrolling banner displays the latest

Offers and Promotions

• Full m-commerce capabilities: Users can purchase phone accessories securely

• Advanced Product Filter: Allows users to easily narrow down their search to find the product

they’re looking for.

“We decided to work with Usablenet to quickly introduce mCommerce capabilities into our

mobile website and get a better understanding of customer behaviour in this area,” says Sarah

Evans, Head of Mobile Channel at Telefonica UK. “By starting with the sale of accessories

we’ve been able to get an early view of both the technology and customer experience. This is

helping us to drive our mCommerce strategy out into 2012 and beyond.”

Nick Taylor, CEO of Usablenet adds: “With 22.2 million mobile subscribers, O2 can now offer

their large customer base an easier route to purchasing accessories while on the go. O2 is

clearly catering to its loyal consumers by building out mCommerce functionality and ensuring a

seamless experience when shopping for accessories on their mobile phones.”

Usablenet is one of the driving forces behind mobile commerce in UK and Europe, with several

recent launches of mobile retail sites including Boots, Mothercare, JD Sports and Marks &

Spencer.

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Mobile Commerce Daily

David's Bridal Aims to Bolster Wedding Sales via Mobile Site Launch

January 23, 2012

Bridal retailer David’s Bridal has rolled out a new mobile site that lets consumers browse and

buy gowns while on the go.

The company partnered with Usablenet on this mobile initiative. Consumers can access the

mobile site by entering http://www.davidsbridal.com on their mobile device.

“All users, regardless of how they are accessing our brand and products deserve to have an

easy to use, branded experience with the same functional capabilities that they would

experience on davidsbridal.com,” said Keely Conley, director of

ecommerce for David’s Bridal, New York.

“Through the course of 2011 we extended some of our key

online functionality to mobile including mcommerce,” she said.

“The results and adoption rates of mcommerce have been

strong, and further solidify the importance of the mobile

investment as a multichannel marketing tool.”

Fully commerce-enabled

Through the David’s Bridal mobile site, consumers can experience a full mobile commerce

checkout.

The mobile site also features a store locator functionality based on where the consumer is –

letting them find the nearest David’s Bridal to view and try on the bridal gowns.

Consumers also have the ability to search by product from the company’s large inventory of

wedding dresses, gowns and accessories.

There is also an account registration feature that lets consumers become a registered user

and log-in to their account to manage.

My favorites

Users can also use the favorites functionalities feature that lets them save their favorite

products to their account.

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“Mobile is key to the future of the David’s Bridal multichannel experience,” Ms. Conley said. “The

adoption of smartphones and tablets is changing the dynamics of retail in general.

“We believe David’s has a unique opportunity to extend mobile across a broad range of

consumer touch points, ensuring we are there for our customers, anytime and anywhere,” she

said.

David’s Bridal has seen more consumers accessing its site via mobile , as well as seen a

consistent year on year growth since 2009.

“Mobile continues to grow as a meaningful portion of our total traffic,” Ms. Conley said. “With a

third-quarter 2011 launch, we are still learning a great deal about our mcommerce customer and

business.”

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The eTail Blog 3 Steps to Better Optimize Your Tablet Strategy January 24, 2012

A recent study found that 87% of tablet owners used their devices to browse and purchase

gifts this holiday season. As consumers are becoming increasingly confident using tablets to

browse, shop and purchase from retailers online, it is crucial for brands to view tablets as a key

part of their overall online sales and marketing strategy. Understanding the tablet shopper as

well as the features that make the devices unique is the first step to successfully integrating

tablets into a broader multichannel strategy. Further, retail businesses must develop a tablet

experience that works for all users, and incorporate similar branding and messaging to

maximize potential traffic and revenue.

The New Tech-Savvy Tablet Shopper

The 2011 holiday season made it easy for retailers to recognize and understand the power of

tablets. According to data from Monetate, 4.5% of all website visits between Black Friday and

Cyber Monday came through tablet devices. Displaying the power of tablets as a sales

channel, these users converted at a rate of 5.1%, only a .3% difference from desktop traffic.

Additional data from Zmags found that 49% of tablet owners plan to shop via their devices

moving forward, representing a significant opportunity for retailers to optimize their tablet

shopping to maximize this increasing traffic and set themselves apart from competitors.

Taking Advantage of the Tablet’s Unique Features

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When optimizing an ecommerce site for tablet users, retailers must take into account the

device’s unique features in order to create the most engaging experience for the consumer.

For example, leveraging the device’s screen size and multi-touch capabilities empowers

brands to become creative when looking for ways to more deeply engage with its customers.

Incorporating tap-tap-zoom, finger swipe, and video features into the browsing and buying

experience helps to both effectively maximize screen real estate and create a fun and

engaging tablet shopping experience.

Optimize for all Tablets, Big and Small

A successful tablet experience is one that works for all users, regardless of what device they

choose. The ever-growing tablet landscape requires brands to develop a device agnostic

strategy with the ability to reach all tablet users and maximize all potential revenue opportunity.

Don’t get lost in the “everyone has an iPad” idea, because not everyone does. Additionally,

optimizing a site for a tablet requires an agile platform that instantly recognizes the type of

device used and delivers the same high levels of performance and support shoppers are

accustomed to on the desktop in order to ensure a positive user experience.

Creating a Consistent Brand Experience

Tablets should be viewed by brands as a valuable channel that will drive traffic and increase

revenue. However, to successfully integrate an effective tablet strategy into overall

multichannel efforts, it is crucial that retailers incorporate the same branding aesthetics and

core functionality on tablets that consumers experience with the brand’s existing in-store,

online and mobile presence. Looking forward, the tablet’s influence on retail will continue to

grow, forcing brands to view devices like the iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook, and others as essential

consumer touchpoints that require a consistent brand experience. In fact, if retailers don’t get

their tablet strategy right over the next several years, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant in

the eyes of today’s tech-savvy consumer.

Jason Taylor is the Head of Platform Strategy and Innovation at Usablenet, New York, Italy

and UK based company that offers a technological platform for transforming and optimizing

web content for any device.

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Retail TouchPoints

David’s Bridal Releases Mobile Optimized Site To Reach Tech-Savvy Brides-To-Be

February 01, 2012

Now that smartphones are ubiquitous, it’s no longer outlandish for consumers to browse,

research and/or buy on their Android, iPhone or tablet devices. The researching process is

particularly important for larger, more expensive purchases, such as wedding gowns. To better

reach modern, more tech-savvy consumers,David’s Bridal has rolled out a mobile optimized

site, developed in partnership with Usablenet.

The David’s Bridal mobile site was released in Q4 2011 to provide prospective customers with

a user experience that is rich and engaging. According to Keely Conley, Director of e-

Commerce for David’s Bridal, the primary goal of the new storefront was to allow shoppers to

interact with the brand and purchase bridal gowns anytime and anywhere.

“Mobile is key to the future of David’s Bridal’s multichannel experience,” Conley told Retail

TouchPoints. “David’s Bridal has a consumer base that is highly engaged and active by nature

of the wedding planning event. As a brand, being present across a broad range of consumer

touch points is critical to strengthening our relationships with customers.”

Through the mobile optimized site, brides-to-be have the ability to search nearby stores. The

site also allows consumers to browse the retailer’s entire inventory and make purchases

whenever and wherever they desire. With login functionality, shoppers can manage their

accounts, view items in their baskets, and save products into their “favorites” list, leading to a

brand experience that is more comprehensive and streamlined, explained Nick Taylor, CEO of

Usablenet.

“The on-the-go shopper is growing into a significant percentage of David's Bridal's customer

base as smartphone use continues to skyrocket and more consumers turn to their devices to

research and purchase products,” Taylor said. “With the launch of its mobile optimized site,

David's Bridal demonstrates its commitment to its customers by ensuring the best shopping

experience, regardless of the type of device being used.”

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During the development process, David’s Bridal and Usablenet did a thorough analysis of the

retailer’s target consumer base, and mapped out a strategy to include all vital features of the e-

Commerce site, such as in-depth item images. The new mobile optimized site leverages the

latest HTML5 technology, allowing the retailer to provide customers with high-resolution

photographs of inventory as well as zoom capabilities, Taylor noted.

The marketing and development teams at David’s Bridal are continuing to develop its mobile

presence and overall multichannel strategy, based on insight from Usablenet and ROI results,

Conley added.

“Our roadmap was developed by considering the overall consumer experience, corporate

priorities and best practice guidance from Usablenet,” Conley said. “The mobile strategy was

planned around the most popular features on our web site. Mobile is a phased effort for

David’s Bridal and we will continue to evolve the roadmap based on learnings and usage from

our latest efforts.”

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Internet Retailer

JetBlue unveils redesigned ecommerce and mcommerce sites

February 03, 2012

In what it’s calling a “digital refresh,” airline JetBlue Airways today launched newly redesigned

e-commerce and m-commerce sites, aiming to make it easier for travelers to book a flight on

the go and find information such as maps to airports and driving conditions. JetBlue also today

debuted an iPhone app that matches the design scheme of the sites while catering to the

needs of highly loyal customers.

“We’re an 11-year-old company with roots in the digital channel,” says Michael Stromer, vice

president of customer connections. “Many of our competitors have begun focusing on digital in

recent years and have caught up. We made this investment in this channel because we want

to stay several steps ahead.”

Personalization is a major element of the redesign. An area for signing into a True Blue loyalty

account is now featured prominently atop the e-commerce and m-commerce home pages.

Once a customer signs in, the sites access all the preferences information in the customer’s

account and customizes features and functions. For example, a customer’s most commonly

used home airport is featured on the page with links for airport and road conditions. If it’s within

72 hours of a flight, gate and other airport information is displayed. And if a customer regularly

travels to Orlando, the site may display an advertisement for Walt Disney World.

JetBlue, No. 78 in the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Top 300, also has added some

functionality on the back-end that affects what consumers see and how they access the sites.

It is using geo-targeting technology to serve up flight prices relevant to the city from which a

consumer accesses the site. It’s added a behavioral targeting engine from Adobe Systems Inc.

to highlight relevant content based on how a customer is clicking through the site. And it has

hired Akamai Technologies Inc. to host site data on servers around the country to speed the

delivery of pages to desktop PCs, smartphones and tablets.Navigation also has been

enhanced—with tablet computers in mind. There are fewer text links. Buttons are larger, a

convenience for customers using touchscreen devices. The bottom content on all the pages

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has been cleaned up and aired out so that fingers don’t accidentally touch the wrong link.

JetBlue also highlights at the bottom of the page its Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages

and its and blog.

The airline worked with web design firm Rokkan on the redesign, which was inspired by

JetBlue’s customers and employees. It e-mailed a survey to 15,000 of its True Blue loyalty

program members and received a 50% response rate. And it interviewed everyone from crew

members up to the CEO to gauge expectations from within the company. That input led to the

focus on personalization and ease of navigation, Stromer says.

Usablenet Inc. built and maintains the m-commerce site. Double Encore helped develop the

app.

Today’s launch is phase one of a three-phase project. Phase two will debut mid-year and

phase three at the end of the year. JetBlue is hush-hush on the next two phases, but does hint

that social media will play a big role.

JetBlue also today launched its first mobile app for the iPhone; an Android version is in the

works.

The app provides all the functionality of the sites and is presented in tiles that are easy to

touch. A personal greeting along with True Blue points total appear atop the screen, followed

by the weather forecast for the city to which the customer is next flying. Flight information

appears below, followed by three boxes: Share, Check In and Pick Me Up. Share enables a

traveler to e-mail details of his flight to friends and family. Check In allows customers to skip

lines at the airport, as well as select seats. And Pick Me Up provides directions to the airport

and up-to-the-minute flight and gate information to the person picking up the traveler at his

destination.

Customers can book flights through the app. They also can elect to receive push notifications

from the app. A push notification is a message in a window that pops up on the smartphone

screen regardless of whether the app is open or not. In case an app user misses a push,

JetBlue has included a Push inbox in the app where a customer can read the most recent

messages.

There’s also a section called Fun Stuff. “We figured out a couple ways for now to get

customers to use the app when they are outside the travel realm,” says Jonathan Stephen,

project manager and mobile producer. “So we give them the ability to create postcards and

download wallpapers.”

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The app also enables customers to view in-flight entertainment schedules. A traveler can enter

his flight number and the app will download the entertainment menus onto the smartphone so

that he can view the content even without a wireless network connection. On that note, JetBlue

plans to deploy Wi-Fi networks on its planes later this year.

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Marketing Vox

JetBlue Adds Personalized, Navigation-friendly Features in Mobile App

February 07, 2012

JetBlue Airways has redesigned its e-commerce and m-commerce sites with the specific goal

of making it easier for travelers to book a flight—the travel industry’s retail equivalent of an

easy payment process. JetBlue also added such features as maps to airports and information

about driving conditions, Internet Retailer reports.

"We're an 11-year-old company with roots in the digital channel,” Michael Stromer, vice

president of customer connections, told the publication. "Many of our competitors have begun

focusing on digital in recent years and have caught up. We made this investment in this

channel because we want to stay several steps ahead."

Usability is Key

Usability, or lack thereof, is a key reason why mobile initiatives fail. 32% of smartphone and

tablet owners say that their shopping has been impeded by difficulties seeing the full product

information on their device screen, thus preventing them from making a mobile purchase,

according to a survey by Motricity, conducted by Wakefield Research.

One-quarter of respondents cited problems with entering purchase information as a hindrance

to making a purchase via their device.

Personalization Important Too

Personalization is also a growing issue in the mobile environment. Here too JetBlue, focused

its attention on adding this level of functionality. An area for signing into a True Blue loyalty

account is atop the e-commerce and m-commerce home pages. Once a customer signs in, the

sites access all the preferences and customer’s account, Internet Retailer says—such as the

customer’s home airport.

Other Sites Move in This Direction

Other sites are implementing similar functionality. Newly-launched BabyShowerStuff.com

made it a goal to offer the same information captured in the webpage about customers in the

mobile app. "To effectively complete the Big Dot party planning experience, we had to offer a

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mobile site that was easily accessible from multiple devices as well as one that contained the

exact functions of the main site," says Brenda Knutson, eCommerce sales and marketing

manager of all Big Dot Shops.

"Then we went a step further and added a 'Click to Call' button at the bottom of every product

page, allowing Hostess Heroes to personally contact our Expert Experts if they have

questions."

Easy to Pay

Most fundamental of all, however, are easy payment options for mobile sites. Bridal retailer

David’s Bridal just launched a mobile site that has been optimized to support purchases as

well as allow consumers to browse the gowns. The company partnered with Usablenet to

achieve this feat, Mobile Commerce Daily reports.

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Retail TouchPoints

TouchPoints TV: Jason Taylor, Usablenet

February 17, 2012

By Jason Taylor, Usablenet

Taylor highlights the evolution of mobile and social commerce, as well as the key

characteristics of a successful mobile optimized web site and application. Taylor also

discusses the work that Usablenet is doing with its eTailer clients, including JCPenney,

Aeropostale and Asos. Additionally, Taylor shares his perspective on the current state of

Facebook commerce, as well as his expectations for the concept to develop in the coming

year.

Link to video.

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Tnooz

Best Western Launches a Facebook App with Reservations

February 24, 2012

If it seems as if you are chained to Facebook because you spend so much time gabbing with

friends or listening to Spotify there, then there’s a hotel chain which will make your travel

planning easier.

Best Western is now giving Facebook fans the ability to book any of its 4,100 hotels in more

than 100 countries without leaving the social network.

The hotel chain debuted the booking app, developed with Usablenet, on the Best Western

Facebook page, and claims it “is the first major international hotel chain with this capability.”

Best Western is simply going to where it’s customers — or a significant portion of them — are.

“It’s imperative that we answer the call from our customer to make it easy to research, book

and share travel experiences through their preferred channels,” says Dorothy Dowling, senior

vice president of marketing and sales at Best Western.

The hotel chain’s Facebook booking app, which it characterizes as “private and secure,”

resembles a typical hotel booking widget, although in addition to searching by city or airport, it

also enables you to search by attraction and points.

You can use the Facebook app to view photo galleries of the property and also insert

promotion codes and corporate ID numbers before completing your hotel booking.

With all of the airlines, hotels and travel metasearch firms building Facebook apps these days,

pretty soon you’ll be able to do everything on Facebook, but travel — although mobile apps

ensure you can bring Facebook along with you as a travel companion.

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IT Briefing

Usablenet Partners with dotMobi for Mobile Device Detection

February 27, 2012

Usablenet, whose clients represent 20 percent of the Fortune 1000, uses DeviceAtlas to

ensure that their solutions work for all Web-enabled mobile devices, including the iPad and

Android tablets. Usablenet’s cloud-based platform maps website content and Web services to

mobile sites, mobile applications, Facebook, in-store kiosks, and assistive interfaces.

“Since 2000, Usablenet has worked with top-tier clients to help them provide great mobile Web

experiences to their customers. The usability of a site has a direct impact on loyalty, and

loyalty is where sales and profits are made. That’s why we need to make Web experiences

work great on all mobile devices. We chose DeviceAtlas because it provides an accurate and

comprehensive mobile device detection solution that meets the high-quality standards we need

to address our clients’ mission-critical requirements,” said Nick Taylor, CEO of Usablenet.

“Making mobile websites as user friendly and as functional on all mobile devices as they are

when viewed on a desktop can be a challenge in today’s complex and fragmented device

market,” said Eileen O’Sullivan, COO and CFO of dotMobi. “With the continued diversity in the

devices people use to access Web content, knowing the capabilities of those devices is vital to

guarantee quality of service. That’s where DeviceAtlas adds value.”

Launched at the 2008 Mobile World Congress, DeviceAtlas provides detailed information on

virtually all Web-enabled devices in use today and can detect devices at high speed and scale.

In 2011, dotMobi added HTML5 properties to DeviceAtlas data, which Usablenet incorporates

into its HTML5 mobile commerce platform — the world’s first at its launch in April 2011.

About Usablenet

Usablenet is a cloud-based technology platform company that works with organizations in all

sectors to create a mobile Web and multichannel presence. Founded in 2000, the company is

headquartered in New York City with offices in London, Italy, and Los Angeles. In 2011,

Usablenet was named one of the top 10 most innovative companies in mobile by Fast

Company, and the top mobile commerce vendor by ABI Research. Usablenet powers the

world's fastest mobile commerce sites, according to studies from Keynote Systems.

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Retail TouchPoints

Analyzing the Mobile Consumer Part II: Personalization Vital to Customer Loyalty and

Engagement

February 28, 2012

Part II of a two-part series discussing the browsing and buying preferences of the mobile

consumer. Part I appeared in the February 21 newsletter.

Mobile technology has become an integral part of the browsing and buying journey. Shoppers

are tapping into their smartphones at home, in store aisles, and on-the-go to explore possible

purchases, compare prices at different locations, and retrieve special offers and coupons.

Best-in-class retailers are responding by building relationships with shoppers via smartphone

devices to create more memorable and interactive brand experiences. By sending

personalized messages via SMS and push notifications, based on consumers’ browsing and

buying behaviors, retailers are able to incentivize customers with targeted offers.

Findings from a recent report titled “Prosper Mobile Insights Mobile Survey” indicated that

mobile usage will continue to soar throughout 2012. Nearly half (44%) of consumers resolved

to spend more time using their smartphone/tablet device during the year. Overall, mobile

subscribers claim they will use their devices more frequently to shop (27%) and complete

payments (25%). As mobilized consumers continue to evolve, today’s merchant is presented

with an optimal channel to engage these tech-savvy shoppers.

Research from InsightExpress also spotlights the increase in mobilized, multi-tasking

shoppers. The “4Q2011 Digital Consumer Portrait” indicated that 33% of smartphone owners

use their phones for at least six activities. These mobile subscribers are characterized as

“heavy smartphone users.”

Top tasks for which heavy smartphone subscribers use their devices include:

Text friends and family (87%);

Access email (79%);

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Browse the Internet (76%);

Update social networking accounts (59%); and

Use Apps (55%).

Retailers can leverage all these areas of the mobile experience to initiate conversations with

shoppers and foster greater loyalty. Before deciding on a mobile strategy, however, marketers

must have a firm understanding of their target audience, including age and overall shopping

preferences. For example, among heavy smartphone users, 58% are between 18 and 29

years old, according to InsightExpress research. As smartphones features become easier to

manage, consumers across age segments are growing more eager and willing to participate in

mobile activities.

“For today’s consumers, what used to be a text is now a Facebook status update or store

check-in, and what once was a phone call to a business is now a site visit,” said Dan Lowden,

VP of Marketing for Digby. “Mobile is completely transforming personal means of

communication and centering it around the smartphone. More ‘mobile shoppers’ and ‘every

day’ shoppers are using mobile across all channels. As a result, retailers need to prepare for

and embrace this new paradigm.”

The Great Disconnect: Retail Mobile Implementations Fall Behind

Although most retailers recognize the arrival of the “mobile revolution,” overall implementation

rates are not keeping pace with smartphone usage. In fact, average retailers are struggling to

match the connected consumers’ growing demand for information and purchasing capabilities

via smartphones.

A recent retailer survey from RSR Research, titled “Keeping Up with the Mobile

Consumer,”indicated that although retailers are aware of mobile’s importance in boosting

customer loyalty and ROI, overall implementation is lagging.

Key findings regarding sentiment vs. actual implementation are as follows:

83% of retailers said a search-for-merchandise capability is vital to a mobile strategy (versus 35% who have implemented);

76% believe store locator features are very important (versus 48%);

63% indicated the ability to receive coupons/offers is important for mobilized shopper (versus 32%);

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61% of respondents think providing access to product reviews is key (versus 26%);

55% believe “check order status” features are vital for an optimal mobile experience (versus 25%);

54% think providing access to product ratings is imperative (versus 31%); and

53% said it is important to provide tech-savvy shoppers with the ability to redeem coupons and offers via their mobile device (versus 29% who have implemented).

The array of mobile strategies and tools currently available presents a low-hanging fruit

opportunity for retailers. For example, some merchants are using signage that incorporates

scannable tags to create a more interactive in-store experience, according to Dianne Kremer,

Senior Analyst for BIGinsight.

“Interactive displays/shelf tags and store-specific apps help engage mobile savvy shoppers in-

store,” Kremer told Retail TouchPoints. “About one-third of mobile shoppers have read product

reviews and scanned QR codes to get more information about a product while shopping in-

store; we can only expect this number to grow as more products/retailers incorporate mobile

technologies in their marketing plans. The recent survey from Prosper Mobile Insights shows

that mobile shoppers like quick, interactive apps that improve their shopping experience.”

Industry experts also point to the emergence of HTML5, which allows companies to create an

engaging and agile mobile web experience to complement their applications, according to Nick

Taylor, CEO of Usablenet, a mobile and multichannel platform company.

“In 2012, we expect to see more retailers deploy comprehensive mobile strategies that include

both next-generation HTML5 technologies to implement faster and more agile mobile sites,

while complementing their mobile browser presence with native apps to drive increased brand

loyalty and in-store interactions," Taylor reported

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Mobile Commerce Daily

Best Western sees 145pc year-over-year increase generated through mobile

March 02, 2012

A Best Western executive said that as of last November the company has seen a 145 percent

increase year-over-year in revenue generated through its mobile channels.

Best Western launched its mobile site, Best Western Rewards in September and has had its

main mobile site since November 2008. Both sites are power by Usablenet.

“We are seeing more and more customers booking through our mobile channels and again we

expect this trend to increase rapidly within the next few years,” said Tiffany Tchida, director of

ecommerce at Best Western International.

“As of last November Best Western has seen a 145 percent increase year-over-year in

revenue generated through our mobile channels,” she said. “Additionally we’ve seen a 70

percent year-over-year jump in downloads of our iPhone and iPad app.

“I would emphasize though that we don’t view mobile simply as a transactional tool but rather

as a way to engage with our customers and provide engaging content about the brand.”

Mobile booking

The Best Western Rewards mobile site lets members manage their profiles, review their

balances and redeem points for travel and merchandise.

Consumers can access the mobile site by enteringwww.bestwestern2go.com on their mobile

browser.

The company also has a mobile site, as well as applications for iPad, iPhone and Android

devices.

“At Best Western International we continue to place tremendous emphasis on expanding and

refining our mobile offerings,” Ms. Tchida said. “We believe that within the next three years

mobile is going to power virtually everything, including how transactions take place within the

travel space.

“Best Western was one of the first brands to be active on GPS devices and we continue to

evolve our various mobile channels,” she said.

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Social presence

Recently, Best Western launched a new booking capability that lets travelers reserve hotel

rooms through the company’s Facebook page.

Usablenet developed and powers the Best Western Facebook booking capability.

“Since 2006, Best Western has been an active leader in the social media space, reaching and

interacting daily with more than 27,000-plus Twitter followers and 261,400 Facebook fans,” Ms.

Tchida said.

“In fact, Best Western now has more Facebook fans than any other global hotel chain and we

maintain an extremely active engagement rate with those fans,” she said. “More than 70

percent of Best Western fans engage with and view the brand’s Facebook page on a monthly

basis.”

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Ecommerce Times

Shifting Sands in the Smartphone Market: What's an Etailer to do?

March 06, 2012

As consumer options continue to broaden in 2012 and beyond, and more competition

seeks to disrupt the current landscape, the key challenge for online retailers will be to

ensure that their mobile sites and apps function properly on all devices and operating

systems -- not just the few dominant players they had to support in years past.

Online retailers that have committed to supporting consumers on their mobile phones

are bracing themselves for a challenging year.

Just as they thought it was a two-horse race for smartphone dominance

between Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) -- which enabled them to

establish a neat mobile Web and app strategy -- a rejuvenated smartphone market is set to

spoil their plans.

In fact, nearly all the leading mobile hardware and software companies --

like Samsung,Sony (NYSE: SNE), LG, Motorola, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Microsoft (Nasdaq:

MSFT) andResearch In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) -- recently introduced a wide range of new

devices at Mobile World Congress and CES.

This enhanced competition will put immense pressure on retailers that plan mobile as a

channel to engage and sell to consumers. It is particularly critical for brands with a global reach

to understand the innovations currently reshaping the smartphone industry, as they must now

ensure that their mobile presence is robust enough to simultaneously keep up with new

hardware and software combinations, as well as the emergence of Asia and other developing

markets.

Simpler Times: iPhone and Android Market Domination

In 2011, the smartphone market was dominated by just a few hardware and software

partnerships. At the high end of the spectrum, there was just a handful of smartphones of

choice for consumers in the U.S. and Europe, including the iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy

running Android, and RIM's BlackBerry.

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Meanwhile, Android dominated the lower end of the smartphone consumer market. The many

hardware manufacturers that chose to run the open source, limited 2.x version of Android

helped cement its market-leading position based on units sold. That created additional issues

for retailers, however, as lower-end Android devices supported fewer features for apps and

less mobile Web interaction.

The landscape was manageable, though, as the rest of the market was made up of smaller

players such as Microsoft and Nokia, which gained very little market traction in 2011.

Simultaneously, RIM experienced losses in U.S. market share, through a combination of

stalled innovation and a series of missed marketing steps that severely affected its BlackBerry

brand.

An Eye on Asia: New Markets and Competition Diversify Smartphone Options

The smartphone landscape is shifting in dramatic ways. The biggest drivers of change have

been in Asia and Europe, which have become open and very sizable markets for both

smartphone device manufactures and online retailers to win. As these markets continue to

mature, smartphone innovation will be pushed forward even further, and online retailers will be

forced to keep up in a more fragmented landscape.

At the mass consumer level, most notably in developing countries in Asia and elsewhere, we

are seeing a land grab for marketshare. For example Samsung, the largest mobile OEMplayer,

recently introduced its Bada operating system. In just two quarters, it already accounts for 4

percent of total worldwide shipments (mostly in Asia). With the strong early showing of this

entirely new operating system, global e-commerce brands are taking notice. This also means,

however, that they will be forced to adapt their existing mobile strategies by testing and

developing apps and sites that work on a whole new set of devices.

At the high end, Apple will continue to dominate, and its tight connection between hardware,

software, and iTunes for distribution will cement its popularity in the app developer community.

However, because Apple releases new hardware and operating systems on a six-month cycle,

brands are required to support apps and mobile features across two or three of these different

versions simultaneously, which increases the costs and human resources required for mobile

development and testing.

Google's acquisition of Motorola will enable tighter hardware and software integration and

provide a more-central developer community that mirrors Apple's ecosystem. However, Google

is also working with nearly every other major hardware manufacturer with its open source OS,

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which means retailers that have committed to supporting the Android user will have hundreds

of devices that need to be accounted for.

Additionally, Samsung will continue to assert itself as a major hardware player, and it has

demonstrated its own high-end aspirations with the latest entry in its Galaxy product line -- the

Galaxy Nexus.

Motorola also recently entered the higher-end market with an aggressive push of its Motorola

Razr, which runs Android's Ice Cream Sandwich OS.

Nokia re-entered the smartphone market with new hardware running Microsoft's Windows

Phone 7.5, aka Mango.

Finally, while RIM continues to struggle to innovate, the forthcoming release of its new

BlackBerry OS 10 promises a solid new foundation for BlackBerry users.

Global Scale for Brands

With this recent flurry of new smartphone devices and operating systems to account for, global

brands face a unique challenge as they look to scale their mobile presence to reach the

smartphone-carrying consumer.

As consumer options continue to broaden in 2012 and beyond, and more competition seeks to

disrupt the current landscape, the key challenge for online retailers will be to ensure that their

mobile sites and apps function properly on all devices and operating systems. Additionally, as

Asia has emerged as a lucrative untapped market, understanding the Asian smartphone

landscape is crucial for retailers that want to reach the global consumer.

In this new mobile world, brands must develop and deliver a robust mobile strategy that

supports all of the increasing devices and operating systems, beyond just the few dominant

players they had to support in years past. And in order to separate themselves in an intensely

competitive environment, online retailers must understand how these new devices and

operating systems are used by consumers, while also continuing to innovate and deliver easy-

to-use mobile solutions.

25

Internet Retailing

Leading European department store El Corte Ingles partners with Usablenet to launch mobile

optimized version of its site

March 06, 2012

El Corte Ingles, the largest department store in Europe and fourth largest worldwide, recently

partnered with global mobile and multichannel technology platform company Usablenet, to

launch an optimized mobile version of its site that extends the El Corte Ingles brand to

customers anytime, anywhere.

The new El Corte Ingles mobile site features HTML5 capabilities and provides customers with

key features and functionality available on the traditional website, including full m-commerce

functionality where registered users and guests have the ability to purchase items directly from

their mobile device.

It also offers an advanced scrolling image carousel, allowing customers to view high-quality,

rotating carousel product images displayed on the homepage and product detail page without

slowing their browsing experience. Users can also double tap on product images to further

zoom in and see the product in greater detail, as well as search and browse from El Corte

Ingles’ entire inventory of products.

And thanks to expandable navigation, users can quickly and efficiently browse by category

without loading extra pages and slowing down the browsing experience.

“With an increasing number of consumers using mobile to aid with their purchases, it was

important for us to create a mobile version of our website that provides a positive user

experience on all mobile devices,” explains the head of the e-commerce division of El Corte

Ingles. “Our new site was designed to provide El Corte Ingles customers with the same high-

quality shopping experience that they have come to expect across all channels.”

According to ABI Research, mobile shopping will account for $163 billion in sales worldwide, or

12% of global ecommerce revenue by 2015. As consumer adoption of smartphones and other

web-enabled mobile devices continues its rapid ascent internationally, major European brands

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are leveraging the mobile web as a significant channel to more deeply engage with consumers

and drive sales.

“Mobile commerce has exploded onto the international stage, with a growing number of

consumers using their smartphones to browse, shop and purchase items from leading retailers

across the globe,” says Usablenet CEO Nick Taylor. “El Corte Ingles is another strong

example of the power of Usablenet’s platform and our ability to scale a brand’s mobile

presence to support a global audience, while accounting for differences in infrastructure,

device-type and mobile networks.”

27

RIS News

Gowns on the Go from David's Bridal

March 07, 2014

Brides are always frazzled and on-the-go. Now, David’s Bridal allows consumers to browse

and buy gowns anywhere, anytime from their mobile devices. The company partnered with

Usablenet to create its mobile site, which includes an account registration feature where

customers can manage their accounts; a store locator based on the consumer’s location; and

a search functionality for customers to browse through products in the company’s large

inventory of wedding dresses, gowns and accessories.

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Mobile News

Carphone Warehouse's new mobile site accounts for 20% of online traffic

March 07, 2012

Mobile site now available to customers, with the same functionalities as the desktop

version

Carphone Warehouse has launched its first fully optimised mobile website, enabling customers

to make purchases, choose tariffs, add accessories, organise delivery/pick up and complete

credit check.

The site offers filters to help customers find the most cost appropriate devices, plans and

packages, a search option to isolate and buy items and full m-commerce capabilities to enable

customers to make transactions via credit and debit card.

Customers can also find their nearest Carphone store, either by GPS detection or postal code.

The site is powered by global technology platform provider Usablenet, the firm behind m-

commerce sites from the likes of O2, Tesco, Boots, Mothercare, JD Sports and Marks &

Spencer.

Carphone Warehouse director of eCommerce Victoria Self said: “Over 15 per cent of our

desktop site traffic had been coming from mobile users, sop we recognised the need to deliver

an optimised experience for these customers.

“Within the first couple of days of going live, we saw a major spike in traffic and achieved a

conversion rate of nearly half of our desktop rate – a great achievement.”

Meanwhile customers can pre-register their interest in a number of handsets launched at

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of last month.

The HTC One S and One X handsets will go on sale from next month, with the One V available

from mid-April/May.

The Nokia Lumia 900, Samsung Galaxy Ace 2, Sony Xperia U and LG Optimus L3 will go on

sale in May.

29

Mobile Commerce Daily

Carphone Warehouse aims to increase phone sales via mobile site

March 15, 2012

Carphone Warehouse has launched a mobile-optimized site that lets consumers review and

buy handsets, tablets and accessories.

The company tapped Usablenet to power its HTML5 mobile site. In 2008, Best Buy acquired

50 percent of Carphone Warehouse’s European and U.S. retail interests, which resulted in the

creation of Best Buy Europe.

“Carphone Warehouse is the largest independent mobile phone retailer in the world, and prior

to introducing its optimized mobile site, over 15 percent of its desktop Web traffic had been

coming from mobile users,” said Nick Taylor, CEO of Usablenet, New York.

“Since their transactional mobile site launched, it has been receiving 20 percent of Web traffic,

and is converting at roughly half the rate of the desktop site,” he said. “With this high a

percentage of mobile traffic coming to your site, it’s essential to provide your mobile users with

an optimized experience that allows them to do everything they can do on a desktop, from the

palm of their hands.

“If brands do not deliver a seamless and easy-to-use mobile experience to users visiting from

mobile devices, those users will look to the competition to meet their needs.”

Carphone Warehouse is a mobile phone retailer with more than 800 stores nationwide.

Usablenet customers include Boots, British Airways, Delta, Estée Lauder, FedEx, JD Sports,

John Lewis, Hilton and Marks & Spencer.

On the go purchases

Through the Carphone Warehouse mobile site consumers can make purchases, pick phone

plans, browse accessories and organize a delivery or pick-up.

The mobile site lets users find the nearest store location by using the device’s GPS

technology.

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Additionally, the Deal Finder feature offers filters that let consumers narrow down their search

when they are looking for something specific.

The Carphone Warehouse mobile site also features an expandable menu that lets users

navigate quicker on a smaller screen.

“Mobile has evolved from being viewed as a novelty to being recognized as a necessity,” Mr.

Taylor said.

“As smartphones and tablets have become key drivers of Internet usage, brands must deliver

a cohesive and hassle-free mobile experience in order take advantage of a powerful revenue

driver and customer engagement channel,” he said.

Importance of mobile

Rolling out a mobile-optimized site is essential for marketers.

Consumers are constantly reaching for their mobile device to make purchases and making

sure the content is optimized is critical.

“In our new smartphone driven world, brands now realize that it’s no longer enough to just offer

a simple optimized mobile site,” Mr. Taylor said.

“Instead, brands are implementing strategies that leverage next-generation features and

technologies like HTML5 to make the mobile customer experience just as comprehensive and

easy-to-use as the traditional Web site,” he said.

“As companies have gotten better at implementing well-executed mobile strategies, they are

seeing increases in conversion, repeat visits, and overall positive brand awareness from users

engaging with their brand via mobile devices.”

31

Business Insider

Five Reasons You Should Build Your Mobile Site With HTML5

March 29, 2012

By Jason Taylor, Usablenet

All businesses understand that mobile is exploding. The number of smartphone subscribers in

the U.S. surpassed the 100-million mark in January, up 13% since October, and mobile

Internet usage is continuing to increase at a rapid rate.

In fact, Cisco reports that the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the world’s

population this year.

In this new smartphone and tablet-driven digital world, businesses are faced with the important

challenge of offering customers a mobile experience that is just as comprehensive and easy to

use as found on the traditional website.

Mobile customers are demanding the ability to do everything they’re used to doing on a

desktop from the palm of their hands.

To accomplish this, brands should turn to HTML5 -- the latest HTML coding language that

allows you to deliver a richer and more intuitive user experience within the mobile browser.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 allows mobile developers to create more dynamic and engaging web content for

different use cases and user experiences. Optimizing HTML5 features for mobile interfaces,

enables brands to keep pages light and focus on functionality that takes advantage of the

smaller screen size of mobile devices.

While most new mobile browsers support HTML5, some older browsers still don’t. Therefore,

when building a mobile site it is very important to make sure that you support HTML5

functionality for the newer browsers and also output another version of the site that supports

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the same core functionality, without the new HTML5 enabled UI/UX, for older browsers.

By implementing a well-executed mobile strategy that takes advantage of next-generation

HTML5 technology, consumer-facing brands will see an increase in conversion, repeat visits,

and overall positive brand awareness from users engaging with their brand via mobile devices.

Here are 5 reasons why developing your mobile Web strategy with HTML5 will improve the

customer experience.

1. Create an App-Like Experience in the Browser Environment

HTML5 allows you to create a rich, app-like user experience in the mobile browser, one that

doesn’t require users to actively seek out and download an app through the store or

marketplace process. While downloading an app is behavior typically exhibited by brand

loyalists, the mobile Web allows you to reach a much larger audience including users much

earlier in the customer life cycle.

Mobile Web interfaces built with HTML5 look more and more like apps every day, and through

HTML5’s ability to recognize gestures, consumers are able to maneuver a site as they would

an app. This includes swiping through navigation and pinching and zooming in on select areas

of the site.

Also similar to native apps, HTML5 mobile sites include local storage which allows site

developers to store data within browser memory. This results in sites with the ability to store

commonly used data within the browser and reduce the number of back-end interactions with

the server -- delivering pages that load much faster than previous generation mobile sites.

2. Location Aware Experience

One of the most impactful features HTML5 enables is its ability to bring location awareness to

the browser. Retailers with a brick-and-mortar presence, for example, can simply prompt the

mobile site to recognize the user’s location upon launch and deliver “Find Near Me” options

that identify the closest stores. Additionally, when a user first loads a retailer’s mobile site,

HTML5 enables it to prompt them with any special deals or offers that are available at nearby

retail locations.

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Travel giant Expedia.com is a great example of a brand that uses HTML5 to add location

aware context to its mobile site. Upon launching the mobile site, Expedia leverages the

device’s internal GPS to offer travelers the ability to search for nearby hotels with same day

vacancies. It is also able to push notifications of special offers to users based on their location.

3. Streamline The Shopping Cart

For retailers, one of the keys to converting visitors into buyers is simplifying the shopping cart

and checkout process. In fact, according to data from Monetate, 75% of all online purchases

never occur because people abandon their shopping carts. On mobile, the need to deliver a

seamless and easy to use checkout process is even more important.

HTML5 mobile sites make it easier for brands to implement advanced checkouts that allow

users to complete their transaction in one step from whatever page they’re on. To achieve this,

retail brands like Tesco Grocery allow you to view your cart via overlays on the product and

category pages. This means that users can easily call up their shopping cart at any time

without having to navigate away from the page that they’re on. Empowering users with this

ability to check out quicker and with less clicks will help boost your mobile conversion rates.

4. Richer Product Images

Another big advantage to mobile sites built with HTML5 is their ability to serve high-resolution

image galleries. One of the traditional challenges with mobile shopping has been the

customer’s inability to view detailed images. This is largely alleviated with next-generation

HTML5 mobile sites, which allow brands to display multiple, high quality product images in a

gallery format.

Further, HTML5 mobile sites offer users the ability to look through a number of product views

and also double tap to zoom in on specific images and view products in more detail than

previously available. This ability to tap-tap-zoom to get a closer view of an image is especially

important on smartphones due to their smaller screen size.

5. Expandable Navigation and Collapsible Menus

Finally, HTML5 makes it much easier for brands to target users with special offers and relevant

promotions by providing the ability to scroll through banners on the mobile homepage. Brands

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can further streamline mobile site navigation and simplify the user experience by integrating

expand and collapse menus and pop-up windows on the homepage and category pages --

features not previously available that are made possible with HTML5.

Taking your Mobile Strategy to the Next Level: HTML5 is Key

In our new smartphone driven world, it is no longer enough to offer a basic optimized mobile

site. Instead, brands must develop a strategy that encompasses next-generation features and

functionalities to make the customer journey just as comprehensive and easy to use as offered

on the traditional website.

Leveraging HTML5 technology is an easy way to improve the consumer’s experience with your

brand in the mobile browser environment. By developing your mobile Web presence with next-

generation HTML5 technologies, brands will deliver users a rich, app-like experience across all

major mobile operating systems.

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Direct Marketing News

Mobile's Surge

April 01, 2012

Sending one-way communications to consumers on mobile devices or optimizing a website for

mobile is no longer good enough. Brands must now be able to optimize mobile channels in a

way that enables consumers to make purchases, track pricing and comparison shop whenever

and wherever they wish to in order to remain relevant. That includes mobile versions of

websites, as well as custom mobile apps.

According to a February 2012 Consumer Electronics Association M-Commerce Forecast, 90%

of consumers own a tablet, a smartphone or a cell phone. Of these consumers, 37% are

engaging in some form of mobile commerce. On average, consumers spent $642 on mobile

purchases in the past 12 months — a whopping $124 billion overall — the report revealed. The

Internet spawned e-commerce, and in the past few years, the iPhone has spawned m-

commerce.

A differentiated approach

Perhaps no company better understands the value of m-commerce thanStaples. The company

invested in a new mobile commerce site,M.Staples.com, in 2011, as well as new mobile apps.

The redesigns came roughly a year after the company invested in its first ever mobile site and

app.

In January, Staples opened an e-commerce innovation center in Massachusetts, designed to

bring new ideas to market in m-commerce and social media, and in early February, the

company launched a new website optimized for tablet browsing. Staples partners with

technology vendorsSkava on the tablet site, Expecient on the mobile apps and Usablenet on

the mobile website.

The new M.Staples.com features a shopping cart that synchronizes in real time with a user's

Staples.com cart, a GPS-powered store locator, store inventory look-up and enhanced on-site

search, including an auto-suggest feature. M.Staples.com is designed more for research, while

the apps are meant to facilitate commerce, says Staples' mobile strategist.

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“Between a smartphone and a tablet, tablets are more transactional in nature,” says Prat

Vemana, director of mobile strategy at Staples. “We brought out the convenience of reorders

for the tablet redesign, [including] faster checkout and the ability to access rewards. We've

optimized it for transactions. The mobile site is optimized for research.”

Walmart also uses its mobile site to enable product research and purchase preparation. The

company launched its first mobile site and apps in 2010 and has since made several

upgrades. Currently, the mobile site offers product details, customer ratings and reviews, and

pricing information.

Walmart's iPhone app enables consumers to add items to a shopping list by speaking, typing

or scanning bar codes. Consumers can use the app to calculate total price in real time as

specific items are added to mobile shopping lists, and they can find the in-store aisle location

of products in select stores across the country.

“We're at an exciting time of transformation, both for our customers and our business, as we

move into the next generation of retail that integrates online, social, mobile and our physical

stores,” says Paul Cousineau, VP of mobile products, Global E-commerce at Walmart.

Although he would not reveal sales or traffic data, he says mobile apps drove “significant

traffic” to Walmart.com during the holiday season in 2011, and many of the shoppers were

customers that had never previously purchased on the site. Walmart launched its first iPad app

last November.

Amazon.com is widely recognized as the inventor of the mobile commerce space. The online

retailer built its first m-commerce site in 1999 and its first apps in 2008. The company uses a

distinct approach for each mobile channel.

“It was important to include meaningful and familiar aspects of the Amazon experience [on

mobile sites] like one-click purchasing, customer reviews and wish lists,” says Sam Hall,

director of Amazon Mobile. “We also offer mobile applications tailored to specific devices to

make the shopping experience faster and easier.”

Amazon has apps for the iPhone, Android phones, Kindle Fire, iPad, Blackberry and Windows

Phone 7. Unlike mobile websites, apps enable consumers do things like access the device's

camera for barcode scanning and use voice input as an alternate search method, Hall says.

“We designed our Amazon mobile app so that a customer could both search for and find a

particular item, and [then] buy it within a very short period of time,” Hall says. “This means the

design had to be simple and ‘glance-able' at first view, but still offer a path to more detailed

product information.”

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Not every brand goes out of its way to develop an original mobile site. Gavin Masters, e-

commerce delivery manager at Hallmark, says his company's m-commerce site is an

optimized version of the company's website. The retailer works with EPiServer, a content

management company, to integrate their commerce platform across channels. While many

industry experts bang the drum for a complete re-architecting of m-commerce sites, Masters

says that can result in endlessly chasing new technology. “By the time we get around to re-

architecting, the devices change,” he says. “Today's mobile browsers are a lot more

accommodating of standard sites than they have been.”

Hallmark instead focuses its resources on mobile apps. Masters says the company has

“double-figure apps internationally [and] five or six in the U.S.”Hallmark's Story Buddies app is

designed for consumers that have already made a Hallmark purchase, in order to engender

loyalty. The app features interactive stories and games designed to “enrich the [customer]

experience.”

Hallmark's mobile transactions increase each year. M-commerce transactions comprise

roughly 10% to 15% of all of Hallmark's e-commerce transactions.

A seamless experience

Although many retailers prefer differentiated approaches to how they develop and optimize

mobile sites and apps, Michael Murray, CMO of e-commerce and online at Sears, says his

company offers a seamless and uniform experience across all devices.

“Whether m-site or mobile apps, we're really agnostic … We're looking to make sure that the

customer experience is continuous and integrated,” Murray says. “Mobile phone, PC, tablet, all

of those expressions should be consistent and uniform to help that customer. It takes a lot of

hard work to help the customer in that way, but it's worth it.” He says Sears' goal is integrating

online with mobile and physical stores. “Mobile is a bright tile in that mosaic.”

While Sears optimizes its sites to offer similar experiences, it does acknowledge that

consumers' mobile device use differs from PC behavior. Since 2010, the retailer has enabled

consumers to order an item on a mobile device and pick it up at a retail location within five

minutes. Prior to the holiday season, Sears launched a similar policy for returns.

Craig Shields, VP of e-commerce at Jewelry Television, says his goal is to ensure a consistent

experience across mobile and online devices.

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“There's a number of companies that have standalone, siloed solutions that can get to market

fast, but there can be differences in inventory results, search results and shopping carts,” he

says. “We wanted to provide a consistent experience so that the shopping cart online and on

mobile is the same.”

Jewelry Television partners with Demandware on its e-commerce platform, which Shields says

Jewelry Television was able to extend to mobile platforms.

“Consistency is important,” Shields explains. “Any customer with an iPhone probably hasn't

had one for more than two or three years. It's still a new experience for shopping online. To

interact and find that the online website and the mobile website aren't the same is an unfriendly

experience. Plus, internal costs, complications and inefficiencies [are an issue].”

Jewelry Television launched its m-commerce site and apps in 2010 and is in the process of

developing an iPad app, which Shields expects to launch this summer.

Ken Mowry, SVP of digital marketing and customer engagement at Charming Shoppes, says

his company focuses solely on the mobile site. The company does not have a mobile app and

Mowry is skeptical about whether apps will ever play a major role in generating mobile

transactions.

“We have not launched an app experience primarily over the concern over low adoption rate,”

Mowry says. “There's an [industry-wide] 70% drop-off after the initial app download. Unless

you come up with a unique app experience, it's a challenge to get customers to come back to

it.”

Instead of spending valuable resources on an app that Mowry thinks consumers will download

once and then discard, Charming Shoppes focuses on customizing its m-commerce

experience on smartphones and tablets.

Charming Shoppes works with e-commerce platform provider Fry to optimize and tailor its

various m-commerce offerings. It launched its first m-commerce site last year, and, in that time

10.5% of its e-commerce revenue has come through mobile, 7% of which came from tablet

shoppers.

Sunglasses retailer EyeSave has also foregone the app route in favor of focusing on m-

commerce sites. It works with e-commerce technology services provider Mercent to handle its

data feed to third-party sites like Amazon. Mercent optimizes those feeds for the best mobile

performance.

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“We priced out some options for building [a mobile site] from the ground up and we thought,

why don't we try this [Mercent partnership] out and see if we're doing well,” says EyeSave

president Darren Lilien. “We have been getting sales through it.” He would not offer more

concrete figures.

New investments

Several brands recently made or planned to make their first m-commerce investments within

the past six months. PriceGrabber, which has dabbled in mobile apps, built its first mobile

commerce site in November. Tim Fernholtz, senior product manager at PriceGrabber, says the

new site is “everything on our [e-commerce] site, but basically in a mobile version.”

The mobile site, which was built in-house, is different than PriceGrabber's e-commerce site in

that it offers location-based features. The company also launched the DealGrabber app for

iPhone in November, which enables consumers to view aggregated deals from daily deals

companies.

PriceGrabber is working on technology that will enable consumers to discover more

information about any product on the market by snapping a picture of the product on their

mobile device and then submitting it to PriceGrabber. Fernholtz says the technology will be

available for the holiday season.

Private sales site, Totsy.com, generates more than 20% of its traffic on its m-commerce site.

However, the company recently began a two-to-three year mobile strategy that includes the

March introduction of custom-made social- and community-based mobile apps for the iPhone,

iPad and Android, says Christophe Garnier, cofounder, president and CMO of Totsy. The

company is working with Diaspark to develop the apps, which Garnier says will enhance the

company's “shop and share” philosophy.

Reebok-owned The Rockport Co. launched its first m-commerce site two months ago. The

footwear retailer built the site to be compatible and accessible across different devices to

maintain a consistent user experience.

“We kept the layout simple, the navigation intuitive, [with] touch screen features and

prioritization of content so our customers are not overwhelmed,” says Kimberly Correia Hunt,

head of e-commerce at Rockport. “Growth rates in mobile usage, ownership, traffic and

revenue is far outpacing the growth of desktop e-commerce sales.”

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WebProNews

How to Develop a Next-Generation Mobile Strategy

April 04, 2012

By Jason Taylor, Head of Innovation and Platform Strategy at Usablenet.

According to an IDC forecast, by 2015 more U.S. Internet users will access the Internet

through mobile devices than through PCs or other desktop devices. As smartphones begin to

outsell simpler feature phones, and as tablet sales continue to explode, the number of mobile

Internet users will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 16.6% by 2015.

Supporting customers and staff on mobile is now a basic requirement for all organizations that

currently have an online presence. Perfecting that strategy starts with getting the basics right

and setting a strong mobile foundation to build upon.

Be Comprehensive: Support on Mobile What you Support on the PC

Since many Internet users are replacing their use of the PC with mobile, it is key for

businesses to ensure that whatever users can do on their keyboard, they can do from the palm

of their hand. Brands must make sure that every important feature of their website is also

implemented on their mobile site and/or apps.

However, the content and functionalities need to be optimized to properly fit the specific mobile

device, rather than just offering a smaller version of the website. The user’s location, screen

size, network speed and other key aspects unique to mobile need to be taken into account in

the design and delivery of your mobile site or app. Productivity, speed, and simplicity are all

essential to achieve maximum usability and customer satisfaction.

The mobile site needs to support the site’s natural traffic coming from various sources,

including SEO, email marketing and advertising. All of this inbound traffic should be redirected

to a mobile comparable optimized experience. By getting this aspect right, brands will increase

traffic, mobile ROI, and provide the groundwork to expand your mobile strategy.

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Staples.com has successfully achieved a consistent mobile experience on all sources of traffic

by automatically directing customers to the mobile optimized view of its site regardless of entry

point. If a user is searching for paper products via Google, for example, they will be led to an

optimized mobile experience of that product page, despite coming from an outside source.

Brands should also integrate mobile equivalent third party solutions that consumers trust, such

as mobile payment provider PayPal and analytics platform Adobe. Integrating PayPal into your

brand’s mobile strategy will make the checkout process that much easier, as users won’t be

faced with the hassle of typing in their billing and shipping information for every purchase, or

trying to remember their account log-in information for each site they access. Making the

checkout process as simple as possible will result in more purchases and repeat visits.

HTML5 Enhances the Mobile User Experience

Leveraging HTML5 technology is a great way to improve the consumer’s experience with your

brand in the mobile browser environment. By developing with next-generation HTML5

technologies, brands can deliver users a rich, app-like experience without having to develop

downloadable apps for each specific mobile platform (iOS vs. Android and others). HTML5

enables brands to offer a consistent experience across all major mobile operating systems.

Additionally, HTML5-based mobile sites enable users to take their mobile shopping experience

to the next level with innovative features such as location-aware capabilities, high-resolution

42

image galleries that enable you to zoom in to view products in detail, expandable navigation,

collapsible menus, and advanced shopping carts that streamline and simplify the amount of

steps users need to follow to complete a transaction.

Travel giant Expedia.com is a brand dedicated to its innovative mobile strategy. The

company’s HTML5-enabled mobile site, for example, takes “location-aware” to the next level

by leveraging the device’s internal GPS to offer travelers the ability to search for nearby hotels

with same day vacancies, as well as push notifications based on their location.

Scaling your Mobile Site to Reach an International Audience

Rapid smartphone adoption is a global phenomenon, with more and more users around the

world replacing their feature phones with smartphones. In fact, global smartphone sales grew

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53.3% in 2011 and made up 34% of all mobile handsets sold in the year, according to Informa

Telecoms research agency.

Further, it is estimated that over a billion people would own a smartphone by 2013, reiterating

the massive market potential. According to a recent PhoCusWright report, smartphone use

now exceeds 50% in the U.S. and Europe. While Asia’s smartphone adoption has been a bit

slower, the smartphone market there is expected to double its size by 2016, according to

research firm Ovum.

Because of this international smartphone surge, it is becoming more and more important for

organizations to extend their mobile channel to match regional web channels in order to

leverage worldwide smartphone adoption. It is vital to ensure that your company’s mobile site

can adapt to regional differences in mobile user context and other key features.

Engaging consumers on a worldwide scale has many benefits to both the company and the

consumer. These include increased mobile channel revenues and maximized usage and

repeat visits. Offering consumers access to online features and functionalities in their preferred

language and currency will create a positive experience and encourage repeat visits.

FedEx has implemented multiple language support to help reach its global user base. The

shipping company’s site currently supports 242 regions and 25 languages worldwide, a

number that signifies the importance FedEx places on scaling its mobile site for an

international audience.

Looking Forward

In our new smartphone driven world, it is no longer enough for organizations to offer a simple

optimized mobile site. Instead, brands must develop a strategy that leverages next-generation

features and functionalities to make the customer experience just as comprehensive and easy

to use as offered on the traditional website. By strategically implementing a well-executed

mobile strategy, companies will see an increase in conversion, repeat visits, and overall

positive brand awareness from users engaging with their brand via mobile devices.

44

News.com.au

Book a Hotel Stay on Facebook

April 04, 2012

AUSTRALIAN holiday makers will be able to book hotel stays via Facebook with a new

platform on the world's biggest social networking site.

Hotel group Best Western has introduced the capability to reserve rooms at more than 4000

hotels on its Facebook page for Australasia.

Customers don't have to "like'' Best Western's Facebook page to reserve a room.

The module works in the same way as a normal booking website - people put in their preferred

dates and get an instant confirmation without ever having to leave Facebook.

Best Western general manager of sales and marketing Kimi Anderson said the company had

previously had links to its websites on Facebook.

"But this is fully integrated so it connects directly with our booking engine,'' she said.

"When we have had a look at our competitors we haven't seen anyone else doing it in

Australia.''

Ms Anderson said online was the fastest-growing area for booking hotel stays and it wanted to

make sure it had a presence wherever its guests were spending their time to make life easier

for them.

"Social media has still got some way to go because a lot of people are still using it for their own

personal usage but it's certainly growing,'' she said.

"We have seen much more interaction with our Facebook followers and fans.

"Our philosophy is that if we make it easy for them to book this gives them a choice.''

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The booking platform was built in tandem with mobile and multichannel platform company

Usablenet.

Over the past two years hotels such as Hilton and Trump have increasingly been increasing

their presence on Facebook to target customers.

Airlines have also embraced social media, with budget carriers such as Jetstar and Tiger

Airways regularly offering special offers and sale fares first to people who follow them on

Facebook and Twitter.

46

TechCrunch

HTML5 Features Can Drive Up Mobile Websites’ Usage By Up To 28%

April 09, 2012

If your mobile site still mostly consists of static pages, maybe it’s time for an upgrade. According to new

data from Usablenet, adding just a few interactive elements could increase your users’ engagement

with your site significantly. Usablenet, which describes itself as a “technology platform for mobile and

multichannel customer engagement,” says that when brands on its platform started using HTML5-

enabled features like interactive galleries, location services, overlays and expandable (or collapsible)

boxes, their pageviews increased by 11% and their bounce rates decreased by 15%. In total, sites

using these features experienced about a 28% increase in overall usage. Usablenet’s customers

include major enterprises like Expedia, Tesco, Amtrak, American Airlines, OfficeMax, ShopNBC and

online fashion marketplace ASOS.

Jason Taylor, Usablenet’s head of innovation and platform strategy, told me earlier today that most of

this data is based on looking at how the retailers in the company’s portfolio use its HTML5 platform. In

this context, an overlay with a shopping cart, for example, can help retailers speed up the mobile

purchase process and lower its shopping cart abandonment rate.

Usablenet also found that using a phone’s built-in GPS feature to determine a user’s location (instead

of asking for ZIP codes) to enable features like checking for local inventory helped lower abandonment

rates. Given the small size of a mobile phone’s screen, expandable boxes with more information about

a product also help these retailers add more information to product descriptions without forcing users to

open up another page and potentially leave the site.

The HTML5 standard is, of course, still in flux. Because of this, it doesn’t come as a surprise that cross-

browser compatibility is at the top of Usablenet’s clients’ wishlist. Interestingly, Taylor also noted that

many of the retailers that have switched to its HTML5 platform would also like to use phone cameras as

a barcode scanners in their mobile web apps. Given the current state of HTML5, though, that’s still

relatively difficult.

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Internet Retailer

What do you get by adding HTML5 to your mobile site?

April 12, 2012

HTML5 is the latest version of the ubiquitous web programming language, and it’s especially important

in mobile commerce as it enables retailers creating m-commerce sites to make greater use of

smartphone features and functions and thus make a utilitarian m-commerce site function more like a

rich mobile app. And it seems, one new study finds, that HTML5 in m-commerce offers a big payoff.

28% of 50 retail and travel m-commerce sites using mobile technology provider Usablenet Inc.’s

HTML5-based Usablenet Mobile 2.0 system experienced an increase in overall usage, along with an

11% jump in page views per visit and a 15% drop in bounce rate, the rate at which consumers land on

their first page then immediately leave a site compared with those who visit more than one page.

“As customers increasingly turn to their smartphones and tablets to browse, shop and buy, it’s now

more important than ever for brands to offer an engaging and easy-to-use mobile experience,” says

Usablenet CEO Nick Taylor. “It is evident that upgrading your mobile site with HTML5 leads to greater

customer engagement and more time spent on your site.”

“ShopNBC has been very pleased with how customers have responded to our mobile site since the

HTML5 upgrade,” says Tom Kraus, vice president of commerce and content at ShopNBC.com. “We

have seen substantial growth in our mobile site’s overall traffic as well as an increase in the number of

page views per visit. In addition, our customers have been quick to adopt live streaming of our

broadcast channel as yet another way for them to engage with ShopNBC whenever and wherever they

choose.”The vendor introduced its HTML5-enhanced platform in April 2011. One of its early adopters

was TV, web and mobile retailer ShopNBC.com, No. 64 in the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce

Top 300.

HTML5 enables live video streaming on smartphones. Other HTML5 features on Usablenet’s mobile

platform include expand-and-collapse menus, high-resolution image galleries, location-aware features

and scrolling promotions.

Usablenet claims 20% of the Fortune 1000 as clients. Clients include Amtrak, Delta, Expedia, FedEx,

GNC, Hilton, Marks & Spencer, Sprint, J.C. Penney and Victoria’s Secret.

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Mobile Commerce Daily

ShopNBC sees 77pc jump in mobile traffic since HTML5 upgrade

April 13, 2012

ShopNBC upgraded its mobile site last fall to leverage HTML5 technology enabling it to stream

live video programming on mobile devices and, as a result, has seen an increase in mobile

traffic and page views.

As consumers increasingly turn to their smartphones and tablets to browse, shop and buy,

retailers with a mobile presence are turning to the latest HTML5 technology to offer an

engaging mobile Web experience that is easy to use. Usablenet, which provided the HTML5

technology used by ShopNBC, reports that, on average, brands experience a 28 percent

increase in overall usage when upgrading their sites with HTML5 features.

“The initial customer experience enhancement with the implementation of HTML5 was our

ability to integrate live streaming of our programming on mobile devices,” said Tom Kraus, vice

president of commerce and content for ShopNBC.com, New York. “This functionality provided

customers a seamless experience to what we provide them on our ShopNBC.com site, as well

as continue to provide our customers with a true shop anytime, anywhere experience.

“We have seen great acceptance of the HTML5 mobile streaming and have experienced a 7

percent increase in page views per visitor and an impressive 77 percent increase in mobile

traffic,” he said. “With live streaming now available on their mobile devices, customers are

taking advantage of having not only ShopNBC’s great product, but also the ability to watch live

programming wherever they go.”

On-the-go shoppers

Mobile Internet use continues to grow at a rapid rate, pointing to the need for retailers to have

compelling mobile Web experience.

The mobile Web enhancement put into place by ShopNBC enables consumers to watch live,

broadcast video from the shopping network on Android and iPhone devices.

Offering live streaming on the mobile site makes it easier for customers to interact and engage

with the brand whenever and wherever they choose. This is important for busy on-the-go

customers who want to be able to shop when they have some downtime.

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ShopNBC used marketing via TV, Internet and social platforms to raise awareness of the live

streaming video enhancement.

Usablenet reports that, on average, brands experience a 11 percent increase in page views

and a 15 percent decrease in bounce rates when upgrading their sites with HTML5 features.

“Around 30 percent of our retail clients have adopted HTML5 mobile sites and we expect to

see continued increases in the amount of retailers upgrading to HTML5 this year and beyond,

as they better understand the value that these enhanced features provide to the customer,”

said Jason Taylor, vice president of innovation and platform strategy at Usablenet, New York.

“When upgrading to HTML5, retailers and other brands must understand that while most new

mobile browsers support HTML5, some older browsers still don’t,” he said. “Therefore, when

building a mobile site, it is very important to make sure that you support HTML5 functionality

for the newer browsers, but also have the same core functionality without the new HTML5

enabled UI/UX, for older browsers.”

More to come

Usablnet’s Mobile 2.0 HTML5 platform is used by Expedia, ASOS and other brands.

Enhanced features possible on the HTML5 platform include shopping baskets with notifications

that slide down once an item is added to the cart, displaying the addition to the cart as well as

the updated cost. Shoppers can choose to check-out, or the window will disappear after a few

seconds, letting users continue shopping without disruption.

Other enhanced features available on the HTML5 platform include high-resolution image

galleries, location-aware features and scrolling promotions.

“We launched our HTML5 mobile site the beginning of October 2011,” ShopNBC’s Mr. Kraus

said. “The move to HTML5 for us was really a foundational move to set us up for future

enhancements and to position ShopNBC’s mobile site for the next generation.

“We are looking to mid-second quarter for additional enhancements to our mobile site that will

capitalize more on HTML5’s functionality,” he said.

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Daily Deal Media

Usablenet partners with Netshoes to Expand Across Brazil

April 18, 2012

Netshoes is counted among the largest sporting goods brand across Latin America

and Usablenet among the leading, global providers of customer engagement tools for mobile

networks. Usablenet will now be partnering Netshoes as it seeks to expand its presence in the

Brazilian market.

Earlier, in October 2011, Usablenet and Netshoes had entered a partnership for helping

Netshoes launch a mobile version of its portal. This was done with the aim of engaging

consumers who wanted to access the Netshoes brand via their mobile devices, including

smartphones.

The Netshoes and Usablenet multi-channel partnership also includes Usablenet helping the

sporting goods giant develop a dedicated Facebook application. This was aimed at helping

consumers access more social media-fueled and streamlined retail choices.

The Facebook app helps consumers easily research the sporting goods site and make

purchases without needing to exit the Facebook page. The new Netshoes’ Facebook application

now offers full support for the Portuguese language apart from offering an entire array of

functionalities that help first-time and returning customers shop across a wider range of

accessories and sportsgear.

This app also makes searching a breeze, where customers can view the entire catalogue without

needing to exit the Facebook page. Most importantly, buyers can share and recommend the

products with their Facebook community.

Netshoes seeks to create more consumers via this multi-channel approach and its optimized

content on the mobile site will ensure that more prospective consumers are turned into actual

shoppers.

51

BetaBeat

Usablenet is the Biggest Mobile Company You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

April 19, 2012

New York-based Usablenet is the largest provider of mobile and multiplatform services for

brands, powering the mobile presences of 75 of the top 300 retailers–so why have we never

heard of them?

Usablenet was founded way back in the dark ages, after the 90′s dotcom boom but far before

the current one, in 2000. Its original business was focused on making websites more

accessible for the visually impaired, which typically boiled down to translating complicated

website designs into sleeker, simpler formats that were easier to read. But when smartphones

began their prodigious rise, Usablenet wised up quick and used what they’d learned from

making websites for the visually impaired to begin building simple mobile sites for clients. They

began doing so as early as 2006–way before ‘mobile’ became a buzzword–with just a three

person team situated in a 6th-floor walkup on the Lower East Side.

In the past five years, Usablenet has seen tremendous growth. The company has grown from

that tiny downtown walkup to one of the largest providers of mobile and tablet device sites in

the country.

“We’re now at around 350 employees and in the region of 300 mobile and multichannel clients,

but our goal is to be at 1,000 clients and 1,000 employees in the next three years,” Jason

Taylor, Usablenet’s head of innovation and platform strategy, told Betabeat by phone. “In the

last couple of years we’ve been doing not just mobile, but things like Facebook apps, kiosk

apps, tablet apps; the explosion of the devices that the consumer has in their hands beyond

just a mobile smartphone is also driving our growth.”

Any time a new device comes out–like a new tablet or smartphone–brands want to support the

consumer on that device, said Mr. Taylor. The Usablenet platform helps translate the sites of

brands like Victoria’s Secret, Expedia and Dell into beautiful sites or apps that fit the device

requirements of smartphones and tablets.

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“That’s really what our platform is about,” said Mr. Taylor. “Providing it to our clients so we can

power the different versions of their mobile sites or apps for all the different devices that come

out for market.”

The company is now far from having to work out of a small downtown office space. They

moved up and uptown, to an office in the trendy Flatiron district, where they handle mobile

development for 25 percent of all Fortune 1,000 brands.

So why haven’t we heard of them?

“We’re very much a client-led company, which means that we’re focused on communicating

and gaining a client base,” said Mr. Taylor. “We focused a lot on going directly after clients,

talking directly with clients to secure them. We don’t do a lot of partnership stuff, we have a

direct sales channel so we don’t work through third parties to reach clients.”

The other reason is that though Usablenet powers some of the most visible mobile sites in the

country, they’re a technology business behind what the consumer is using, so they’re rarely

recognized. “If you took a day in the life of an average business traveler or consumer, they’d

probably be using a number of our sites on a daily basis,” said Mr. Taylor. “In New York, we

power the NYC metro mobile sites; if you want to take a flight on Delta, we power Delta; same

with Amtrak.”

Mr. Taylor also stresses that Usablenet doesn’t just want to be a one-off company that can be

gobbled up by a bigger brand. Usablenet is privately owned and has never taken funding, he

said. They took their time building the business from the ground up, “one happy client at a

time.”

“We’re not this sort of nichey, piped-up environment,” he said. “We’re not looking to be

purchased, we’re looking to become a company like IBM and Oracle, not just a flash-in-the-

pan company that gets purchased. We want a company that has healthy business, so we can

say to our clients, ‘We will be here not just next week, but we’ll be here in five years time.’”

Mr. Taylor said that Usablenet currently has offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and

Italy, and intends to expand to Asia and Brazil by year’s end.

53

Mobile Entertainment

ME Cross Platform Month: M&S's Multi-Channel Shopping Project

April 19, 2012

A look at how the UK retailer's 'Shop Online' project was configured to work across

mobile, tablet, kiosk and TV.

In the early days of digital commerce, most people believed that people would use screen-

based shopping as an alternative to visiting physical stores.

History has shown this assumption to be wrong.

As it turns out, shoppers are rather keen on bringing their smartphones and tablets with them

into bricks and mortar outlets. Research reveals 37 per cent of people who use their

smartphone to research a product do so while standing in a store and 44 per cent of

consumers who use a mobile to research a product still go to a store to buy it.

Viewed one way, this is a threat. After all, those consumers could use their mobile devices to

make price comparisons and go elsewhere.

Viewed another, it's a fantastic opportunity.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer took the latter approach. It reasoned that these supplementary

screens could enable shoppers to view and purchase out of stock items or those not available

in smaller stores. It created a multi-channel experience called ‘Style Online’ to make this

happen.

Today, Style Online is available in three M&S stores. The concept comprises 46” screens

running a flash application on which the customer can build outfits, watch catwalk videos and

browse products.

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Once items are placed in the basket, a code is generated for the customer to purchase directly

from the Browse & Order Point or from the iPad. Tickets are then placed on the product

samples, which can be scanned and take customer direct to the product on the web site for

purchase.

Orders can then be delivered to home or to any M&S store.

Sounds simple doesn't it? But synchronising these diverse channels was a major technical

challenge. Essentially, M&S need to ensure that customers could start a journey on one

channel and finish seamlessly on another.

To address this, M&S turned to Usablenet, becoming the first company to deploy the latter's

Agile Web Services. Usablenet’s cloud-based platform can also take in any existing source as

input, while Agile Web Services can quickly create a web service that uses the website as a

source.

This means retailers can create more advanced UI/UX for their channel outputs because

they’re not limited by the website interface. And it means they can build out their multichannel

strategy with a strong and scalable foundation underneath it.

The approach helped deliver the following service features:

iPad app for sales assistants

In some departments, sales assistants carry an iPad to help the customers with their purchase.

If a customer’s required size is unavailable in store, the assistant can order direct from their

tablet, so the customer doesn’t have to queue up at the order desk or travel to another store.

Thes app is like Browse & Order Point, but optimised for the tablet format – allowing assistants

to scan barcodes to move directly to the correct product details and access the full e-

commerce offer.

Virtual basket

The virtual basket is a web service that allows third parties to create a basket of M&S products,

and transform this URL into a 2-4 digit alpha numeric code or a QR code. When a user wants

to retrieve their basket they can enter the 2-4 digit code at the touchscreen or iPad app and

check out using these devices.

Mobile site

M&S launched its fast loading made-for-mobile site over a year ago to great success. For this

project, Usablenet modified it to work with Style Online in-store shopping journeys. For

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example, a customer can create an outfit in Style Online, scan a QR code which will show the

outfit on their mobile and then transact at their convenience.

M&S says Style Online has been a very successful project, providing 'an inspiring touch point

across a number of different channels' while driving loyalty to the M&S brand.

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Mobile Entertainment ME cross platform month: The Carphone m-shopping project April 26, 2012

How the UK retailer used tools to create mobile sites that glue an 'on the go' experience

to in-store shopping.

If you're the number one phone retailer in the UK, it's a good idea to have a decent mobile site.

One that not only gives plenty of information in a pleasing user interface, but also supports

genuine transactions for the growing number of consumers that are content - eager even - to

buy products from a handset.

Carphone Warehouse came to this realisation last year, when it saw that 15 per cent of its

desktop site traffic had been coming from mobile users. Here was an army of consumers

crying out for a fully optimised mobile experience.

CPW addressed the issue by turning to Usablenet, whose cloud-based platform also powers

mobile-commerce sites for Boots, Mothercare, Tesco, JD Sports, O2, Marks & Spencer and

more.

But the system also gives CPW the freedom to deliver mobile-only campaigns that drive m-commerce and traffic. Moreover, All mobile activity is integrated into existing analytics systems. Usablenet’s platform automatically detects the type of phone accessing the site and applies a series of steps on-the-fly that results in an optimised screen view tailored to it.

The content is dynamically mapped from the CPW desktop site, so CPW is able to deliver an

experience that is consistent across mobile channels, and could has the potential to output for

web, mobile apps, tablet web, tablet apps, Facebook, kiosks, and more.

The end result was an HTML5 mobile site lets customers make purchases, pick plans, add

accessories, organise delivery/pick-up – and even complete credit checks – wherever they are.

Meanwhile, just days ago, the mobile site was updated to include support for Mobile Money

Network’s “Simply Tap” one-click product purchases.

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Simply Tap is a mobile checkout tool that lets consumers make purchases by typing in a

numeric or capturing a QR code displayed on an ad, poster, in-store POS or even the product

itself. Previously it had only been available from its own app, but CPW became the first third

party to incorporate it into a mobile website.

But that's just the commerce stuff. The mobile website also comprises a bunch of

complementary features to drive product enquiries and store visits. So, for example, the site

offers a ‘Find store near me’ feature using GPS and filtered searchable menus containing info

on phones, tablets, plans, and packages.

This is important as CPW's ultimate vision is site that can bind together the whole consumer

'journey' from in the home to on the move to in the store.

The results were more or less instant.

Victoria Self, Carphone Warehouse's director of eCommerce, said: "Within the first couple

days of going live, we saw a major spike in traffic and achieved a conversion rate of nearly half

of our desktop rate – a great achievement. We were thrilled and will continue enhancing the

site to deliver the best mobile experience to our customers.”

Traffic-wise, the percentage of total visits coming to the site from mobile devices rose from 15

per cent to 20 per cent in the first two weeks after launch. Year on year the rise was 50 per

cent. What's more, there appears to be no cannibalisation: the mobile traffic is highest at

commuting times and also after 9pm - in front of the TV or in bed.

Equally pleasing for CPW was the order conversion numbers. There is a notion that mobile

users are uneasy about completing a transaction across a handset, but it hasn't proved the

case. Mobile conversions currently at roughly 50 per cent of the desktop conversion rate.

Most gratifyingly, 13 per cent of total orders were 'delivery to store' - justifying CPW's faith that

mobile will be the glue that binds 'research and purchase' journeys between web and stores.

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SiliconANGLE

Top Mobile Trends Beyond HTML5, According to Usablenet VP [Q&A Series]

April 30, 2012

Mobile has become an ubiquitous experience these days, as companies seek consumer

access across platforms and devices. Usablenet recognizes the need to have a strong mobile

presence through design and uniformity, crafting strategies for some of the biggest

brands. With a focus on HTML5 and a penchant for innovation, Usablenet’s led the charge in

mobile’s revolution.

In today’s Snapshot series we hear from Jason Taylor, Usablenet’s VP of Platform

Strategy. He share’s mobile’s biggest trends beyond HTML5, identifies the biggest mistakes

brands make when pushing a mobile strategy, and his favorite iPhone app.

What trends besides HTML5 are shaping the mobile industry?

One of the biggest trends we’ve seen in the mobile industry over the last several months has

been the rapid smartphone adoption in Europe and developing markets like Asia and Latin

America. In many cases, especially Asia, consumers in these markets are accessing the

Internet via mobile first. As such, it’s important for brands to scale their mobile presence to

support this new global audience, and in order to do that they must account for international

differences in devices, mobile networks, currencies, and overall user behavior.

Additionally, we’re seeing a rapid shift in consumer expectations as they demand a seamless

and easy to use customer experience from all channels — including their smartphone, tablet,

or social media like Twitter and Facebook. With consumers more empowered than ever

before, it’s now essential for brands to meet these changing consumer demands and deliver a

positive user experience from all channels.

The most surprising/interesting build you’ve done for a client?

One of the most exciting recent projects we’ve done for a client is the Style Online in-store

touchscreen displays UK retailer Marks & Spencer deployed via our platform’s Agile Web

Services.

In addition to its retail mobile commerce site, Marks & Spencer has also worked with us to

develop touch screen Browse & Order Points which is integral to the Style Online project. It is

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made up of consumer-facing large screens and a touch screen Browse & Order Point along

with iPads for the Style Advisors to aid customers. M&S is the first brand to leverage

Usablenet’s innovative Agile Web Services to tie all these channels together, allowing

consumers to browse in store, explore the wider range online, watch videos, create an outfit on

the interactive screen and purchase online — all of which are achieved in store. Consumers

are tracked on each channel, which allows M&S to better measure and understand the

behavior of a multichannel consumer.

3 of the biggest mistakes brands make when building a holistic mobile strategy?

One of the biggest mistakes we see brands make when rolling out their mobile strategy is not

thinking through what they want to achieve from mobile. Mobile should be part of an integrated

multichannel strategy, and too many times we see brands deploy a simple mobile site that

doesn’t match with the brand’s overall online experience — just for the sake of having a mobile

site. Additionally, you should put a significant amount of thought into developing features that

cater to the behavior of your customers.

We often see brands that choose to go with a one or the other strategy when it comes to native

apps vs. the mobile Web. However it is important to view these two outputs as complementary

pieces of an overall mobile strategy that can be used to reach both a broad consumer

audience (mobile Web) and a smaller group of brand loyalists (native apps).

And finally, when it comes to building your mobile site with HTML5, brands must understand

that while most new mobile browsers support HTML5, some older browsers still don’t.

Therefore, when building a mobile site it is very important to make sure that you support

HTML5 functionality for the newer browsers and also support the same core functionality

without the new HTML5 enabled UI/UX, for older browsers.

Mobile is key to consumer interaction moving forward. What gives you confidence

in/for the future?

Mobile has clearly established itself as a primary gateway for consumers to navigate the Web.

In fact, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population this year.

We have seen an extraordinary number of mobile innovations over the last several months —

from location-aware experiences to interactive scanning capabilities — and I have no doubt

that we are at the beginning stages of a truly mobile future, with many more innovations in

store.

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Mobile Entertainment

ME cross-platform month: John Lewis's 'shop anywhere' mission

April 30, 2012

How the much-praised UK retailer ensured the ability to make payments across any

channel.

For the British, retailer John Lewis is a true institution. It's like a cup of tea or the BBC – woven

into the fabric of the nation.

John Lewis is a cooperative –- owned by its staff, and renowned for its unswerving

commitment to customer service. It's entirely consistent, then, that the retailer would fully

embrace the mobile channel, especially given that so many of its customers have begun to

choose mobile as their preferred method of digital communication with the brand.

That process started when John Lewis chose Usablenet to create a mobile site that

incorporated all the main features of its website and then configured it for the smaller mobile

screen.

Any customer typing in the full URL from a mobile device is automatically redirected to the

mobile site. They are then given a view optimised by handset type and OS.

Essentially, anything a customer can do on the John Lewis website – even having custom curtains and blinds measured – they can do on the mobile site.

However, the site was conceived to do more than just relay product information; it was fully

configured for commerce, giving customers the ability to purchase from the complete John

Lewis inventory including fabric swatches and catalogues. It incorporates robust search and

browse functionality; and supports access to account using the same login and password.

John Lewis then added a native iPhone app for an even more immersive experience. To do so,

it utilised Usablenet’s Agile Web Services and worked directly with agency Sapient Nitro to

design and build the native interface for the app.

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The end result provides users with everything they need to make an informed purchase,

whether they are in-store, on the train to work, or at home on the sofa. And, as a native app, it

drills into the capabilities of the devices itself such as GPS and scanning.

This means users can read barcodes in-store to access product information, read and

compare reviews and browse the full John Lewis catalogue. They can also watch product

information and inspirational videos, search via keywords or product codes, and also see a

history of products and videos viewed for quick revisits.

Out of stock products can be ordered for collection or delivery using the app, and there is GPS

functionality to locate the nearest John Lewis store.

The two mobile strategies each contribute to a multichannel approach that fluently integrates

with catalogue, online and bricks and mortar. This seamless integration means that customers

can use the same account information and access the same inventory from any channel.

This philosophy was behind the firm's decision to become the first UK department store retailer

to offer free wi-fi in its shops nationwide. It also rolled out its the Click and Collect service,

ensuring John Lewis customers can buy goods and then take them home – wherever they

start their journey.

The results have been dramatic. For the five weeks to December 31st 2011, mobile sales were

up 120 per cent and the app was downloaded over 100,000 times.

In addition, John Lewis is now seeing on average eight per cent of online traffic coming

through mobile, and it has developed into a multi-million pound sales channel for the business.

Not only is the mobile site fully functional and works on every and all web-enabled phones, but

the John Lewis site has been consistently ranked as one of the fastest and most reliable sites

by Keynote Systems Rankings (a leading independent cloud monitoring company that

regularly tests sites for speed and reliability).

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Internet Retailer

CVS’s updated mobile app lets smartphones double as loyalty cards

May 02, 2012

With the slew of loyalty programs offered by retailers today, it can be easy for consumers to lose track

of the little plastic cards that are often paired with such programs and scanned at checkout for

discounts and coupons. One thing that most consumers always have on hand, however, is their mobile

phone.

A new feature in CVS/pharmacy’s mobile app lets shoppers leave their loyalty cards at home and store

their card data in their smartphones. Consumers can use the bar code scanning functionality in the

updated app to scan the bar code on the back of their CVS/pharmacy ExtraCare loyalty card or

manually enter their account number to store a card in their smartphones. CVS/pharmacy registers are

equipped with optical scanners that can scan from a mobile device; the beams from conventional laser

scanners, far more common in retail today, bounce off the screen of a smartphone. The clerk at the

register scans the loyalty account bar code as it appears on the opened application with the optical

scanners.

CVS Caremark Corp., No. 92 in the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Top 300, also offers a

commerce-enabled mobile site created by mobile commerce technology vendor Usablenet Inc., as well

as a text message program that alerts consumers when their prescriptions are ready to be picked up. In

November, CVS/pharmacy updated its iPhone and Android apps to enable consumers to hold a

smartphone’s camera above the bar code on a prescription bottle to send a refill notification to their

preferredCVS/pharmacy store.

The app, available for free via the Apple App Store for the iPhone or via Google Play for smartphones

using Google Inc.’s Android operating system, also lets consumers manage their prescriptions, shop,

locate stores and access the drugstore chain’s weekly circular.

"During the past few months, we've significantly expanded the mobile options available to our digitally

minded customers with the goal of creating the most personalized and accessible shopping

experience," says Rob Price, senior vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer for

CVS/pharmacy. "ExtraCare members can use the new CVS mobile app to easily store their ExtraCare

cards and can also have full access to their ExtraCare accounts right from their smartphones, making it

even easier to view their personalized offers.”

The CVS/pharmacy loyalty program has more than 69 million active cardholders, CVS says.

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Mobile Commerce Daily

CVS/pharmacy redesigns mobile app to drive loyalty

May 02, 2012

CVS/pharmacy has updated its mobile application to let shoppers digitally store their

ExtraCare card and earn rewards.

Through the mobile app, consumers can scan the bar code on the back of their card or type in

their account number manually. After the bar code is captured, consumers can simply show

their smartphone device at the register to earn their rewards.

“We are continually exploring new and different ways to deliver personalized value to

customers,” said Erin Pensa, a spokeswoman for CVS/pharmacy.

“To accomplish this, we’ve significantly expanded the mobile options available to digitally-

minded customers to create a more personalized and accessible shopping experience,” she

said. “This newest mobile feature for ExtraCare makes it easier and more convenient for

shoppers who prefer not to carry their ExtraCare card to take advantage of ExtraSavings and

ExtraBucks Rewards.

“Shoppers can even use the Send to Card digital option on their mobile app to

send ExtraBucks Rewards and personalized ExtraCare email coupons to their cards directly

from their smartphone.”

CVS/pharmacy is a retail pharmacy with more than 7,300 CVS/pharmacy and Longs Drug

store locations.

Usablenet powers CVS’ mobile apps and optimized site.

New upgrade

Consumers can upgrade the new version through either Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

In addition to storing their ExtraCare card, consumers can also manage their prescriptions,

shop for products, find the nearest store and access the CVS/pharmacy weekly circular.

The updated app also features a new interface.

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Users can now use the prescription refill scanner feature to refill their pills, check out local

deals and promotions that are happening in the closest CVS/pharmacy location and access

their ExtraCare account.

All about mobile

Over the past few years, CVS has been proving that mobile plays a key role in its day-to-day

initiatives.

Last year, CVS launched a series of mobile tools aimed to boost its loyalty program, ExtraCare

Rewards.

CVS relaunched its mobile Web site and updated its iPhone and Android applications to help

its ExtraCare Rewards members save money and time (see story).

Additionally in 2011, CVS/pharmacy revamped its mobile site to make the entire CVS.com

catalog available to shoppers.

In addition to being able to purchase items for the first time, the mobile site has been

enhanced with additional new functionality such as the ability to redeem coupons and

purchase photo prints for in-store pick up (see story).

Most recently, CVS/pharmacy made it easier for consumers to fill prescriptions on the go with

a new SMS program.

The SMS program from CVS/pharmacy notified users when their prescription was ready to be

picked up at their local pharmacy (see story).

“The CVS/pharmacy ExtraCare Program is the largest retail savings and rewards program

with more than 69 million active cardholders and it uniquely positions us to deliver tailored

offers, rewards and information for each customer that are based on individual shopping

preferences,” Ms. Pensa said.

“We’re focused on leveraging digital innovation to create a more personalized shopping

experience and the new digital app is the latest example of how we’re doing this,” she said.

“Most recently, we’ve also given our customers the option of sending their earned quarterly

ExtraBucks Rewards and personalized ExtraCare email coupons to their cards directly,

eliminating the need for any printing.

“This Send to Card feature is also available from the new mobile app. Engagement with the

customer happens everywhere the customer chooses — in our stores, at our pharmacies, at

home via e-mail, mobile or digital – and we need to be there wherever the customer turns.”

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Internet Retailer

L.L. Bean shows other mobile retailers how to speed things up

May 03, 2012

L.L. Bean Inc. beat average mobile performance and pushed its way into the top 10 of the

Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index last week. Its m-commerce site home page

loaded on average in 7.28 seconds and it did so successfully 98.92% of the time for an index

score of 841 out of 1,000. It came in at No. 10 on the index.

By comparison, for the week ending April 29, the average m-commerce site home page load

time for all 30 merchants on the performance index was 9.07 seconds, the average success

rate was 98.12% and the average score was 742.

“L.L. Bean underscores this week what makes for a great mobile web site,” says Joe Flake,

web and mobile performance expert at Keynote Systems Inc. “The site’s home page element

count is relatively small at 15. And their page download size is moderate: 25 kilobytes to 64

kilobytes. They could improve a bit by reducing the size of the jpg splash photo on the home

page. It’s nearly half the page size; larger than needed for the small mobile screens involved.”

Sears Holdings Corp. came in first with a load time of a swift 3.20 seconds and a success rate

of 99.00% for a score of 949.Toolfetch.com LLC came in second with a load time of 4.77

seconds and a success rate of 99.29% for a score of 929. AndAmazon.com Inc. came in third

with a load time of 5.43 seconds and a success rate of 98.84% for a score of 882.

L.L. Bean, No. 52 in the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Top 300, did not immediately

respond to a request for comment. M-commerce technology vendor Usablenet Inc. built L.L.

Bean's mobile site.

Click here and then click on Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index Part 1 and Part 2

to see this week’s complete results for all 30 retailers on the index.

Keynote Systems measures 30 representative m-commerce sites exclusively for Internet

Retailer. The sites include merchants in multiple categories and channels, and of multiple

sizes, ranging from such giants as Amazon.com Inc., Sears Holdings Corp. and Walmart.com,

to midsized retailers like Sunglass Hut and Toolfetch.com LLC. Keynote tests the sites in the

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index every hour Monday through Sunday from 8 a.m. through midnight Eastern

time, emulating four different smartphones on four different wireless networks:Apple

Inc.’s iPhone 4 on AT&T, the HTC Evo on Sprint, the BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile and the

Droid X on Verizon. The HTC Evo and the Droid X run Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

Keynote runs the tests in Chicago, Dallas, New York and San Francisco.

Keynote combines a site’s load time and success rate, equally weighted, into a single score.

Given that both performance and availability are important, the score reflects the overall quality

of the home page; a higher score indicates better performance. Scores also reflect how close

sites are to each other in overall quality. The index average score is the midpoint among all the

sites’ scores.

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Econsultancy

Mobile site review: Majestic Wine

May 15, 2012

Majestic Wine has launched a new mobile site to allow its customers to browse and buy

wines on the go.

It has been developed by Usablenet, which also designed mobile sites for House of Fraser,

Tesco and M&S.

A wine merchant isn’t necessarily the type of business you would expect to have a mobile site,

and it doesn’t seem to be a common feature among its competitors.

So how does it measure up in terms of usability?

Homepage

Mobile sites need to be simple to navigate, and Majestic has initially done a good job of

stripping out unnecessary options. The search function is prominently positioned at the top of

the page, as is a store locator which offers both geo-location or postcode search.

These are both useful options for mobile users and it makes sense to make them easy to find.

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Furthermore, while there are quite a few product categories, it doesn’t feel too cluttered, and

the options match the desktop site so regular customers will be familiar with the navigation.

Navigation

Each category on the homepage has a dropdown menu that reveals further product

options. The process is very smooth, although in some categories it does feel as if you are

given too many choices.

Mobile sites need to be simple and Majestic could probably have stripped a few options out.

That said, it still feels quite slick and is relatively easy to find the products you are looking for.

Product pages

The product pages are well laid out with a large product image prominently displayed. It also

includes pricing information, access to customer reviews and ratings, and social media buttons

in case you are inclined to share your purchase with friends.

There is also comprehensive information about the wine, such as its origin, taste, body and

even whether it is cork or screw top.

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The one minor issue is that you need to navigate away from the page to access delivery

information, which could have been provided in a dropdown menu on the product page.

Checkout

This is where the site loses points, as you are forced to register before you can order your

goods.

Typing in all your personal details is a fiddly process on a mobile and is likely to put some

customers off completing a purchase. It is fine to offer the option of creating an account, but it

shouldn’t be compulsory on mobile sites.

Another issue is with the delivery method. If you choose home delivery then it tells you it will

deliver it from your local store, which in my case is Clapham.

However if you then select ‘Collect in store’ it doesn’t automatically assume I would want to

pick it up from Clapham, and instead you have to scroll down a massive list of stores.

This is only a minor point, but seems a fairly obvious way of making the process easier.

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Conclusion

Majestic Wines has produced a decent mobile site that is easy to navigate, although there are

a few points that let it down.

There are a few too many options in the drop-down menus on the homepage, but it could be

that these will be reduced after Majestic has evaluated user data. Furthermore, the checkout

process is too long and may harm the conversion rate.

But that said, it still provides a useful tool for Majestic’s customers and keeps them one step

ahead of the competition.

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Retail TouchPoints

Channel Innovation Awards Recognize Republic, 8 Other Retail Leaders

May 22, 2012

Retail TouchPoints is proud to present the second annual Channel Innovation Awards, honoring

retailer leaders who are achieving cross-channel success in today’s challenging retail environment.

This year a UK retailer received top honors: fashion retailerRepublic received the sole Platinum award.

Republic has seen across-the-board success from a multi-faceted cross-channel expansion. “The

integrated multi-channel system has encouraged online customers to visit the store, driving footfall and

increasing the chance for further cross and up sales and interaction,” according to Nick Rennardson, IT

Director.

Channel Innovation Award winners operate in a variety of industry segments, from specialty apparel

and bridal to big box, grocery and specialty soft goods. They are both U.S.- and internationally-based

retail companies. Most of the winners are selling their products via both brick-and-mortar and e-

Commerce web sites, in addition to mobile web sites and other channels.

Other winners include:

Gold winner: Tesco

Gold winner: S Group and Foodie.fm

Silver winner: Envelopes.com

Silver winner: David’s Bridal

Bronze winner: Marks & Spencer

Bronze winner: Target

Bronze winner: Step2

Honorable Mention: Stop & Shop

2012 Channel Innovation Award winners have demonstrated achievements in some or all of the

following areas:

Sales gains, particularly within emerging channels

Meeting consumer demands with convenient cross-channel shopping opportunities

Cross-channel marketing

Customer recognition, including social media feedback

Technology innovations

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Harpers

Majestic mobile website launch sees increase in traffic

May 28, 2012

Majestic's recently launched mobile commerce site has seen a 60% increase in store page views during its first two weeks.

Powered by Usablenet, the HTML5 mobile site includes a variety of functionalities that

streamline use such as expandable menus, geo-location and image galleries, plus social

sharing options so customers can post products to Facebook or Twitter, email friends or simply

save to favorites for later reference.

Graham Everitt, ecommerce analyst at Majestic, said: "Within the first two weeks of launch, we

saw our mobile traffic increase by a further 15% and visits to 'find a store' pages by 60%.

"The feedback has been extremely positive – not only is it a beautiful site, it is incredibly easy

to use. We have also developed and implemented responsive templates in our email

marketing programme so the mobile user experience with Majestic is now optimised from start

to finish.

"We pride ourselves on providing the best customer service in the wine retail space and we

saw this as the natural next step for supporting our increasingly mobile customers."

The Usablenet platform has had several recent launches of mobile commerce and multi-

channel sites including ASOS, British Airways, Carphone Warehouse, Mothercare, Tesco,

House of Fraser, JD Sports, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, O2, and Superdry.

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Mobile Entertainment

Guoman and Thistle Hotels launch mobile-optimised site

May 28, 2012

25 per cent visit increase in two weeks.

Cross-platform developer Usablenet created the HTML5-enabled site for the luxury UK hotel

chain, offering travellers a means of searching and booking rooms when on the move.

Traffic has risen 25 per cent since the site launched a fortnight ago, allowing users view offers,

search galleries and videos, use location-based services to find the nearest hotels, and view or

cancel existing reservations.

Mithu Sengupta, e-commerce director, Guoman and Thistle Hotels, said: "The mobile channel

has become an important travel planning and booking channel worldwide, especially for local

and last minute searches.

"It was very important for us to have a mobile site that reflects our brand and provides the best

experience for our customers with rich-media content and videos. We partnered with

Usablenet to create a mobile site that caters to the traveler’s needs and understands what their

user journey would be when accessing our websites via mobile phones.

Usablenet powers several UK mobile sites including Tesco, British Airways, JD Sports, O2,

and Marks & Spencer, and last month we spoke to VP Jason Taylor to discuss the firm's cross-

platform strategy.

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The Drum

Arsenal launches Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain augmented reality app

June 08, 2012

Arsenal Football Club has launched a new augmented reality app featuring winger Alex

Oxlade-Chamberlain to promote the launch of its new home kit.

Apple and Android users who download the Aurasma Lite app can see exclusive footage of

'The Ox' practicising his keepy-uppies by holding their device against a trigger image of the

Arsenal cannon.

The England midfielder then directs supporters to a link where fans can buy the new kit.

The app's arrival coincides with the relaunch of the club's mobile store,

m.arsenaldirect.arsenal.com, which was built with M-commerce company Usablenet.

Arsenal football retail director, Nick Peel, said: "Our new mobile store is another exciting

development in our journey to provide Arsenal supporters with the best retail offering available.

"Arsenal Direct traffic via mobile has doubled over the past year so it was important for us to

keep up with this increased demand by creating a site which will offer fans a more

comprehensive and user-friendly retail experience.”

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Mobile Commerce Daily

Majestic Wine sees 15pc traffic increase two weeks after mobile site launch

June 19, 2012

Majestic Wine has seen an uptick in mobile traffic after it launched a commerce-enabled site

that lets consumers research wine, as well as order it via their smartphone devices.

The company partnered with Usablenet on the mobile initiative. The HTML5 mobile site makes

it easier for consumers to search the full inventory of wines, champagne, beers, spirits and soft

drinks.

“We’ve seen more and more users coming to our site via mobile devices over the last year,”

said Graham Everitt, ecommerce analyst at Majestic Wine.

That’s the spirit

In addition to the 15 percent increase in mobile traffic, Majestic Wine also saw visits to its “Find

a Store” pages increase by 60 percent.

The mobile site features expandable menus, image

galleries and incorporates geolocation.

Additionally, consumers can share their favorite

products with friends and family using social sharing

options such as Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to browsing the company’s entire inventory

via the mobile site, consumers can also write personal

reviews, as well as read customer and staff reviews.

Consumers can also order cases, mixed cases, gifts,

beers, spirits and accessories with delivery and mail

order options pending customer location.

The mobile site also features product information that

lets consumers narrow down their choice.

Majestic Wine customers can also browse special

offers by Top 10, regions or special features.

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The store locator feature helps them find the nearest store to browse products in-person.

Smart move

A mobile site is a smart move for Majestic Wine.

Consumers are increasingly using their mobile device to make purchases. Therefore,

marketers should make sure that they can provide optimized content to on-the-go consumers.

“We pride ourselves on providing the best customer service in the wine retail space and we

saw this as the natural next step for supporting our increasingly mobile customers,” Mr. Everitt

said.

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Marketwired

Marks & Spencer, John Lewis and Carphone Warehouse Recognized for Retail Technology

Innovation

June 21, 2012

New York, NY – June 2012 – Usablenet, the world’s leading technology platform for mobile

and multichannel customer engagement was recognized lastnight at the Retail Week

Technology Awards in London for its work on retail innovation. Recent work with clients Marks

and Spencer, John Lewis, and Carphone Warehouse were all award-nominees for their mobile

and multichannel solutions. Both John Lewis and Carphone Warehouse were named finalists

in the Mobile Solution of the Year category, and Marks and Spencer in the Multichannel

Integration of the Year category.

“The rapid emergence of mobile has led to significant innovations among retailers committed

to delivering an integrated and efficient customer experience acrossall channels,” said

Usablenet CEO Nick Taylor. “Our platform is a driving force behind these innovations on a

global scale, and it is pleasing to see valued partners Marks and Spencer, John Lewis, and

Carphone Warehouse recognized fortheir substantial achievements.”

Information on the three award finalists:

Marks and Spencer: Innovative ‘Style Online’ Project and Cross Channel Support

M&S teamed with Usablenet to develop exciting new innovations in creating a true

multichannel experience for M&S customers. The “Style Online” project feature large 46”

touchscreens that run a flash application where customers can build outfits, watch catwalk

videos, and browse products. Items can be ordered on sleek new touch screen kiosks called

Browse & Order Points or from iPad carrying sales associates. A ticket is generated to hold

items in a “virtual basket” for immediate or future purchase which can be done on the web or

directly scanned to their phone. All channels are seamlessly connected so customers have

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the flexibility to start their shopping journey on one channel and seamlessly complete it on

another,integrating everything into a full multichannel experience.

John Lewis: Comprehensive Mobile Strategy Leads to Multi-million Sales Channel

John Lewis presents a great example of a comprehensive mobile strategy, first partnering with

Usablenet to develop a mobile site for the broadest reach -- allowing anyone with a web-

enabled phone to do everything they can do on the John Lewis website – then creating an app

for a more immersive experience. The native app leverages Usablenet’s Agile Web Services

allowing for innovative design and functionality so loyal John Lewis fans can have a deeper

engagement with the brand -- whether it’s engaging while in-store such as barcode scanning to

access product information, or watching videos while on the go. The result is a much more

informed buyer which led to positive results. John Lewis us now seeing on average eight

percent of online traffic coming through mobile, and it has developed into amulti-million pound

sales channel for the business.

Carphone Warehouse: Usability Brings Mobile Conversion to 50% of Desktop Conversion Rate

Carphone Warehouse saw an increasing number of online traffic coming from mobile and

quickly realized customers needed an optimized experience. Partnering with Usablenet to

create the best UI/UX for the CPW customer, Carphone Warehouse experienced dramatic

results. Within the first two week so launch they saw 20% of total website traffic coming from

mobile, with overall mobile traffic up 50% over the last year -- a faster rate of growth than

desktop traffic. Mobile conversion numbers were equally impressive, at roughly 50% of the

desktop conversion rate. In addition, Carphone Warehouse has recorded 13% of total mobile

orders as “delivery to store”, further cementing mobile as an essential channel that binds their

multichannel strategy together.

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Mobile Commerce Daily

How Pinterest is Flipping the Merchandising Model for Mobile Retailers June 28, 2012

Pinterest is one of the major social media sites responsible for driving significant sales for online retailers and more brands need to take notice and merchandise their mobile sites and applications to drive stronger traffic and ROI. According to some mobile experts, social media needs to be viewed as a comprehensive part of a retailers’ mobile strategy. “When social is implemented as part of a comprehensive mobile strategy, it can become a powerful mechanism for marketers to amplify their merchandising initiatives,” said Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet, New York. “By leveraging a customer’s ability to easily share products, reviews, promotions and other content over social channels, businesses can engage with a much larger audience and maximize their reach. In essence, social media creates a multiplier effect to enhance a brand’s message over the mobile channel,” she said. Social driver Traditionally, retailers have merchandised mobile sites and apps based on what products are newest or most in season. However, a recent study from comScore found that Pinterest is leading the pack as the fastest-growing social media site with a year-over-year growth of more than 4377 percent, showing how consumers are sometimes more in control of purchasing power than many brands. The same study predicts that users who accessed the Web via mobile will surpass desktop users by 2014. With Pinterest’s emphasis on users sharing content via the mobile Web, the study points to the opportunities that retailers have to equip their mobile services with social media. Mobile retailers also need to think about how their content will be shared, whether it is through links or social sharing buttons. Although Pinterest undoubtedly plays a big role for retailers, other social media sites are also important for retailers and brands, based on a company’s goals. “At a high level, social media appeals to businesses that want to increase their brand awareness. However, which platform a business chooses to promote depends on what they

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believe will have the greatest reach based on their audience,” Ms. Van Vuuren said. “And as social sharing continues to increase in popularity, we are experiencing a notable shift on the mobile channel. Instead of driving traffic that originates on their social platforms to mobile, brands are now viewing mobile as a starting point in the customer journey and are integrating social as part of the holistic user experience,” she said. Build on data Incorporating social media goes beyond a basic “Like” with data at the core, say some. Consumers are now major forces of deciding what others buy by sharing content across multiple devices. Social media also needs to be viewed as part of a broader, multichannel marketing strategy, according to Craig Davis, CEO/founder of Relevvant, San Francisco. “A range of factors, data and channels are now instrumental in the purchasing channel. We are looking to our friends, family and even complete strangers to recommend, guide and influence every product purchase we make,” Mr. Davis said. “Further, with easier access to brand content on our mobile phones, consumers are constantly looking at product reviews, social recommendations, videos, images and user generated content – merchandising has become more personal than ever before,” he said. Taking a broader picture look at how consumers interact with a brand could lead to more personalized shopping experiences. For example, if a retailer had access to a consumer’s social media graph, then the home page of a mobile site or app could be personalized to show only products that a consumer has indicated that they are interested in. Not only would consumers want to shop from a retailer with a more personalized experience, basket sizes would also likely increase as consumers find new products. Time is always top-of-mind for mobile marketers, but social media adds an additional real-time element to consumers looking for information, recommendations and products while on their devices. “Mobile shoppers want to be able to find what they are looking for, share it with their friends and purchase it quickly and easily – often in 60 seconds or less,” said Dan Lowden, vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX. “Enabling social sharing on product pages allows retailers to see which products are most popular on mobile and then merchandise accordingly. Social media creates a two-way conversation between the consumer and the brand. Paying attention to social media channels lets retailers see which products are shared most often and receive the highest response. Retailers can also see what their most loyal – and disloyal – shoppers are saying about their brand and see where they are successful and where they need to improve,” he said.

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Social commerce Peter DiBart, regional vice president for Metia, New York, believes that social media needs to have a commerce-first approach. Additionally, any content that a brand distributes can be seen as potentially leading to commerce, showing how social media has the ability to drive more than just online traffic. “Every social experience can be transactional. Every transaction can be a social experience,” Mr. DiBart said. “There’s an increasing number of people who are engaging with social media on their mobile devices, and the percentage of people being referred to mobile retail sites from social networks is on the rise. Your site must be mobile-friendly if you want to capture a socialized audience. The objective of a retailer should be to make it easy to discover and share product information – social and mobile are equally important,” he said. “By consuming brand content, your audience is contributing to the merchandising of your product. Marketers are no longer promoting a brand’s salable attributes – they are creating full content and experience ecosystems around brands for audiences to consume.”

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Mobile Commerce Daily

Mattel aims to bolster toy sales via mobile site

June 28, 2012

Toy giant Mattel has launched a mobile site that lets consumers shop an array of products including toys, games and apparel. The company tapped Usablenet to power its mobile initiative. Usablenet also powers mobile sites for Mattel brands such as Barbie Collector, Fisher-Price and American Girl. “Moms in particular depend on the internet for convenient purchasing, in fact Nielsen found that moms are 50 percent more likely to purchase toys online,” said Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet. “In an effort to engage with this growing customer-base Mattel teamed up with Usablenet to launch Mattel Shop on mobile,” she said. “After the great successes of the Barbie Collector, Fisher Price and American Girl mobile sites, Mattel wanted to create another platform for their customers to interact with the Mattel brand. “Mattel’s site provides customers with the most seamless browsing and shopping experience by enabling their customers to easily browse products, share information with their networks and quickly navigate to the products and pages of interest.” Mattel Inc. http://www.mattel.com designs, manufacturers and markets toys and family products. Mobile fun The Mattel mobile site features product listings that can be sorted and refined by age, brand and price. Consumers can also browse ratings and reviews to see what others are saying about each product. Similar to other mobile sites out there, Mattel has included a Store Finder feature that uses the device’s GPS-enabled technology to help consumers find the nearest retail location. The Mattel mobile site also includes a PayPal mobile express checkout that helps consumers speed up the shopping process. Past endeavors The toy giant is no stranger to mobile.

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Earlier this year, Mattel rolled out a mobile site for its Monster High brand that features 3D graphics and entices users to show off their school spirit. Users can access the site by entering m.monsterhigh.com on their mobile browser (see story). “Mobile commerce is growing exponentially and it is no longer enough for brands to create a basic mobile site,” Ms. Van Vuuren said. ”Today, brands must understand that each channel in the customer journey serves a specific purpose to promote the customer’s shopping experience. “For example, businesses are integrating social throughout the mobile platform in an effort to amplify the impact of a customer’s network and extend the reach of their social shares,” she said. “Looking forward, we expect to see more brands implement mobile strategies that leverage social tools throughout the entire sales cycle.”

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The eTail Blog

5 Ways to Win with Mobile This Holiday Season

July 16, 2012

Carin Van Vuuren is the CMO of Usablenet, a New York, Italy and UK-based company that

offers a technological platform for transforming and optimizing web content for any mobile

device.

The countdown to the 2012 holiday season has begun. This year, holiday success will be a

factor of how well retailers optimize their mobile and multi-channel strategies.

A look back shows that mobile fundamentally changed holiday shopping in 2011, with a 26%

increase in online sales on Black Friday, according to an article in Reuters. Per an IBM report,

on Cyber Monday, 10.8% of shoppers used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from

3.9% the year before. Last year revealed the importance of synchronizing in-store and online

promotional activities to drive success: the same report from IBM revealed that 11% of all

online sales in December 2011 originated from a mobile device.

With the empowered consumer poised to conduct even more of his and her holiday shopping

on smartphones and tablets in 2012, retailers should consider how to make the most of mobile.

1. Leverage the role of mobile as a shopper’s social hub

While social engagement and browsing the web remain firmly entrenched activities, shopping

on mobile devices is increasing steadily. A winning strategy this holiday season will ensure that

your mobile web experience capitalizes on the social behavior of the user.

To keep up with increasing consumer expectations of mobile, retailers must take their mobile

strategy a step further. It’s abundantly clear that consumers do not want to browse a mini

version of your website on the go. Today, minimum requirements on mobile include features

like expand and collapse navigation, and high-resolution image galleries with tap-zoom.

Capitalize on the value of social by offering deep integration of social elements with mobile

web functionality. Enable users to share their favorite products and purchases with their

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networks as part of their mobile experience. For example, if a large quantity of your mobile

referral traffic is driven from Facebook or Pinterest, consider incorporating overlays on product

pages that allow mobile users to easily “Like” or “Pin” their favorite products without having to

load a separate page. Allow customers to browse trending items right from the mobile home

page, and consider giving them“one-click” access to products that capitalizes even further on

the power of social to influence and drive purchase.

2. Create a unique tablet experience that delights your customers

One of the most fundamental recent shifts in e-commerce has been the impact of the tablet.

Forrester forecasts that more than 112 million U.S. consumers will own and actively use

tablets by 2016. In order to take full advantage of this lucrative shopping device, you have to

deliver experiences that are uniquely tailored for tablet.

Instead of making the tablet site a smaller version of your desktop website, take advantage of

the opportunity to create a user experience in which your customer can browse, discover and

explore promotions, photo books or this season’s catalog. Savvy marketers could extend the

impact of their marketing budgets into campaign-like experiences for tablet.

3. Drive mobile engagement in-store

Show-rooming is a trend that has many brick and mortar retailers on their heels, but

encouraging shoppers to use their smartphone as a bridge to link the online and offline worlds

can turn in-store into a place of opportunity rather than a challenge.

The opportunity for retailers is clear. Deloitte recently reported that 48% of U.S. consumers

said their phones influenced their decision to purchase an item in-store. Further, purchases

influenced by a mobile device are predicted to increase to $689 billion by 2016 (representing

19% of total store sales).

To take advantage of this, add an on-property mode for your mobile web that gives shoppers a

reason to use their smartphones while in the store. Use location-based networks like

Foursquare and the phone’s geo-location capabilities to push notifications of special offers that

encourage in-store visits. Use QR codes as a way to connect consumers with rich, detailed

information about the products and offer targeted in-store promotions to your mobile web users

that will keep them shopping where you want them to.

Consider investing in in-store Wi-Fi, and use the opportunity to deliver relevant content to your

shopper. Offer in-store users updates on what’s trending at that particular location, and

additional information on special events and activities.

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4. Use kiosks to remove barriers to purchase

The word kiosk does not mean the same thing it did as recently as five years ago. Today, in-

store kiosks can be created in a range of different sizes, and touch-screen technology presents

an innovative and more engaging use-case for the customer, allowing them to check stock and

to purchase from the full e-commerce site, with the option to ship free to the store. In many

ways, tablets can even become a potential kiosk alternative.

Regardless of the hardware solution, it makes sense to have a clear strategy for kiosks in-

store. They are a good defense against show-rooming, and are an effective way to extend your

full inventory of product into smaller stores with limited or targeted inventory.

The value of kiosks during a busy holiday season should not be underestimated. During this

time, when shopper traffic is high and store associates are busy with other customers, kiosks

can provide the support and product information needed to ensure an effective and engaging

brand experience.

5. Create seamless multi-channel experiences

Successful retailers deliver an integrated customer experience that flows seamlessly across all

channels. Consider how you can use mobile web, native apps, tablet and kiosk together to

create an engaging, multi-channel experience.

UK retailer Marks and Spencer is a great example of an innovative brand that is adding value

through multi-channel marketing. In addition to mobile web and the native app, M&S also

enhanced the in-store experience by allowing shoppers to build outfits through in-store

touchscreen displays and interactive kiosks. Shoppers can browse, review and save items to

their mobile basket and purchase at their convenience.

Within the 360° mobile customer experience, ensure each channel delivers against a specific

goal within the customer journey. In store, mobile web is a highly effective channel to connect

shoppers to the brand. With this in mind, incorporate the ability to add items to a virtual basket

and complete the shopping journey at any time, across all channels and devices. Location

functionality, access to in-store Wi-Fi, using QR codes and barcode scanners to scan and drop

desired products into a wish-list further enhances the experience and motivates shoppers to

continue to browse and shop. Further, geo-fencing can trigger push notification to loyal

shoppers with special in-app promotions and offers.

Mobile is Essential to Holiday Success

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Multi-channel engagement is the new frontier in m-commerce. To make the most of the

upcoming holiday shopping season, now is the time to embrace available mobile technology

solutions that can deliver unique experiences across multiple channels and empower

consumers to engage on their own terms.

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Retail TouchPoints

TouchPoints TV: Jason Taylor, Usablenet [VIDEO]

July 23, 2012

Jason Taylor from Usablenet talks about his work with Tesco Grocery and Marks & Spencer,

which recently received Channel Innovation Awards from Retail TouchPoints. Taylor shares

information on Tesco’s mobile site. “Grocery is not the typical retail site where you are buying

one item at a time. Tesco wanted to push the innovation envelope as much as possible.” For

Marks & Spencer, Usablenet focused on a different goal: to connect the online experience in-

store. “They combined innovation on the hardware front and on the solution front.” For

example, they looked for innovative ways to present kiosks.

To watch full video, visit Retail TouchPoints.

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Retail TouchPoints

Mattel Optimizes Mobile Experience, Integrates PayPal Mobile Express Checkout Into New M-Commerce Site

July 23, 2012

As consumers continue to tap into their smartphones to research potential purchases, mobile

commerce will continue to increase and impact overall retail sales. In fact, mobile commerce

sales are expected to grow from $3.5 billion in 2012 to $31 billion in 2015, according to

eMarketer.

To keep pace with this anticipated growth, Mattel — a global manufacturer of toys, games and

children’s apparel — recently unveiled its mobile-optimized site. The new release is powered

by Usablenet, a provider of multichannel technology and solutions, and was developed to

“address the needs of millennial parents and provide them with a technology-relevant solution,”

Andres Amezquita, VP of e-Commerce for Mattel, told Retail TouchPoints.

“In the past, Mattel created its own consumer games, applications and mobile content, but as

consumers’ mobile habits changed, we needed a partner to help us achieve our goals in the

mobile commerce space more efficiently,” Amezquita explained. “We wanted to optimize our

two e-Commerce stores — Mattelshop and Fisher-PriceStore — to the mobile screen so

parents could receive more product information and consumer reviews at the point of sale.

This strategy would then help build business with our retailers.”

Through Mattel’s mobile-optimized site, visitors can sift through a variety of toys, games,

apparel and other items with a navigation feature that includes product listing, sorting and

refinement based on age, brand and price. They also can access in-depth product display

pages, ratings and reviews, and a “related items” feature to optimize discovery and

recommendations.

In addition, the new site is equipped with PayPal Mobile Express Checkout, which helps speed

overall transaction time, according to Amezquita. With brick-and-mortar and web spaces

continuing to converge, Mattel is working closely with PayPal to help create the future of

mobile shopping, he added.

However, Mattel’s direct measurement goals with the mobile site currently are focused on

traffic, Amezquita reported. “We don’t anticipate a significant boost in revenue for our direct-to-

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consumer sites,” he said, “But we do expect to see a revenue increase with our retailers as we

provide more and better information to enhance the shopping experience.”

As Mattel continues to develop its mobile shopping experience, the manufacturer “plans to be

wherever our consumers are,” Amezquita reported. “The important distinction, however, is

mapping out what each consumer touch point is delivering within the digital ecosystem.”

This especially will be true during the highly-competitive holiday season, during which retailers

and manufacturers will fight to win customer eyes and dollars, according to Carin Van Vuuren,

Chief Marketing Officer of Usablenet.

“Retailers must take a holistic view when establishing their mobile strategies by addressing all

channels to ensure customer engagement no matter what touch point that customer chooses,”

Van Vuuren said. “Mattel wanted to create a mobile site that can effectively aid customers in

their research when purchasing toys; the launch of its mobile site is perfectly timed for the busy

holiday season.”

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Mobile Marketing

Transport for London Upgrades Mobile Site

July 26, 2012

Just in time for the Olympics (are we allowed to say 'Olympics' – Ed?), Transport for London (TfL) has upgraded its mobile site with new features specifically designed to help consumers navigate the city of London during the games. The TfL mobile site provides users with all of the necessary information to understand how the Olympics will affect their journey and reach their destination on time.

The updated site, created by Usablenet, offers Olympic-specific alerts that identify travel

hotspots and routes impacted by Olympic travel; a Live Tube Departure Board that leverages

the smartphone's GPS and provides updates on lines and stations nearby, as well as real-time

train arrival and departure information; a Tube Map linked to the homepage for a quick and

easy way to access all Underground routes; and an Updated Journey Planner to help travellers

find the best route to reach their destination including alternate routes by foot or bicycle.

"With the Olympics starting this week, the city of London is preparing for a massive increase in

traffic on the street and Tube," said Nick Taylor, CEO of Usablenet. "Transport for London is

committed to providing mobile users with the most up-to-date and relevant information on how

to plan their Olympic travel, and we are excited to partner with them to help deliver a world-

class mobile experience."

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MarketWired

Usablenet Named to Inc. 5000 List for Third Consecutive Year

August 22, 2012

Leading Mobile and Multi-Channel Technology Provider Demonstrates Continued

Growth and Success

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Aug 22, 2012) - Usablenet, a global technology leader in

mobile and multi-channel customer engagement, today announced it has been named to

the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies in America for the third consecutive

year, ranked by revenue growth from 2008 to 2011. In addition, Usablenet has also been

ranked 65th among the New York City Metro Area companies on the Inc. 5000 list.

"Our success is the result of our core focus of being a strategic partner to our clients and

creating experiences that best serve their brand and customer needs," said Usablenet Chief

Marketing Officer Carin Van Vuuren. "Our team is dedicated to consistently finding new ways

to innovate our platform to meet the multi-channel needs of our clients."

Usablenet, which powers the mobile and multi-channel experiences of over 300 companies

today, is a driving force behind mobile commerce globally. Its cloud-based technology platform

powers the fastest and most consistently performing mobile sites including Tesco, Dell, LL

Bean, OfficeMax and more.

About Usablenet

Usablenet is a global technology leader for mobile and multi-channel customer engagement.

Usablenet's powerful platform enables leading companies in all sectors to create compelling

experiences for their customers across multiple channels, including mobile, tablet, social, and

in-store kiosks. Usablenet customers include Amtrak, Delta, Expedia, FedEx, Marks and

Spencer, Ritz Carlton, ShopNBC, Victoria Secret and others. Founded in 2000, Usablenet is a

private company headquartered in New York City with offices in Los Angeles, Italy and

London. For more information, visit us at http://www.usablenet.com or on Twitter @Usablenet.

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Mobile Commerce Daily

Top 5 mobile commerce trends

August 27, 2012

The mobile commerce space is growing rapidly and marketers are increasingly turning to new technologies such as NFC and augmented reality, as well as classics including SMS and mobile advertising to increase revenue. The mobile commerce space has changed over the years. However, marketers are gradually incorporating traditional and emerging mediums to drive engagement and sales. “There is no doubt that from devices, to trials, to full-blown launches, mobile payments are accelerating and starting to look like they will become a real business,” said Drew Sievers, CEO of mFoundry, San Francisco. “Even more impressive are the numbers around mobile commerce, where someone purchases a digital or remote item through their mobile phone,” he said. “The best marketers are using the mobile phone to acquire, retain and increase share of wallet from their customers. As with mobile banking, simply replicating the online experience isn’t enough, and marketers who mimic online will see lower rates of adoption and success.” NFC Near field communication is still rather new, but the technology will grow even further in the coming years. NFC lets consumers use their mobile devices to interact with almost any real-world object such as posters, clothes and shop windows. Currently, Google Wallet and Isis lead the NFC race. However, as adoption continues to grow, more companies will jump on board. NFC has the potential to be so much more than it is now. Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to make purchases – both large and small. Therefore, giving them an option to pay for goods and services through mobile will be crucial – especially for retailers.

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“As more phones hit the market with NFC support, you can expect further growth and acceleration in the mobile payments industry,” Mr. Sievers said. “While it will still be a small percentage of traditional purchases, the growth should be impressive,” he said. Location-based mobile advertising Many retailers such as Target, JCPenney and Macy’s continually turn to mobile advertising to drive in-store traffic, as well as help increase sales. Mobile advertising is a great way for companies to reach a wide audience. In past months, marketers have added location to the mix to better target consumers. For example, Victoria’s Secret and Best Buy have been adding location to their mobile advertising strategies to help consumers find the nearest physical location. Many consumers are still wary of purchasing items through their mobile devices. Therefore using mobile advertising to drive foot traffic is a smart move. “Marketers understand that this new shopper is digitally savvy and is interested in getting the best offers,” said Cyriac Roeding, CEO of shopkick. “Retailers now have the ability to reach consumers all the time, whether they browse new items within the application while at home sitting on their couch, to the time they come into the store to earn walk-in rewards and check-out offers in person. “Mobile will soon be the No. 1 marketing medium for physical retailers and is the key to their future success.” SMS SMS is one of the simplest and most effective ways that marketers can increase revenue. Firstly, the medium is a great way for companies to build their databases. From there, they can send out timely SMS messages that inform consumers of upcoming sales and other mobile exclusives. Companies such as Macy’s, Target, Gap and Victoria’s Secret have all used SMS effectively. For example, whenever Macy’s has an upcoming sale it sends out an SMS message to its opted-in database to inform them about it.

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Additionally, Gap recently partnered with Visa to offer cardmembers mobile discounts when they opt-in to its service. Incentives are a great way to engage consumers and including them in a call-to-action or within a text message may prove to be effective. QR codes There is an ongoing debate with QR codes. Marketers either completely love them or completely hate them. However, companies such as Express, Boston Market, Starbucks, Walmart and McDonald’s have implanted mobile bar codes into their strategies. Retailer Express continuously places QR codes on its direct mail to let consumers shop featured looks. Restaurant chain Boston Market drove consumers to its locations via a campaign that incorporates QR codes and enticed users to scan them by offering prizes. McDonald’s recently put QR codes on its packaging as part of an ongoing effort to help customers lead a nutritious life and make informed choices. The fast food giant introduced the new nutrition mobile bar code on packaging at its Olympic venue restaurants. When used correctly, QR codes can be very valuable to a marketer’s strategy. By linking the mobile bar codes to an incentive, companies entice consumers to scan them and connect with them on a deeper level. Social media Mobile and social inherently go hand-in-hand. When married together, the result is incomparable. Recently, with Instagram and Pinterest entering the space, marketers, brands and retailers are able to drive purchase intent, while starting a dialogue with new and existing customers. Additionally, marketers are increasingly adding social into their mobile apps, sites, SMS campaigns and other mobile efforts.

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“We are seeing a major shift among brands as they recognize the need to deliver distinct experiences across all mobile channels,” said Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer at Usablenet. “It’s abundantly clear that consumers do not want to browse a mini version of the desktop website from their phones,” she said. “Instead, customers expect unique experiences in mobile that take into account what they are trying to do in the moment and at that particular stage of their journey. “Further, mobile is the channel of choice for social, forcing minimum requirements on mobile now to include deep social integration to enhance the mobile experience and enable users to share favorite products and purchases with their networks as part of their shopping experience.”

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RIS News

Watch, Shop, and Buy on Mobile

September 05, 2012

It’s hard enough for retailers to stay up-to-date with mobility in stores and online, but how does

a broadcast and cable home shopping network compete? Since 1991 ShopNBC has been

known for its trendy, on-the-go customers, so entering the mobile space was essential to its

business model as mobile and multi-channel commerce are increasingly important to the

digital reader.

The retailer wanted to continue to provide its customers with the product, information,

entertainment and content that they desire whenever and wherever they are.

“It’s 1999 all over again in Internet world, it’s the tablet and mobile revolution,” said Tom Kraus,

vice president of online commerce and content for ShopNBC. “As a company continues to

grow, it must think about how it interacts and optimizes with customers.”

Shopping on the Move

ShopNBC identified several must-have items. It was in need of a solution that would not only

provide a turnkey solution that worked with the existing infrastructure, but also would ensure

the customer journey is seamless, straightforward and as intuitive as possible, including

simplified browsing and payment.

According to Kraus, the retailer decided to take it a step further. “We thought, ‘What if we could

get live-stream onto mobile as a unique functionality and great accomplishment?’”

Going…Going…Live!

ShopNBC first launched with Usablenet in 2009 and chose to upgrade to its HTML5 with live

streaming and broadcasting in late 2011. The retailer deployed HTML5 as a foundational move

to position the site for the next generation of innovation. The deployment took three months of

fast-paced adoption and now extends seamlessly through applications. Features of the rollout

include “Watch Us Live” ShopNBC content, quick-buy to expedite checkout and automated

delivery of specific items on a preset schedule.

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To track its progress, the retailer monitors Web metrics including revenue, page views, clicks,

performance at handset level, page load times and issues customers experience, figuring the

“where” and “why” of abandonment. These metrics help to enhance ShopNBC’s offering while

remaining consumer-focused.

Since the HTML5 launch, ShopNBC has exceeded expectations. Revenue, customer adoption

and acceptance of mobile platforms all grew considerably. In the first month the retailer met

the revenue numbers that were expected for the first quarter, and the results have continued to

double and triple since. There has also been a 7% increase in page views and a 77% increase

in mobile traffic.

“We’ve seen substantial growth in our mobile site’s overall traffic as well as an increase in the

number of page views per visit,” said Kraus. “Our customers have been quick to adopt live

streaming of our broadcast channel as yet another way for them to engage with ShopNBC

whenever and wherever they choose.”

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Website Magazine

Usablenet Walks the Runway with Mobile Experience

September 07, 2012

If you have a minute, grab your smartphone (preferably a newer smartphone) and type in “uatfashionweek.com” in your browser (preferably Safari). If you meet the aforementioned criteria, you’ve arrived at one of the most comprehensive mobile experiences around. Although the limitations are, well, limited, the experience is impressive. To top it off, this mobile site, catered to Fashion Week enthusiasts, was only put together last night.

U-Experience is Usablenet’s newest platform that is set to launch on Sept. 10. It’s advanced

HTML5 development framework, coupled with Usablenet’s agile website services and mash-up

capabilities, create the perfect vehicle to take fashion enthusiasts from one channel to

another.

A horizontal social scrolling bar (they call it a Social Tuner - see the image in this post) gives

users the opportunity to scroll to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or YouTube and ‘tune in’ to latest

news about Fashion Week. A fifth ‘dial’ includes the latest look books for certain apparel

companies. Viewers can take a look at each of the outfits and click on any of the price tag

symbols to be taken to the website for purchase.

Usablenet boasts a significant portfolio including David’s Bridal, Aeropostale, FedEx and more,

but U-Experience can service clients across the range.

“The experience for ‘uatfashionweek’ can be done very quickly at a very low cost and a short

period of implementation,” said Usablenet CMO Carin Van Vuuren.

Also, as part of the launch, Usablenet will introduce U-Control: an easy to use CMS dashboard

that gives marketers immediacy of control over the content, promotions and messaging they

present to users across each channel.

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Fashion Monitor

Usablenet debuts social network platform for fashion week

September 10, 2012

Transformative technology company Usablenet has launched social network platform u@fashionweek for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week New York. The platform is a one stop access point for fashion week, featuring celebrity lookbooks and social media updates from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. u@fashionweek's edited list of models, bloggers and fashion media features runway updates, front row gossip, celebrity news and a look at next season's trends.

website: www.usablenet.com

twitter: @uatfashionweek

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Mobile Marketer

App discovery still an ongoing struggle for marketers

September 10, 2012

App discovery is still a critical challenge for marketers to overcome and many are struggling

with how to best solve the problem.

Companies who have their own mobile applications are doing everything in their power to

promote them and have consumers coming back to them time and time again. However, not

everyone will be prominently featured in Apple’s App Store or Google Play.

“Our research shows that 53 percent of app downloaders learned about the app through a

search in the app store,” said David Gill, vice president of emerging media at Nielsen.

“Half of app store searchers go straight to top-rated category to browse and 34 percent sort by

most popular,” he said. “With so many titles in the store, it is very hard to be noticed which is

why we see a lot of app publishers allocating ad spend in digital to drive awareness and

conversions.

“What’s encouraging is that word-of-mouth is a hugely successful way to drive download

activity. Fifty-four percent of app downloaders prefer friends and family recommendations on

apps which means that marketers should think about how to use social media channels as

much as possible to aid in discovery.”

Overcoming hurdles

There is a tremendous amount of mobile applications out there and the number keeps growing

daily.

Nowadays, there is a mobile app for everything.

Therefore, marketers are constantly struggling to be kept top-of-mind.

“I think it’s going to be a struggle for a long time, but I don’t think the solution is a discovery

strategy,” said Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet.

“It’s about the experiences you want to create,” she said. “It’s about your consumers and your

app has to have a real utility for the user to have them put that on their homescreen.”

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Marketers need to make sure their customers know about their mobile apps through the

channels they own – including social media.

Additionally, companies need to leverage the social graphs of their users – one of the key

ways that people learn about apps is through recommendations from people they know.

It is also important for marketers to market around big device launches and gift-giving holidays

– although users download an average of 6-7 apps a month, those with new devices download

a lot more in a short amount of time

“App discovery is a struggle only if marketers have the ‘build an app and they will come’

mentality,” said Chia Chen, senior vice president of Digitas. “An app is really a software

product – and I don't think anybody would think that a piece of software is just going to

distribute and market itself.

“That said, marketers are very interested is getting people to really engage with the apps, so

the more enlightened ones are planning for that when they make the decision to build an app,”

he said.

Breaking in

Breaking into the Top 100 in a category is the goal of nearly every company creating an app.

In a sea of apps that have traction, competing is a real challenge.

To date, traditional marketing has not been a viable solution for many apps, creating more

questions than answers.

“App discovery is the number one issue that faces app publishers, whether they know it or

not,” said Russ Whitman, chief strategy officer at Ratio Interactive, Seattle. “Unfortunately the

tools simply do not exist for users to easily find and recommend apps and most don’t go far

beyond the featured pages of the various app stores.

“Search is a real challenge in how apps can define the searchable data and how the stores

present results,” he said.

According to Craig Palli, vice president of business development at Fiksu, app discovery is an

ongoing challenge for marketers who not only have to continuously adapt to ever-changing

app store environments, but also stand out from amongst millions of app offerings created by

increasingly sophisticated app developers.

The mobile app ecosystem is the most dynamic environment marketers have ever

encountered.

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The pace of innovation in handset and OS variants is driving a seemingly never-ending stream

of updates required by mobile marketers to remain relevant with the latest and greatest

opportunities.

“The biggest challenge marketers face is the pace of change itself,” Mr. Palli said. “Innovative

breakthroughs are regularly achieved and thousands of app developers world-wide remain on

the ready to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by those changes.

“Marketers must support their apps with strong marketing technology,” he said. “Such

technology must support all current forms of marketing attribution including UDID, Digital

Fingerprinting, HTML 5 1st Party Cookie, MAC Address, Referrer and be flexible enough to

seamlessly incorporate new methods such as the one anticipated from Apple.

“Perhaps more important still marketers need a system that can tie App Store and Google Play

rank back to their marketing investments as rank improvements often yield big increases in

organic downloads where those organic users have the highest propensity to be come loyal

value driving users. Marketers have the choice the build such systems in house or partner with

3rd parties who can support such functions.”

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MarketWired

Usablenet Sets a New Standard for Mobile and Multi-Channel Engagement With the Launch of

U-Experience

September 11, 2012

Leader in Mobile Usability Launches Latest Evolution of Its Platform, Enabling Global

Brands to Deliver Unique Experiences Across Smartphones, Tablets, Social and On-

Property Kiosks

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Sep 11, 2012) - Usablenet, the global leader in mobile and

multi-channel technology, today introduced a new standard in mobile innovation with the

launch of U-Experience. The latest evolution of Usablenet's platform, U-Experience enables

brands to create unique, customer-focused experiences that reflect user context across

mobile, tablets, social, and on-property kiosks.

U-Experience is designed to solve the central problem global organizations face when

attempting to extend their brand experience across multiple channels: how to create unique,

contextually rich experiences when limited by the constraints of their website or available web

services. Since the U-Experience platform is not limited to specific sources, brands are not

limited with the experiences they can create using the Usablenet platform.

Usablenet's agile web services is key to its ability to create relevant customer experiences in

each channel from a range of data sources including the website, APIs, web services, and

more. This ability to mashup sources also allows for deep social integration. Additionally, U-

Experience makes it easy to deploy commerce-enabled lookbooks that support the ability to

browse while enhancing the potential for purchase. On Tablets, U-Experience supports a more

leisurely discovery through its Dynamic Canvas offering.

"The digital world is clearly evolving into a multi-screen environment, where the customer often

begins their journey on one channel and completes the session on a different channel," said

Carin Van Vuuren, Chief Marketing Officer of Usablenet. "Usablenet wants to be an essential

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partner for brands that seek to create tailored experiences and drive business results across

all channels."

Putting Control in the Hands of the Client

Today Usablenet is also introducing U-Control, an experience decision and management tool

that alleviates internal resource limitations by giving marketers immediacy of control over the

content, promotions and messaging they can create in each channel.

In addition, Usablenet is announcing U-Develop, which gives brands the ability to use internal

resources to develop and deliver multi-channel experiences on top of the Usablenet platform.

"We recognize that some clients seek to develop multi-channel experiences in house,"

continued Van Vuuren. "With U-Develop, we are unlocking the power of the Usablenet platform

and putting development control in the hands of our clients, and are providing the assurance

that our platform scales with them as their business evolves."

Usablenet is a driving force behind mobile commerce globally, with an unmatched track record

of creating customer-centric experiences for over 350 clients across all industries. Brands like

Marks and Spencer, Ritz-Carlton and others are all currently leveraging the U-Experience

platform to deliver unique, multi-channel customer experiences.

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FashInvest

FashInvest Exclusive: Want Live Coverage and Update from New York Fashion Week? Try UatFashionWeek.com!! September 11, 2012

Follow Fashion Week with Your Smartphone

It is every fashionista’s dream to attend New York Fashion Week, to see the best trends for the

upcoming season and to be able to participate in conversations. Well, now fashionistas have

the best ticket in the house, their smartphone.

Mobile technology company Usablenet, is introducing U@FashionWeek, a curated, uniquely

mobile experience that gives you access to what insiders are posting and wearing, all in one

place: your smart phone. With this social mobile capability, fashionistas from around the world

can have access to celebrity look books and social media updates for the most anticipated

week of fashion!

U@FashionWeek uses in the Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest feeds from a wide

range of fashion influencers in a unique, mobile experience. Some of the social tuner includes

social feeds from DKNY PR Girl, Victoria Beckham, Karlie Kloss, Zoe Saldana, Tommy Ton

of Jak and Jil, Erin Kleinberg and Stephanie Mark of the Coveteur, and many more.

The company has released the following key benefits:

UI/UX - U-Experience contains a new HTML5 interface that is designed to allow user content

discovery from multiple social sources. It enables users to quickly tune into different channels

and removes the need to visit different sources to get branded content.

Mashup – U-Experience can combine any input sources such as social APIs and brand

content like blogs and reviews. The platform can also pull images from multiple sources.

Control - U-Experience gives marketers control over the subjects and social IDs followed. For

example, you can pull in different Pinterest boards from top fans or from top executives, and

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combine official content being generated by the company, as well as industry and consumers

into one "curated" experience.

At FashInvest, we feel that this concept is a very great idea as it will enable consumers to feel

like they are participating in New York Fashion Week! This trend is also popular amongst

brands and retailers, making their consumers feel a part of what is going on and any other

updates.

This is a single forum that provides participants with a unique mobile experience that allows for

quick loading time and high-quality images. The experience includes select look books that

provide a direct connection between what consumers are interested in to and what

brands have to offer.

Ready for your u@fashionweek experience? Head to www.uatfashionweek.com on your

mobile device!

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tnooz

How to optimise the mobile travel experience

September 13. 2012

NB: This is a guest article by Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer at Usablenet.

It’s no secret that travel and mobile go hand in hand. In fact, business travelers were the

earliest adopters of using the mobile web to book reservations and engage with brands on the

go.

And now more than ever, travelers are using their smartphones and tablets to book flights,

locate nearby restaurants, and reserve hotel stays.

According to a recent Nielsen study, mobile activity has a significant effect on travelers’ path to

purchase as 46% of mobile travel researchers ultimately make a purchase, with 33% intending

to complete a transaction within a day.

In the UK, it has been reported that travel sites’ mobile traffic has doubled in a year from

10.2% in August 2011 to 20.5% in June 2012.

This strong mobile purchase intent among travelers reinforces the need for travel brands to

create unique mobile experiences that encourage conversion.

To do so, travel brands must tailor the mobile experience to the customer by making it easier

for them to research and book on-the-go.

It’s no longer enough to offer today’s tech savvy travelers a mini version of the desktop

website; instead they’ve come to expect unique experiences across channels that support their

intended actions.

Let’s break down the ways in which travel brands can step up their game and exceed

customers expectations on mobile and other channels.

Mobile

We are seeing a major shift among travel and hospitality brands as they recognize the need to

deliver distinct experiences across all mobile channels.

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Customers expect unique mobile experiences that take into account what they are trying to do

in the moment and at that particular stage of their journey.

This is especially true among travelers, who expect a mobile experience that includes geo-

targeted information, special offers and recommended restaurants or attractions in their

destination city, and high quality image galleries with tap-zoom functionality.

Further, mobile is the channel of choice for social, forcing minimum requirements on mobile

now to include deep social integration to enhance the mobile experience and enable users to

share favorite products and purchases with their networks as part of their shopping

experience.

Google Think Insights reported that 45% of personal travelers and 54% of business travelers

have made plans based on reviews and experiences of others.

Additionally, 40% of personal travelers and 46% of business travelers use social networking to

share their travel experience.

Travel brands should take this into account when creating mobile experiences by allowing

users to easily share bookings, trips, and favorite destinations across their networks.

The Ritz-Carlton is an example of a travel brand that takes a strategic approach when it comes

to developing and delivering unique mobile experiences to its customers.

The luxury hotelier launched a robust mobile app earlier this year that demonstrates its

commitment to engaging users at all stages in their journey: from booking the reservation, to

their stay and beyond.

Designed for on-property engagement, the app instantly recognizes when a guest has arrived

at a Ritz-Carlton property and uses push notifications to serve them location-specific advice

and attractions.

It also enables users to scan QR codes to learn more about the activities and amenities

offered at their specific hotel.

Tablets

According to Travelocity, 55% of all its mobile bookings are now coming via tablet devices,

with mobile-exclusive deals generating a good percentage of hotel bookings.

As the tablet continues its mainstream adoption, we can expect to see more and more travel

brands investing in this lucrative channel.

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In doing so, the key is to recognize tablet as a distinct channel, and create relevant and unique

experiences that connect with the “on the couch” mindset of the tablet user. Today’s savvy

consumers have come to expect more than a minimized version of the desktop on their tablet.

Rather they are looking for a tailored experience designed specifically for the tablet that

delivers high-quality images, an easy to use interface, exclusive tablet offers, dynamic

catalogs, and more.

In many ways, tablet devices are still a ‘blank slate’ for the travel industry, allowing ample room

for innovation.

We’re seeing consumers turn to their tablets when they are in a comfortable state, lying on the

couch in front of a movie or traveling on a long train ride. Across all verticals, we see that 72%

of tablet owners use their device while they are at home.

This means that a brand’s tablet experience must be technologically intuitive to the user,

visually appealing, and most importantly, offer consumers a unique experience different from

desktop and mobile.

Design for the experience

Whether creating an intuitive mobile app, a tablet site offering special mobile-only deals, or a

mobile site that offers customers the ability to share content with their social networks, travel

brands must make customer experience the main focus that shape all multi-channel decisions.

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eMarketing and Commerce

Usablenet Introduces the U-Experience September 14, 2012

Company: Usablenet, a mobile and multichannel platform provider

Product/Service: U-Experience, a mobile web solution

What it Does: Allows merchants to create customer-focused experiences by using social

integration, commerce-enabled lookbooks, and "U-Control", a management tool that gives

marketers immediate control over content.

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Mobile Marketer

Who wins the apps versus mobile sites debate?

October 01, 2012

There is a continuous debate in the mobile industry on whether mobile applications or

optimized sites are a better choice for marketers. Companies looking to invest in the space

should first set a goal and have a clear understanding of their target consumer.

Many industry experts believe that while mobile applications are great, they are mostly used by

loyal users. Unless companies have a big loyal base, they should first introduce a mobile site

or consider rolling out a mobile app and optimized site at the same time.

“To those looking to invest either in a mobile Web site or a mobile application, the truth is that

they must invest in both,” said Eric Newman, vice president of products and marketing

at Digby, Austin, TX.

“Mobile sites are for the masses, rich apps are for the loyal,” he said. “Using this comparison

as a guide, the intrinsic uses of mobile Web sites and apps become quickly revealed.”

Know your customers

Consumers primarily use the mobile Web as a quick search tool, and most mobile searches

are for general information such as store location and hours or contact information.

Having a mobile presence is critical.

Consumers are constantly on-the-go and therefore, a mobile presence is now a necessity.

Many times, marketers roll out a mobile application because their competitor has one. But, at

the same time, companies must remember that one size does not fit all. Just because their

competitor has a mobile app does not mean that it will be a good fit for them.

Marketers must first figure out who their target demographic is and go from there.

“Those new to a brand enjoy mobile Web as a way to gain access to product catalogs while

they’re on the go, as a way to quickly learn about a brand’s offering, so the information

provided must be quick to consume and to the point,” Mr. Newman said.

“Mobile applications, however, are hubs for a brand’s loyal fans,” he said. “Given that apps are

always apparent on a consumer’s phone and must be tapped into, consumers more deeply

engage with the app depending on that app's capabilities ranging from entertainment to

informational research to just plain fun.

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Mobile loyalty

Mobile applications are a great way to utilize value-adding services for the loyal customer

ranging from more targeted 1:1 marketing and customer service features such as interior maps

of retail stores or access to loyalty programs.

There is not a lot of real estate on a mobile device, and with a mobile application, marketers

are asking to use up some of that real estate.

If marketers are set on rolling out mobile apps, they need to make sure that it fits their

consumer’s needs.

“Consumers have gotten clever with how to maximize real estate on their phones,” said Carin

Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet, New York.

“You need to know what you want to achieve with a mobile site or app and your strategy

should encompass both,” she said.

Go with both

Many industry experts believe that when in doubt, roll out a mobile site and app strategy.

“While apps will always have a place for the loyal customer, the first place people are going to

go it to the Web to contact that brand and an app will come later as real estate will become

precious,” said Roland Campbell, senior director of solutions engineering at Usablenet.

“The general consumer will hit the mobile Web more often,” he said. “They’re not going to

grant you space on their screen.

“Once they have become a loyal customer of your brand you can add something, like an app,

that really adds value.”

The mobile space is growing at a rapid speed and marketers who do not have a mobile

presence are missing out on a big opportunity.

The mobile apps and mobile site debate will continue to go on for years.

Companies need to figure out which medium works best for them and go from there.

“As for the future of mobile in 2013, the mobile industry is in a truly exciting place right now,”

Digby’s Mr. Newman said. “A number of groundbreaking technological innovations have

entered the playing field this year and they will be forever altering the way we market and sell.

“Mobile’s intrinsic understanding of consumer’s context—their current time, location, and

behavior—will lead to much more personalized style of marketing, which is centered around

location,” he said. “Mobile POS will become much more common in stores, as pushed by

providers like Square and brands like Starbucks and Finish Line.

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“Lastly, Apple’s release of Passbook will have a huge affect on the mobile wallet race. The

emphasis will turn from NFC to comprehensive, rich offers that retailers are able to seamlessly

integrate into their current POS systems. Combined with location-marketing, offers will be

easy to use, personalized, and seamless.”

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Shop.org Blog

Why retailers should design mobile for the experience, not the device

October 08, 2011

Put five “masters of mobile” on a panel and you get a lot of interesting thinking about where

mobile is heading for the retail industry. That’s just what we had on hand at last

month’s Shop.org Annual Summit in Denver. Vice President for the The Aberdeen Group Sahir

Anand moderated the panel of mobile retailing executives including Leapfactor CEO and

Founder Lionel Carrasco,Kony Solutions Chief Mobile Officer Sam Lakkundi, Swirl

Networks VP of Marketing Rob Murphy, and Usablenet‘s Chief Marketing Office Carin Van

Vuuren who each shared how they see mobile shaping the next several years in retail.

Anand kicked off the session with some thoughts about the next three to five year “roadmap”

for mobile in retail. He started off with what thousands of attendees had already been buzzing

about – that mobile personalization is a major factor. “What e-commerce has done well is to

understand buying behavior, [that is,] the stated preferences of the consumer…” across

product suggestions, marketing and more. So how do retailers truly personalize the mobile

experience? “In any mobile initiative, data is important, but what’s also important is how the

consumer interacts with it for shopping to make the customer experience more interactive and

more effective.” In the mobile arena, personalization has to be “device agnostic” and cover

many different form factors, Anand added.

Furthermore, he emphasized, “Any definition of mobility has to include both consumer and in-

store associate access. “ Unlike the “showrooming” concept, he continued, “When you

integrate mobile with the employee and employee behavior, mobility becomes much more

impactful.” Next, Anand and the panelists explored a number of key questions around mobile’s

role in retail going forward.

How important is consumer experience to a mobile strategy – and what does that look

like?Usablenet’s Van Vuuren declared that mobile strategy, “is the most important thing for

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retailers to focus on. The big shift is that mobile is not about devices – mobile is the entire

experience.” She explained that her firm tries to, “Look at the entire journey. [We] design the

experience around that and let the technology support that.” She cited Marks & Spencer as

“pushing the envelope” for a “deliberate experience for the app, mobile web, and in-store

kiosk.” The challenges on this journey, she added, include analytics and conversion to

understand the efficacy of mobile.

How about the state of mobility today? What are the merits and pitfalls and why should

companies care? Swirl’s Murphy observed that mobile is ‘here’ from the consumer

perspective. Therefore, the big question is how retailers should create the right experience.

Murphy pointed to Starbucks’ high adoption and use for its mobile payment app as one of the

biggest examples in the industry. The same goes for flash sale sites Rue La La & Gilt Groupe ,

to which Murphy noted that, “30% of their business is done by mobile for very time sensitive

purchases.” Simply put, the onus is on retailers to create experiences for consumers to use the

device that they have in hand as they walk into the store. Things like “style advice, tracking

their shopping history, wish lists, loyalty programs”, etc. Kony’s Lakkundi added that retailers

need to “make sure the experience is solid” – and most importantly, trustworthy and useful.

What about the “fear” that mobile has replaced or will replace point-of-sale (POS)? “It

goes back to understanding the whole customer experience. If the desktop POS disappears,

that changes the whole store experience,” Leapfactor’s Carrasco emphasized. In general, he

said, consumers are shaping their own shopping experience while potentially rendering store

associates “powerless.” Instead, Carrasco advised that retailers need to empower the store

associate to “provide real service” by giving them information about the customer, where the

customer lives, their shopping history and the like.

Carrasco added that with the combination of the empowered store associate toting mobile

devices that are starting to replace traditional POS, the store POS will become a, “point of

interaction and point of engagement – not just a checkout experience.” Using an analogy from

the pharmaceutical industry, Carrasco recounted that Bayer sales reps who go into a doctor’s

office with an iPad have doubled the time they spent with the doctor, a significant metric for

that industry. Bringing it back to retail, Carrasco noted that in the store, this can “[similarly]

empower store associate and will directly improve the bottom line.”

What role does mobile play in an omnichannel strategy? “Mobile is the bridge that goes

between the channels,” Van Vuuren explained. Retailers shouldn’t see mobile as a single

device but rather as an experience – to which Anand added, “Mobile is an experience strategy,

not a device strategy.” Retailers need to think how design for enhanced usability and seamless

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browsing and shopping. As one example, if you think about the “virtual basket” that goes with

the customer across channels, the retailer needs to understand whether the customer just

wants to save an item for later consideration or if he/she is ready to buy on the spot.

Which are the social aspects of mobile for retail? Murphy reminded the audience that

social is top of mind for the consumer, whether sharing their location with friends, checking in,

and more. Retailers need to think about how everything they do “creates social opportunities”

for consumers to engage. Strong examples include writing product reviews, talking about

styles that they do or don’t like, commenting on brands, etc. Van Vuuren reminded the

audience of the risk of appearing as “gimmicky”, noting that, “The magic of social is

authenticity.”

Ultimately, while questions persist about the business case and ROI from mobile, panelists

noted, the retailer’s challenge with mobile is not about completing the transaction – it’s about

mobile helping to drive a better experience overall, regardless of where the sale actually

happens.

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Adweek

Mercedes-Benz Revs Up Mobile Revamped mobile site soars in 2012; mobile ad spend

coming in 2013

October 16, 2012

Marketers these days like to talk about how mobile is in a similar place to where the Web was a decade ago. Well, Mercedes-Benz has just wrapped up a complete overhaul of its mobile website—and just like an e-commerce firm in 2002 probably felt after retooling its online product pages—it’s pretty stoked about how much better the performance is before vs. after. In fact, Mercedes’ mobile traffic is up 85 percent year-to-date due to a months-long, incremental makeover that was completed yesterday, according to Derek Johnson, digital platform supervisor, digital marketing and CRM at Mercedes-Benz USA. He added that nearly half of the visitors are reading/utilizing product pages about specific cars, representing a stark increase compared to the former mobile site version. The best tweak made? Per Johnson, it was taking the detailed customization features from online and making them more lightweight and interactive in the mobile sense. “People are there to look at vehicles," the digital exec told Adweek. "We did not go the route of adding really heavy ‘build’ experiences because we think they can be really cumbersome [via mobile].” The automotive brand worked with mobile vendor Usablenet to enhance Mercedes’ mobile site. “In this demographic,” Johnson said, “everywhere you look there are smartphone usage numbers going up.” Mercedes echoes another currently popular marketing sentiment: this is just the tip of the iceberg for mobile in terms of spend. In the coming months, it plans to launch mobile surveys to perhaps further optimize the mobile site and looks to buy mobile advertising for the first time in 2013. “The thing about mobile is that it is constantly evolving,” Johnson said. “People are not necessarily thinking about deep branding experiences on mobile. What they are looking for is getting information at their fingertips."

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Mobile Marketing Watch

Mercedes-Benz Revamps Mobile User Experience

October 16, 2012

Mercedes-Benz is backing out of its marketing garage with a new and enhanced mobile version of mbusa.com. The new and improved platform enables it to communicate key brand and product attributes to customers, provide vehicle information and ensure that customers are efficiently connected with Mercedes-Benz dealers at any time from their mobile device. Mercedes-Benz USA has teamed with Usablenet to create this new and improved mobile web experience designed for smartphone users. Over the last year, mobile traffic to mbusa.com has grown by 170 percent. In response to this strong customer demand, Mercedes has enhanced its mobile site to offer customers a seamless experience while engaging with the brand from their mobile phones. “Mercedes-Benz USA is committed to deepening customer engagement through a branded mobile experience that measurably drives consideration of Mercedes-Benz vehicles,” says Eric Jillard of MBUSA. “Usablenet enables us to reach the on-the-go customer with a unique and brand-commensurate mobile experience that reinforces our brand equity, supports customer loyalty, and adds value to the vehicle research and purchase journey.”

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Internet Retailing

Decorating goes digital as Homebase launches mobile site driven by consumer demand

October 17, 2012

To encourage great home enhancement projects whenever and wherever the creative impulse strikes, Homebase – one of the UK’s leading ‘home enhancement’ retailers – has launched a dedicated mobile site with Usablenet as it sees growing numbers of customers accessing its website via smartphone. “We recognised that a large number of our customers wanted to interact with the website whilst on the move and we wanted to ensure that we delivered a solution which improved the mobile experience by making things quicker and easier to buy or research,” says Andy McWilliams, Head of Multi-Channel for Homebase. “It was important for Homebase to partner with an organisation who could support our objectives; with demonstrable success developing mobile solutions for leading Multichannel retailers.” The Homebase mobile optimised site has a user-friendly design and enables secure ecommerce transactions. Once customers find the products they want, they can easily check stock in their local store and find out how to get there. The store locator feature maximises revenue opportunity by driving foot traffic to the retailer’s nearest store. The site also features a customisable scrolling image banner for relevant promotions and product displays without additional page loads, delivering a fast and enjoyable shopping experience. Additional interactive features include customer reviews and tap-to-zoom functionality to aid shoppers in their purchase decision process. “Homebase is setting the standard in home enhancement by designing a mobile experience customised for their discerning, mobile-savvy customer,” says Carin van Vuuren, CMO of Usablenet. “They recognised the potential of increasing traffic and engagement by serving their customers through a unique mobile experience designed to communicate style, convenience and choice.” The Usablenet platform is one of the driving forces behind mobile commerce in the UK and Europe, through recent launches of innovative m-commerce sites and dynamic multi-channel experiences for a broad range of industry leaders including Marks & Spencer.

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Website Magazine

Holiday Checklist for Web Success

October 19, 2012

Santa called, and he wanted to make sure you were ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year. He decided to leave an early present for Web professionals, business owners and retailers everywhere. As you may know, Santa’s a big fan of lists. In order to help out Website Magazine readers as they prepare for the rapidly approaching holiday shopping season, he left an informative checklist that you can all use to ensure your website and marketing campaigns are ready to go when consumers come knocking on your virtual doors. And, it just so happens his checklist follows Website Magazine's content channels. Prepare for Customer Inquiries The biggest difference for customers who decide to shop on the Web rather than in-store, is the lack of customer service. For example, a customer who is searching for a specific blue sweater in a brick-and-mortar store can easily ask a sales associate for assistance, however, this is not the case on the Web. Merchants can combat this problem by adding customer service solutions, such as live chat or virtual assistants, to their websites. These solutions not only provide consumers with a better shopping experience, but can also improve conversion and engagement rates. Learn more about bringing your company’s sales team to the ’Net here. Advertise Everywhere Nowadays, there are many avenues where brands can spend their advertising dollars on the ’Net, including within search, social and mobile channels. This is why marketers should analyze online advertising campaigns from holidays past to determine which campaigns generated the best return on investment. By doing this, marketers can also review which keywords from the 2011 holiday season sent the most and highest converting traffic. Once the best-performing keywords have been discovered, marketers should also add a few more for the 2012 season and then select which words will be added to their holiday-specific paid search campaigns. However, marketers should also consider spending their advertising dollars on social and mobile marketing as well. This is because a recent study from Marin Software reveals that many consumers turn to Facebook during their hunt for deals around Thanksgiving time. Furthermore, a separate study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau reveals that consumers are very likely to take an action, such as investigate a product or local business, once they have engaged with a mobile ad.

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Be Mobile Ready Mobile shopping has reached $20 billion in 2012, with that number set to grow with tablet shopping, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. The company's Strategy & Research EVP and Research Director, Mary Monahan, counts tablets as the ideal channel to transform PC-based online shoppers into mobile shoppers because of the large-screen real estate and mobile capabilities. "Increasingly mobile devices like tablets are being used as shopping tools but the mobile buying experience is not keeping pace with consumer activity," said Monahan. "Apps engage consumers to make purchases. With the upcoming holidays, retailers must prepare for the mobile shopping trend or lose out on the opportunity to convert browsers into buyers.” Companies like Usablenet, which are behind the mobile experiences of some of the world's top brands (Hilton, FedEx, Mercedes-Benz USA – to name a few) can help retailers create a mobile experience, quickly and at a low cost. The Usablenet platform requires no client IT resources, no systems integration and no Web development. Create a Savvy Social Campaign Retailers not leveraging social media’s prowess this holiday season – and in general – stand to lose out on revenue that is often unexpected. For brands looking to sell on Facebook, Website Magazine has compiled a how-to list of sorts, found here. However, Pinterest is the real standout network of the season. Its potential and popularity is in its simplicity. It takes very little to get started. Any retailer, of any size, can create a Holiday Gift Board. In turn, users will like and re-pin these products. And, the real beauty of Pinterest is that a retailer’s products aren’t only limited to who is following that brand and who, among their followers, is friends with. For the most part, Pinterest users view boards and pins outside of their network. Capitalizing on this free channel is a slam dunk this season. Additionally, retailers can integrate Pinterest with email, to see how, click here. Engage with Email One of the best ways to encourage audience engagement with your brand during the holiday season is with email. In fact, a recent study from Listrak and Harris Interactive reveals that 41 percent of Americans who receive emails from retailers have made a purchase in the past six months as a direct result of receiving the retailer’s email. This channel definitely shouldn’t be overlooked; instead, it should be in the forefront of your holiday marketing strategies. Holiday email campaigns should include frequent sending at optimal times and days of the week, as well as contain promotional offers and gift idea suggestions. Additionally, email can be a valuable tool for creating repeat customers during the holiday season. For example, after a consumer makes an online purchase, marketers can automatically send a follow-up email that thanks the consumer for their purchase and offers a coupon to bring the consumer back – either in stores, online or after the holidays. Be Search Friendly Consumers do a lot of searching during the holidays on their quest to find the perfect gift for someone special. In the online world, much of that searching is done through Google, whose search engine just happens to feature product listing ads, as well as a wholly re-imagined

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product search service called Google Shopping that essentially works as a separate retail-focused search engine. Prepare yourself by creating a product feed and linking it to AdWords. Your product rankings are based on four factors: data quality, bid management, quality score and enrollment in the Trusted Stores Program. So jam-pack product listings with as many extra attributes as you can, carefully organize your ad groups and set (accurate and appropriate) ad group level bids. Then, just write a promotional messaging, make sure your product listings have images and you’re off to the races. It’s far more effective than dressing up mannequins in a window. Pick Up the Speed, Developmentally Speaking The holiday season will inevitably bring about holiday traffic, and if your site isn’t adequately prepared, it could be costly. After all, most e-commerce sites are notorious for having slow site speeds to begin with, so you don’t want to be chasing away more customers (and losing more revenue) than you have to. In fact, optimizing your site and providing faster load times than your competitors will probably make you a more desirable destination for shoppers looking to research or purchase products online. You can use Google’s Page Speed Online website to quickly test the speed and performance of your website. But hurry, because there’s not a lot of time left; early bird holiday shoppers will be visiting your website before you know it, if they’re not already.

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eTail

Aeropostale New Concept Store has iPad Music Stations & iPad Shopping Kiosks

October 19, 2012

Aéropostale, Inc. has announced the introduction of new technologies to a concept store at Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island that will undoubtedly flip the brand’s typical customer’s experience on its heels.

The new concept is designed with a vintage-feel featuring New York-inspired artwork

alongside technology that is au courant with its teen shoppers. The technology wow factor is a

group of iPads placed in fitting rooms, encouraging shoppers to choose their favorite music to

listen to while trying on clothes.

Shoppers will also find four iPad kiosks, developed in partnership with Usablenet, a mobile

and multi-channel technology company. The kiosks are placed throughout the store and

feature a user-generated “build-your-own outfit guide,” which can be emailed to oneself and

friends for online purchase. Customers will be able to shop an optimized version of the brand’s

website on the iPads for hard-to-find items, and to place orders that they can get shipped to

their home.

“The new concept store is the latest step in our initiative to provide our shoppers with a unique

and innovative experience,” said Mary Jo Pile, EVP of Customer Engagement, Aéropostale.

“It’s about creating an environment where our customers feel at home, and free to engage in

their lifestyle while shopping.”

“Effective multi-channel engagement starts with having a deep understanding of what your

customer is trying to accomplish at each stage of their shopping journey,” said Carin van

Vuuren, Chief Marketing Officer, Usablenet. “Aeropostale demonstrates this understanding

through their innovative use of technology to enhance the in-store experience.”

In addition to the technology integrations, each of the concept store’s five dressing rooms has

a New York City neighborhood-inspired theme; “Soho,” “Williamsburg,” “West Village,” “East

Village,” and “Park Slope.” It’s surely no surprise that these hoods were chosen – they’re

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naturally appealing spots for younger crowds, especially teens who might aspire to move to the

big city someday soon.

The store design is a collaboration between Aéropostale’s internal team and Montreal-based

design and consulting firm, GH+A Design.

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MediaPost Online Media Daily

Aeropostale Uses iPad Displays To Attract Customers

October 22, 2012

Apparel retailer Aeropostale aims to entice its young clientele with a new concept store outfitted with iPad-powered displays, offering everything from e-commerce to in-store music selection. The company’s revamped outlet at Roosevelt Field Mall in New York launched Friday boasts four iPad kiosks placed around the store, which the brand’s teen shoppers can use to create their own outfits. In addition to providing a style guide that allows users to view their new looks, they can email assembled outfits to friends for their input or to themselves. Developed with mobile and multichannel technology company Usablenet, the kiosks also offer an optimized version of Aeropostale’s Web site to place orders to ship home and dig up hard-to-find items. Another feature geared especially to the retailer’s high-school-age customers allows them to use the iPads to vote on music playing inside the store. "The new concept store is the latest step in our initiative to provide our shoppers with a unique and innovative experience,” stated Mary Jo Pile, EVP of customer engagement at Aéropostale. “It’s about creating an environment where our customers feel at home and free to engage in their lifestyle while shopping.” Based on customer response, a company spokesperson said Monday that Aeropostale will decide over the next few months whether to extending the technologies to any of its other retail locations. The company operates 913 Aeropostale stores in the U.S., including its flagship presence in Times Square. Along with its high-tech elements, the Roosevelt Field mall location is intended to evoke a New York City vibe with the iPad-equipped fitting rooms designed to suggest different city neighborhoods including SoHo, the West Village, Williamsburg and Park Slope. For its part, Usablenet has previously given similar upgrades to retailers such as U.K.-based Marks & Spencer. Its stores incorporate Wi-Fi, touchscreen kiosks and iPad-toting sales associates. It has also created mobile sites and apps designed to sync with in-store shopping to bridge the digital/brick-and-mortar divide.

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MarketingWeek

Champneys to extend brand into food

October 22, 2012

Champneys, the luxury spa brand, is to extend its brand into the wider lifestyle market with a range of healthy eating products and digital information services. The brand aims to replicate the healthy experience of its spas in other areas such as healthy eating and apps that give information that consumers can adopt in their daily lives. Alex de Carvalho, managing director of Champneys, told Marketing Week that the brand’s vision is to be the UK’s “health and wellness reference point not just a spa brand” to capitalise on the growing demand for health and wellness information in the UK. He says the UK lags behind other European nations in terms of investment in health and wellbeing, which means there is a huge growth opportunity. The brand is also overhauling its digital strategy to improve its data and mobile marketing and has revamped its digital presence to optimise it for mobile in recognition of the fact that more than a quarter of its customers start their journey with the brand on mobile devices. The mobile platform, developed by Usablenet, has helped drive a 200% rise in mobile traffic over the past year. Champneys is also currently building a data system that combines its six current databases which are separate to each spa it operates, to create a single customer view. The platform is due to launch in January, after which the brand plans to build a CRM programme that can provide targeted personalised offers to consumers. It will also use the insight gleaned from its data to shape its strategy. Champneys currently runs six spas in the UK and sells a range of beauty products at high street retailers and department stores.

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Luxury Daily

Mercedes increases mobile traffic 170pc over one year

October 22, 2012

Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz USA has seen an uptick in mobile traffic over the past year and recently enhanced its mobile site to better reach and engage affluent consumers. The company partnered with Usablenet to help develop its mobile-optimized site. Mercedes believes that the new mobile site will be an effective way for the company to communicate brand and product attributes to its customers. “Mercedes partnered with Usablenet to create a luxury mobile experience consistent with its brand in response to the growing need of customers to use mobile as part of their vehicle purchase journey,” said Carin van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet, New York. “For example, Mercedes noticed that many of its customers were browsing vehicles while out on the weekends,” she said. “They recognized that the ideal mobile solution must enable consumers to search for Mercedes vehicles and complete their initial discovery on the go. “Specifically, we worked with Mercedes to create a mobile experience that achieves two goals – first, to capture buyers’ interest when browsing Mercedes vehicles and, second, to build loyalty with existing Mercedes car owners.” Mobile loyalty Consumers can access the new mobile site by entering http://mbusa.com on their mobile browser. The enhanced mobile site aims to provide affluent consumers with information that ensures that they are efficiently connected with Mercedes-Benz dealers at any time from their mobile device. After seeing a traffic growth of 170 percent, as well as strong customer demand, Mercedes decided to add new features to better understand the car buyer’s behavior and needs. On the new mobile site, consumers can discover and learn about the company’s full line of luxury vehicles through comprehensive specifications, high-resolution image galleries with carousel browsing and tap-tap zoom functionality and videos. Additionally, the mobile site includes GPS functionality to make it easy for customers to find a nearby authorized dealer.

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Through the mobile site, consumers can also customize vehicle interior options and change exterior colors. “The Mercedes mobile solution effectively facilitates what the automotive customer most wants to accomplish when engaging with the brand via mobile,” Ms. Vuuren said. “The enhanced mobile site offers an experience that is contextually relevant by highlighting features and functionality that are helpful throughout the purchase phase all the way through the ownership phase. “The mobile solution we built successfully enables Mercedes to help the mobile user find what they are looking for as quickly and elegantly as possible, which was a primary goal for the brand,” she said. Driving experiences By enhancing its mobile site and adding new and relevant features, Mercedes is able to connect with consumers on a deeper level. Over the next year, more brands will recognize that it all comes down to the experience they want to create for their customer. One size does not fit all when it comes to mobile. “You need to create a relevant experience for each channel to address customer needs and context,” Ms. Vuuren said. “The mobile experience you deliver is increasingly a reflection of your brand’s overall relationship with the user. “Successful mobile and multichannel engagement starts with having a deep understanding of what the customer is trying to do at each stage of the journey,” she said. “While mobile users want easy-to-use functionality like store locators and product research capabilities, tablet users want to dream and discover the brand in a touch-friendly environment. “The in-store or on-premise experience sits at the center of this journey, with the ability of mobile to help lead to deeper on-property engagement by synchronizing the experience across channels.”

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Internet Retailing Decorating goes digital as Homebase launches mobile site driven by consumer demand October 22, 2012

To encourage great home enhancement projects whenever and wherever the creative impulse strikes, Homebase – one of the UK’s leading ‘home enhancement’ retailers – has launched a dedicated mobile site with Usablenet as it sees growing numbers of customers accessing its website via smartphone. “We recognised that a large number of our customers wanted to interact with the website whilst on the move and we wanted to ensure that we delivered a solution which improved the mobile experience by making things quicker and easier to buy or research,” says Andy McWilliams, Head of Multi-Channel for Homebase. “It was important for Homebase to partner with an organisation who could support our objectives; with demonstrable success developing mobile solutions for leading Multichannel retailers.” The Homebase mobile optimised site has a user-friendly design and enables secure ecommerce transactions. Once customers find the products they want, they can easily check stock in their local store and find out how to get there. The store locator feature maximises revenue opportunity by driving foot traffic to the retailer’s nearest store. The site also features a customisable scrolling image banner for relevant promotions and product displays without additional page loads, delivering a fast and enjoyable shopping experience. Additional interactive features include customer reviews and tap-to-zoom functionality to aid shoppers in their purchase decision process. “Homebase is setting the standard in home enhancement by designing a mobile experience customised for their discerning, mobile-savvy customer,” says Carin van Vuuren, CMO of Usablenet. “They recognised the potential of increasing traffic and engagement by serving their customers through a unique mobile experience designed to communicate style, convenience and choice.” The Usablenet platform is one of the driving forces behind mobile commerce in the UK and Europe, through recent launches of innovative m-commerce sites and dynamic multi-channel experiences for a broad range of industry leaders including Marks & Spencer.

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Mobile Commerce Daily

Aeropostale puts mobile in the forefront of new concept store

October 23, 2012

Mall-based retailer Aeropostale is incorporating mobile into its new concept store that uses technology to engage in-store shoppers. The company partnered with Usablenet to execute the mobile effort. Aeropostale’s Roosevelt Field locaton will feature fitting rooms, which are equipped with iPads and help the company better interact with its customers. “Aeropostale’s core objective was to establish an emotional connection with its always-online millennial shopper,” said Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet. “By partnering with Usablenet, Aeropostale created a customizable in-store experience to reflect the personal style and needs of its hip target audience,” she said. Aeropostale Inc. is a specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, principally targeting 14 to 17 year-old young women and men. New technologies Aeropostale believes that through this new initiative, the company will be able to make an emotional connection with its customer. Aeropostale is placing Apple iPad devices into its fitting rooms, where customers will be able to select and listen to their favorite music while trying on clothes. Additionally, shoppers will find four iPad kiosks placed throughout the store that feature a user-generated build-your-own outfit guide, which can be emailed to yourself and friends for online purchase. Customers will be able to shop an optimized version of the brand’s Web site for hard-to-find items and place orders to ship home. Aeropostale implemented the iPad devices in-store after seeing a proliferation of tech-savvy consumers. Through this effort, the company is able to use mobile to connect with consumers while they shop in-store.

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“Aeropostale’s recent in-store efforts are a first for the clothing company; it extends their mobile strategy to multichannel, so that they can better engage with their target audience,” Ms. Vuuren said. “Aeropostale is taking advantage of what mobile technology has to offer in the retail space; they demonstrate a keen understanding of what their customer wants and delivers an experience to satisfy their need,” she said. “This interactive, digitally engaging experience provides the consumer with complete control over their shopping journey.” Interactive shopping In addition to being able to build their own outfits, as well as send it to friends and family, consumers are able to scan in store bar codes to learn more about products from the Web site, receive alternate color suggestion and check out items that go well with certain looks. Consumers can also vote on the music playing in the store – a feature that attempts to keep shoppers engaged by crowdsourcing the store’s playlist. “Over the next year, we expect to see more brands recognize the importance of adding social to their in-store experience and we believe tablet is the touch-point that will enable these customer conversations,” Ms. Vuuren said. “As more brands prioritize customer-focused experiences, fixed-wall tablets will become a staple in retailers’ multichannel strategy,” she said. “Experimenting in-store and sharing on social adds dimension to the typical try-and-buy practice – which can be fun and more enjoyable. “As shoppers continue to tweet, blog, and Facebook their shopping experience, these behaviors will continue to create opportunities for brands. Today’s consumers want an immersive shopping experience across all channels that allows them to move about the web and the store without ever disrupting their shopping journey.”

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Marketwire Hard Rock International Selects Usablenet October 25, 2012

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Oct 24, 2012) - Usablenet, the global leader in mobile and

multi-channel technology, today announced that it has partnered with Hard Rock International,

to power the brand's forthcoming mobile brand experience. Hard Rock will expand its digital

presence with the launch of a dedicated mobile site that enables smartphone users to engage

in a more relevant brand experience from their mobile phones.

"Hard Rock is committed to deepening customer engagement with both new and existing

guests by delivering smartphone users a unique mobile experience that is consistent with our

brand," said Kim Matlock, Senior Director of Digital Marketing and CRM. "Usablenet's

guidance through the mobile deployment process has been exactly in line with our brand

goals, and their strategic leadership and design execution have been invaluable."

Scheduled to be available in December, the smartphone-optimized HardRock.com will deliver

a unique digital brand experience that is customized for the mobile customer journey, offering

users the ability to:

Search for Hard Rock Cafe locations and book reservations

Search Hard Rock Hotel information, check room availability, access special offers and book reservations

Browse Hard Rock's memorabilia library and access high-resolution image galleries with tap-zoom functionality

Easily share content and experiences across social platforms, like Facebook and Twitter

"It's clear that today's digitally-savvy consumers are demanding a mobile experience that is not

a shrunken-down version of the traditional website," said Carin van Vuuren, Chief Marketing

Officer at Usablenet. "Our partnership with Hard Rock aims to solidify its commitment to deliver

users a unique mobile experience consistent with Hard Rock's fun and unique brand."

About Usablenet

Usablenet is a global technology leader for mobile and multi-channel customer engagement.

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Usablenet's powerful platform enables leading companies in all sectors to create compelling

experiences for their customers across multiple channels, including mobile, tablet, social, and

in-store kiosks. Usablenet customers include Amtrak, Delta, Expedia, FedEx, Marks and

Spencer, Ritz Carlton, ShopNBC, Victoria Secret and others. Founded in 2000, Usablenet is a

private company headquartered in New York City with offices in Los Angeles, Italy and

London. For more information, visit us athttp://www.usablenet.com or on Twitter @Usablenet.

About Hard Rock International

With a total of 179 venues in 54 countries, including 140 cafes and 18 Hotels/Casinos, Hard

Rock International is one of the world's most globally recognized brands. Beginning with an

Eric Clapton guitar, Hard Rock owns the world's greatest collection of music memorabilia,

which is displayed at its locations around the globe. Hard Rock is also known for its collectible

fashion and music-related merchandise, Hard Rock Live performance venues and an award-

winning website. In addition to the two flagship Seminole Hard Rock Hotels and Casinos in

Tampa and Hollywood, Fla., Hard Rock Hotels/Casinos are located in Las Vegas, Biloxi,

Orlando, Chicago, San Diego, Pattaya, Bali, Macau, Penang, Singapore, Punta Cana,

Panama, Cancun and Vallarta. Additional hotel and casino projects planned to open include

Riviera Maya in 2013 and Abu Dhabi in 2014. Additional announced hotel and casino projects

include Aruba, Hungary and Northfield Park. Hard Rock International is owned by Seminole

Hard Rock Entertainment, Inc. For further details on Hard Rock Hotels and Casinos,

visit www.hardrockhotels.com. For more information on Hard Rock International,

visit www.hardrock.com.

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Fierce Content Management

Mercedes-Benz sees huge gains in mobile traffic

October 26, 2012

In case you're looking for proof that you need a strong mobile strategy, look no further than

high-end car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz, which has found that by paying attention to

analytics they were able to see a huge increase in mobile traffic, and based on that, introduce

a new enhanced mobile web browsing experience.

Not enough businesses pay attention to analytics and if you see a burst in traffic, you have to

tailor your products to meet that. In fact, ideally you probably want to have an optimal mobile

experience in place because chances are that mobile traffic is coming, even for high-end car

shopping.

Mercedes found that by monitoring their user's traffic patterns, that mobile traffic increased

over 170 percent. That's not something you can ignore and wisely, the car maker took steps by

building a new mobile browser-based experience. Recognizing that this might be out of their

area of expertise, Mercedes turned to Usablenet to help them build the mobile website.

I took a look at the mobile version of mbusa.com and it has been designed for small-screen

viewing and navigation and takes advantage of touch screen capability. It can use location

information from the phone's GPS to help you find the nearest dealer. It has a simple, clean

interface that's easy to navigate. The pictures in the galleries have been optimized for a small

screen and let you see the beauty of the cars and what comes in them in a few taps.

Usablenet Chief Marketing Officer Carin Van Vuuren says companies like Mercedes have to

be engaged with customers in multiple channels. "The modern car buyer does not wish to be

tethered to their computer to research vehicles," she said.

It seems to be working. Mercedes reported that 50 percent of visitors are looking at product

pages and a similar, if slightly lower number, are exploring more deeply, which proves a mobile

strategy even for something like a luxury automobile maker is essential.

For more information:

- see the Mercedes-Benz press release

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Betabeat

NYC Startups Batten Down the Hatches for Sandy October 28, 2012

With mass transit closed and dangerous storm surges set to wallop the city, New York startups aren’t messing around when it comes to hurricane prep. Most, like Usablenet, Kickstarter, HowAboutWe and SideTour, are urging employees to work from home due to the closure of the MTA system. “We have a simple rule of thumb that if the subways are shut down, the office is closed and people can work from home,” Onswipe CEO Jason Baptiste told Betabeat over email. “A few of us are actually crashing here over the weekend – myself and a few engineers. We built the place to be like a home, so it’s a great place to be stuck for a few days .” “For those that are staying here, we have ample food, beverage, and entertainment. More iPads than flashlights,” he added. Hey, we’re sure there’s a flashlight app. “The offices are closed; we’re working from home,” a developer at Etsy told Betabeat. “We put the Brits on point for Ops, though, in case the power goes out.” Many startups are also thanking their lucky stars that their data centers are out of the line of the storm. “Usablenet’s platform is cloud-based and none of its U.S. data-centers are likely to be affected,” a rep for the company told Betabeat. “We’re on Amazon Web Services, but we’re in different data centers for redundancy,” Mr. Baptiste said. “We’re not worried about downtime.” Of course, startups with businesses that revolve around reliable delivery services are rolling out massive contingency plans to combat the bad weather and get the goods to their customers on time. H. BLOOM, a subscription flower service that delivers luxurious bouquets monthly to homes and corporations, is well-versed in the weather troubles heaped upon delivery startups. “Unlike a lot of other technology businesses in New York, a pretty big component of our business is dependent on touching tangible products, receiving it, making something beautiful out of it and then actually delivering it, so there’s no question that a situation like this has an impact on the business,” said Sonu Panda, COO of H. BLOOM. “The thing that is comforting to

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us is having external things impacting our operations is a regular occurrence. We have a bit of a scale–like if President Obama visits the U.N. and eastern Manhattan is turned into a traffic mess, that has an impact. This is a much more significant event and requires a lot more preparation, but in general we’re sort of used to these fire drills.” “We got through hurricane Irene just fine,” he added. By beefing up operations workers and having them start their shifts earlier, H. BLOOM intends to fulfill all delivery requests tomorrow. “We’ve got teams that will be getting in as early as 3:30 a.m. tomorrow morning to be able to facilitate deliveries before the storm hits New York,” Mr. Panda said. “So the expectation is that everyone will be as delighted as they normally would be. In the instances in which deliveries can’t be done, we’ll be communicating early and often about what our alternative plans are.” Seamless, the popular food delivery service that keeps many New Yorkers from starving on a daily basis, is also working hard to ensure that users not only receive their orders in a timely fashion, but that they also know what to expect when ordering delivery in inclement weather. Likewise, the company is working with those restaurants who request it to close down their ordering service on Seamless during the storm. “We have the ability to customize neighborhood delivery times so that our customers are able to see most of the times with relatively accurate estimates,” Seamless’ VP of marketing, Ryan Scott, told Betabeat. “It’s not always perfect just because of the thousands of restaurants we have across the country, but we do our best to look at the neighborhoods that are going to be mostly impacted and use those data points to come up with a plan of attack.” Mr. Scott said that users ordering in areas affected by the storm will also soon see a message crop up when they navigate to Seamless, letting them know about possible delivery delays. We wondered if the site had seen any spikes in service over the past few days as New Yorkers brace for the storm, but Mr. Scott said that data wasn’t available yet. “Without seeing the data until tomorrow I wouldn’t know if tonight produced some sort of a record number, but I’m sure it will be a good day,” he added. Of course, Seamless also urges you delivery lovers to tip your deliveryman well–it’s probably not very fun to brave a superstorm just to bring you some pizza.

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Retail TouchPoints

New Aéropostale Concept Store Features Mobility And Interactivity

November 01, 2012

Forward-looking retailers no longer are combating the continual rise of online shopping, but increasing in-store engagement and sales by leveraging more interactive digital tools and technologies. Aéropostale, a mall-based apparel retailer for teens, is upping the ante on its brick-and-mortar experience with a new concept store, which was unveiled at the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, Long Island, on Oct. 19, 2012. Featuring interactive fitting rooms and iPad self-service stations, the new store was developed to “inspire a more solid emotional connection with our teen audience,” Anthony McLoughlin, Senior Director of Interactive Marketing for Aéropostale, told Retail TouchPoints. Following extensive qualitative and survey-based research of its core demographic of teenagers 13 to 17 years old, Aéropostale embraced the iPad as the device of choice to address shoppers’ growing interest in using technology to shop. To help create a stronger connection between the brand and its shoppers in the new store, Aéropostale partnered with Usablenet, a multichannel technology company, to place four iPad kiosks strategically throughout the store. Shoppers can use these devices to build their own outfits and email their creations to friends, family and themselves. “We want to be a part of the conversations our target audience has online, via mobile devices and in stores,” McLoughlin said. “We also want to create relevant brand experiences for our customers: that’s the vision at the core of this concept. To have that relevant and emotional impact on teens, we needed to create a strategy and use technology that allows them to engage with us on their terms. We’re not just using tactics to drive sales; we’re using strategies that are consumer-centric to drive engagement and eventually create brand ambassadors.” Aéropostale shoppers also can use the iPads to shop on the mobile-optimized brand e-Commerce site and even scan in-store bar codes to learn more about items, read reviews and receive complementary product recommendations. Curated collections developed by brand stylists also are available on the iPad, creating more educational and interactive shopping experiences. “Our initial research indicated that not only do Millennial consumers want more choice, they also want to be more in control,” McLoughlin explained. “However, they also want to be

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curated to and feel that we’re introducing new styles and items they wouldn’t find in their day-to-day lives.” By providing instant access to the e-Commerce site and offering the chance for shoppers to have items shipped to their homes, Aéropostale more efficiently can connect the brick-and-mortar and online shopping experiences. Moreover, ensuring item availability across touch points will help the retailer save sales, McLoughin noted, even if specific items or sizes aren’t available in the store. While the Roosevelt Field concept store is “very much a test location,” according to McLoughlin, he reported that Aéropostale is eager to review performance and receive initial responses to the technology to help pave the way for future investments. “We then can pinpoint how important this kind of experience is to our audience and make necessary adjustments before we expand to other stores.” “From a consumer standpoint, the new mobile experience is very seamless,” McLoughlin added. “Mobile technology is very intuitive to how teens interact with their peers and their communities. Brands that acknowledge this trend and become a part of the conversations consumers are having with friends and social graphs will be the brands that have a lasting impact.” The Aéropostale team and GH+A Design, a retail design consulting firm, established the store interior to convey the best of New York City style. Exposed brick, white fixtures, dark wood and dynamic lighting embellish the entire store. Each dressing room has a décor inspired by a New York City neighborhood: East Village, Park Slope, Soho, West Village and Williamsburg.

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VentureBeat

Why the future of disaster preparation belongs to the mobile web

November 07, 2012

When disaster strikes, fewer things are more important than your smartphone. So says mobile website platform Usablenet, which reported that mobile traffic to websites of utility companies like Con Edison increased by 16,000 percent both during and after hurricane Sandy. Other sites saw major traffic boosts as well. Visits to transportation pages spiked by 495 percent, and telecoms saw their own traffic climb by 126 percent. While these numbers are unsurprising on their own, they do show just how important the mobile web has become for finding information about natural disasters both before and as they are happening. The trick, then, is to ensure that people can access that information quickly and easily. “The ability to access the mobile web becomes even more essential during times of crisis,” Usablenet marketing chief Carin Van Vuuren said via email. While Usablenet’s numbers don’t extend to weather sites, we already know that traffic to The Weather Channel increased a thousandfold during the storm. And much of that, certainly, came from smartphones. All of this underscores one main conclusion: Investing in mobile infrastructure is the most important thing the government and utility companies can do to prepare for future disasters.

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GottaBeMobile

Mercedes-Benz: How a Mobile Site Was Done Right

November 14, 2012

The Mercedes mobile site features the basics of what car shoppers need while doing preliminary research or while at a dealer. Users can quickly find current deals, option descriptions and other info that some salespeople don’t know off the top of their heads. Those looking to configure a Mercedes vehicle or get the most detailed information will still need to visit the full version of MBUSA.com. The site is much more streamlined than other auto manufacturers’ sites I visited.Mercedes-Benz’s new mobile site certainly helped me make informed decisions as I met with the local dealer to lease a new SUV last month. More importantly, the site’s helped me learn the ins and outs of all the gadgetry packed into the vehicle. One of my favorite features on the new mobile site is its video demo section, which makes it much easier to configure and use everything in the cockpit. It’s also easy to find and download owner manuals and the 484-page COMMAND navigation and entertainment manual. Mercedes Benz is known for designing some nice machines, but it didn’t design its mobile site. Instead, it hired Usablenet, a company that specializes in mobile Web sites. Usablenet helps companies such as FedEx and Ritz-Carlton mobilize their sites. I caught up with Usablenet CMO Carin Van Vuuren to learn more about how they designed the Mercedes site and why mobile sites can be preferable to mobile apps. Below is a Q&A with Van Vuuren. Can you tell us about what’s new with the Mercedes mobile site? Van Vuuren: In the past year, Mercedes Benz has noticed a 170% increase in mobile traffic to their website. In an effort to appeal to this growing mobile consumer base, Mercedes made it a priority to create an enhanced mobile web experience for smartphone users. Mercedes worked with Usablenet to bolster its mobile offerings and create a luxury mobile experience for both new consumers, as well as for valued Mercedes clients and brand enthusiasts. On the new mobile site, customers can now browse high-resolution image galleries with tap-tap zoom functionality and carousel image browsing. The site also has GPS functionialtiy so that users can locate a nearby authorized dealer. These enhancements only further enable Mercedes-Benz to connect with their consumers on a deeper level by creating a relevant experience that is unique to every device and channel. Why do companies need customized sites for each device? Why is that important?

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Van Vuuren: On mobile, one size does not fit all. Instead, it all comes down to the experience you want to create for your customer. Brands need to focus on creating relevant experiences for each channel to address customer needs and context. The mobile experience you deliver is increasingly a reflection of your overall relationship with the user. Successful mobile and multichannel engagement starts with having a deep understanding of what the customer is trying to do at each stage of the journey. While mobile users want easy to use functionality like store locators and product research capabilities, tablet users want to dream and discover your brand in a touch-friendly environment. The on-property experience sits at the center of this journey, with the ability of mobile to help lead to deeper on-property engagement by synchronizing the experience across channels. What challenges was Mercedes working to combat by creating a mobile optimized site? Van Vuuren: Mercedes partnered with Usablenet to create a luxury mobile experience consistent with its brand in response to the growing need of customers to use mobile as part of their vehicle purchase journey. For example, Mercedes noticed that many of its customers were browsing vehicles while out on the weekends. They recognized that the ideal mobile solution must enable consumers to search for Mercedes vehicles and complete their initial discovery on the go. Specifically, Usablenet worked with Mercedes to create a mobile experience that achieves two goals: first, to capture buyers’ interest when browsing Mercedes vehicles, and second, to build loyalty with existing Mercedes car owners. How does the site appeal to the Mercedes brand audience? The Mercedes mobile solution effectively facilitates what the automotive customer most wants to accomplish when engaging with the brand via mobile. The enhanced mobile site offers an experience that is contextually-relevant by highlighting features and functionality that are helpful throughout the purchase phase all the way through the ownership phase. The mobile solution we built successfully enables Mercedes to help the mobile user find what they’re looking for as quickly and elegantly as possible, which was a primary goal for the brand. Additionally, the sleek and technologically innovative functionality was created with the affluent, tech-savvy, Mercedes customer in mind. The Mercedes mobile experience is aesthetically pleasing, with sleek functionality and high-resolution images. Why mobile site vs. mobile app? When determining whether to create a mobile site versus mobile app, it is essential for a brand to know what they want to achieve with the mobile experience. While both mobile sites and apps are important, mobile apps are geared more towards brand loyalists, while mobile sites are much more scalable and designed for all users. Mobile sites are faster when searching for nearby store locations, phone numbers, and more, whereas mobile apps are meant for people that have a deep affinity to a brand, and will revisit the app on a regular basis

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Marketwired Usablenet Ranked Number 130 Fastest Growing Company in North America on Deloitte's 2012 Technology Fast 500 November 11, 2012

New York, NY, November 14, 2012— Usablenet, the global leader in mobile and multi-

channel technology, today announced it has been ranked number 130 on Deloitte’s

Technology Fast 500, which rates the 500 fastest growing technology, media,

telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. Over the

past four years, Usablenet has grown its revenue by 861%, from 2007-2011.

Usablenet’s Chief Marketing Officer, Carin van Vuuren, credits the company's growth to its

single-minded focus on creating and delivering great mobile experiences for clients. Van

Vuuren explains, "brands today recognize the importance of connecting wih their customers

through mobile. We take this connectivity to the next level at Usablenet, striving to be a

strategic partner to clients and creating the best mobile sites and experiences that meet user

goals and deliver business results across all channels."

Usablenet’s cloud-based technology platform powers the fastest and most consistently

performing mobile and multi-channel experiences for over 350 companies today. Its clients

include Marks and Spencer, American Airlines, FedEx, Ritz Carlton, ShopNBC, Mercedes-

Benz, Aeropostale and others.

Most recently, Usablenet launched its U-Experience platform, which represents a new

standard in mobile innovation that allows brands to create unique, customer-focused

experiences across mobile, tablets, social, and in-store kiosks. Usablenet's U-Experience

platform delivers experiences with context, inviting consumers to enjoy even deeper

engagement with their favorite brands and retailers across all channels and devices.

“The companies on the Fast 500 list are among those that have demonstrated remarkable

innovation, creativity and business savvy,” said Bill Ribaudo partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP

and national TMT leader for audit and enterprise risk services (AERS). “As a result, these

companies have continued to successfully forge ahead in a challenging economic

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environment. We applaud the leadership and employees of Usablenet for this impressive

accomplishment.”

Overall, 2012 Technology Fast 500™ companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 128

percent to 279,684 percent from 2007 to 2011, with an average growth of 2,774 percent.

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Mashable Mobile Traffic to Electric Companies Soared 16,000% During Hurricane Sandy

November 15, 2012

When Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast earlier this month and left many without power, those affected turned to their smartphones to access the mobile web and get information about when electricity would be restored. According to mobile website platform Usablenet, smartphone traffic to utility company websites such as Con Edison and Connecticut Light & Power, increased by as much as 16,000% during and after the storm. The data comes from 10 of the most relevant and searched websites Usablenet manages in the U.S. Other sites which experienced huge traffic growth included transportation companies (up 465%) such as Amtrak and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the New York City subway system. “During times of crisis and power outages, people use mobile devices to gain information to determine and plan the impact of the disaster,” said Usablenet marketing chief Carin Van Vuuren. “Members of the public need to be able to access real time critical information easily and quickly.” The utility and transportation mobile sites saw the most traffic influx on Tuesday, October 27 — the day after Hurricane Sandy impacted most of the East Coast.

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Forbes

Mobile Apps: The Trouble With Using 'Responsive Design'

November 18, 2012

Guest post written by Carin van Vuuren Carin van Vuuren is chief marketing officer at Usablenet. If you’ve recently chatted with your Web development team, you may have heard about responsive design. A growing trend for today’s businesses, publishers and developers, responsive design is an approach to Web development that many brands are considering to optimize their online content for multiple devices with varying screen sizes across the traditional Web, tablets, smartphones and beyond. Like any philosophy, responsive design is a choice, and a tempting one at that. Many pro-responsive developers affectionately term RD “one-Web,” which emphasizes the single set of code a responsive site is based on. This design principle utilizes coding language that responds to the device being used – whether an Android smartphone or an iPad – in order to display content relative to the size and orientation of its screen. Amid an overwhelming amount of mobile options and solutions, it’s easy to see why responsive design’s singular code seems like an alluring universal panacea for mobile optimization. However, while responsive design aims to scale web content fluidly across multiple devices with different screen sizes, it may not represent the best option for organizations aiming to deliver unique and innovative experiences to customers. A good example of this dilemma can be found in LinkedIn’s recent approach to developing its iPad app. According to Kirin Prasad, LinkedIn’s head of mobile development, responsive design doesn’t work for complicated sites like the LinkedIn iPad app, 95% of which was developed with HTML5 to target a specific set of user tasks. This approach allows LinkedIn to create different experiences on different devices based on use case and context. For the majority of sites that require an interactive experience like LinkedIn’s, responsive design limits the different designs necessary to deliver functionality for each use case. So when is responsive design an appropriate solution? When the only changing factor in the Web experience is the user’s device, responsive design is a useful solution. It works very well for content sites like magazines and newspapers, because content is simply being reformatted. If you’re accessing a publication’s website on a smartphone, for example, you still want to read the news, just smaller parts of it.

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People magazine recently adopted responsive design to great effect in order to scale traditional Web content across screens. This works well for magazines and other content publishers, as users are coming to consume content, not necessarily to interact or search for certain answers. At the device level, responsive design works best if the page contains the type of text and image-based content often found on publisher sites. However, content delivery on responsive sites has the potential to deter users. For instance, if you’re trying to deliver complex functionality built with CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, and other heavy Web development technologies, pages will be heavy and the experience will be dramatically slower on a smartphone or tablet. Time lost equals users lost, as page load times have a direct impact on your ability to deliver users a positive experience. Beyond device-specific content display, the two other pieces to consider when designing your mobile strategy are use case and context, two realms in which responsive design does not contribute meaningfully. Use case covers the driving reasons behind a user’s foray onto your mobile site – what the user is looking to do and how it can be accomplished on your site. Take an airline website, for example. When a user visits an airline’s site from their smartphone, they typically want to be able to do a few very specific things like check their flight status, check-in for a flight, or access local information related to their destination. The user expects a completely different experience from when they access the airline site from a computer, which more easily facilitates detailed flight searches. On the other hand, the mobile user’s goals are often context-driven. In “The Future of Mobile eBusiness is Context,” Forrester analyst Julie A. Ask defines “mobile context” as “the sum total of what your customer has told you and is experiencing at his moment of engagement.” Because user experience and context are the new benchmarks of a mature mobile strategy, they should drive the decisions you make when designing your mobile experience. Responsive design implicitly suggests that mobile is a subset of the traditional Web, but it is clear that people use mobile for a very different end. Consider what a user is searching for when accessing a mobile site. The user does not wish to browse on the same site that is available on desktop PC, but expects a different experience for different end goals – an experience that is fast, convenient, relevant and contextual. Many banks have done a great job of optimizing the mobile experience to help users accomplish specific goals. This is why responsive design does not work across the board – it is not able to deliver the individual experiences, like the ability to deposit a check by snapping a picture, required by mobile banking customers. The limitations of responsive design in adapting for use case and context means that it is more hindrance than help in mobilizing distinct, device-specific experiences that impart user value, such as more complicated web applications.

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The future of digital business depends primarily on mastering the mobile channel. Mobile’s mushrooming numbers are due to the convenience of remote access and a new reliance upon the delivery of information when and where little to none was previously available. When developing your approach to engaging customers via mobile, it is key to ensure your strategy accounts for the rising expectations your customers have for this important channel. Once you understand the kind of mobile experience you want to create, you can decide whether adopting a responsive design philosophy can deliver upon these expectations and goals. While responsive design can help you achieve a certain measure of consistency across channels, the real prize lies with the ability to create unique experiences. A broader multi-screen approach designed dynamically by channel will enable the sort of customer experiences that yield higher engagement and contribute to overall success.

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ADOTAS

Usablenet Data Shows Mobile Shopping Increase Over Thanksgiving

November 26, 2012

Besides being a traditional day for family gatherings and expressions of gratitude, Thanksgiving has also become a big day for scoping out Black Friday deals. Usablenet, which powers the mobile sites and apps for top retailers like Walgreens, Aeropostale, ShopNBC, CVS, J.Crew, Mattel, Brookstone, and many more, studied mobile activity on Thanksgiving and found that retailers with both mobile sites and apps saw traffic increase at a higher rate from 2011 to 2012 (117 percent) than retailers with mobile sites only (98 percent). The data was taken from a random sample of over 18 million page views across mobile retail sites on Usablenet’s platform from Wednesday through end of day on Thanksgiving. Other key stats are as follows: Traffic Increases • Average increase of mobile site traffic, 2012 over 2011: 98 percent • Average increase of mobile page views, 2012 over 2011: 74 percent Consumers shop more with multi-channel retailers • Retailers with both mobile sites and apps saw traffic increase at a higher rate (117 percent) than retailers with mobile sites only • 25 percnt of overall mobile traffic comes from apps Mobile Traffic by Device • 51 percent of mobile traffic comes from iOS-based devices • 44 percent of mobile traffic comes from Android-based devices • Windows and Blackberry are present but not in significant numbers Who’s Shopping on Mobile? • 21 percent of traffic comes from North Eastern US • 11 percent of traffic comes from the West Coast • 22 percent of mobile web traffic driven from search

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“The strong increase in mobile shopping traffic this holiday weekend does not come as a surprise as more consumers are using their smartphones to browse, search and shop,” said Usablenet CMO Carin van Vuuren (pictured). “This holiday season, retailers have made it easier for mobile shoppers by offering mobile-only deals, targeted in-store experiences and a more consistent experience across all channels. “More consumers will shop on mobile this year than before, and the retailers who deliver an experience that meets rising consumer expectations and adds value to the shopping experience will be most successful this year. That means offering more than a re-rendered version of the desktop website, and demonstrating an understanding of user context. With trends like showrooming on the rise, consumers will respond to smart engagement and are more likely to act when the user experience is optimized to reflect appropriate context.”

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Upstart Business Journal

Retailers bag Black Friday weekend across channels

November 26, 2012

One of the areas that certainly rose this year was mobile shopping. Data from Usablenet which powers the mobile sites and apps for big retailers including Walgreens (NYSE: WAG), Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO), and J.Crew, looked at mobile activity on Thanksgiving, finding that retailers with both mobile sites and apps saw traffic increase at a higher rate (117 percent) from 2011 to 2012 than retailers with mobile sites only (98 percent) and that 25 percent of mobile traffic came from apps. “This holiday season retailers have made it easier for mobile shoppers by offering mobile-only deals, targeted in-store experiences and a more consistent experience across all channels,” said Usablenet chief marketing officer Carin van Vuuren, adding that smart engagement by retailers can help them take aim against showrooming. A growing number of mobile browsers were buyers as well. On Black Friday, PayPal reported a 173 percent increase in mobile payment volume compared to last year, with the hours between noon and 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time marking the busiest hour. Houston led the pack on mobile purchases via PayPal, followed by Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. In the holiday sales postmortem it will be interesting to see whether stores like Target, Toys ‘R Us and others will deem the Thanksgiving Day openings—the subject of protests by the likes of Change.org—worth it or whether they just prompted shoppers to spread their money out over those four days versus three. But for that determination, we’ll have to wait until fourth-quarter results in January, because for all the attention to Black Friday weekend, the shopping season has just begun.

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Digiday

Retailers See Mobile Gains Thanksgiving Weekend

November 27, 2012

Thanksgiving weekend proves that consumers are choosing to do business with retailers and brands that offer them more options to shop. Mobile Web and app developer Usablenet, which powers the mobile sites and apps of brands like Walgreens, Aeropostale and CVS dug into its data and found that retailers with both a mobile app and site saw a higher rate of increase for mobile traffic over the Thanksgiving weekend. The data shows that retailers with both mobile sites and apps saw mobile traffic increase 117 percent from 2011 to 2012. Retailers with a mobile site only saw a 98 percent increase in traffic from last year. “Retailers that offer customers the choice to shop via both optimized mobile sites and mobile apps are driving higher engagement than those that offer only one option,” said Carin Van Vuuren, CMO of Usablenet. “Mobile shoppers demand convenience, usability and an experience that reflects the understanding of context within the mobile shopping journey.” The caveat, of course, is that Usablenet has a dog in this fight and wants retailers to adopt mobile as quickly and as broadly as possible. Still, there’s evidence emerging that mobile is making a difference, if not to the degree many hype. Take Wayfair’s private sale site for home furnishings, Joss & Main, as an example. The company has a complementary mobile site and app. Traditionally, Joss & Main sees approximately 25 percent of its overall revenue coming from mobile. For Black Friday, it saw 40 percent of sales coming from mobile devices. Private sale site Rue La La also saw a surge in mobile traffic last weekend. It also has both a mobile site and a dedicated app. Its mobile sales increased 75 percent from a year prior. Online retailer Fab.com saw 40 percent of its sales coming from mobile devices during the holiday weekend. It also has both a mobile app and site. This may indicate that consumers are doing all they can to avoid the hustle and bustle of going in-store during this time of the year. “Let’s face it, mobile commerce is much more refined and civilized than battling it out for deals in a store,” said John Mulliken, general manager of Joss & Main. “Based on what we saw on [Black] Friday, we’re extremely bullish on Cyber Monday and the overall holiday season.” Also noteworthy is the fact that purchases on mobile devices using PayPal jumped 190 percent as of 2 p.m. ET on Black Friday this year, up from the same period last year.

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It’s obvious that more consumers are using their smartphones to browse, search and shop. According to IBM, the number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site is at 27.2 percent, up from 16.2 at this time in 2011. Furthermore, the number of consumers using their mobile device to actually make a purchase is 14.2 percent, up from 9.5 percent in 2011. “Now more than ever, retailers have the opportunity to maximize mobile revenue by giving customers the choice to shop however it is most convenient for them,” Vuuren said. The data was taken from a random sample of over 18 million page views across mobile retail sites on Usablenet’s platform.

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RIS News

Digitized Customer Engagement

December 07, 2012

Aéropostale, a mall-based apparel retailer with nearly 900 stores across the U.S., wanted to

develop an emotional relationship with its shoppers. Targeting 14 to 17 year old young men

and women, the retailer wanted to bridge the relationship from selling items to building

powerful experiences and empowering shoppers as brand ambassadors.

“It’s a story about engaging with our teens, the Millennial shopper, in ways that they endorse,

such as technology – mobile, social, tablet, text, etc. – to create dynamic store experiences,

fashion, causes, culture, and connecting with our store associates who embody all of our

values,” says Anthony McLoughlin, senior director of interactive marketing for Aéropostale.

Creating a Connection

After a series of surveys and tests, Aéropostale recognized this core demographic’s growing

interest in utilizing technology while shopping.

The retailer decided that in-store iPad kiosks would be instrumental in creating an environment

that is teen-centric, based on their fashion tastes, music and video selections and an outfit

builder.

“The new concept store is the latest step in our initiative to provide our shoppers with a unique

and innovative experience,” says Mary Jo Pile, EVP of customer engagement for Aéropostale.

“It’s about creating an environment where our customers feel at home, and free to engage in

their lifestyle while shopping.”

Digital Deployment

The retailer opened its concept store at Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, NY on October 19,

2012. The store includes New York-inspired artwork to pay homage to the retailer’s New York

City roots as well as technology to engage its teen shoppers. iPads are placed in fitting rooms,

where customers can listen to their favorite music while trying on clothes.

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Throughout the store shoppers will also find four iPad kiosks, developed with mobile and multi-

channel technology company Usablenet. The kiosks feature a build-your-own outfit guide that

can be e-mailed to yourself or friends for online purchase. Customers can also shop an

optimized version of the retailer’s website for hard-to-find items, and place orders to ship

home.

The retailer will evaluate metrics such as conversion, sales and engagement during this pilot

period, making edits to the app prior to rolling out to the entire store fleet.

“Technology has become the teen’s sixth sense, serving as an extension of who they are and

how they engage with their friends and communities,” says McLoughlin. “The store experience

must bring in key aspects of this technology to position the consumer at the center of the in-

store narrative, engaging them in more than just a shopable moment.

“The goal is to impart on them an emotional experience through this engagement that the

Millennial shopper will then see as the baseline for all experience, in stores, and other

channels they choose to engage us in,” he adds.

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Retail Gazette

Cyber Monday busiest ever online shopping day

December 07, 2012

Cyber Monday was the busiest ever online shopping day in the UK, new figures have revealed.

Monday December 3rd 2012 saw British shoppers make a total of 112 million visits to retail

websites, a 32 per cent rise on last year’s figure and the highest ever visitor number recorded

in a single day.

In total, UK consumers spent 15 hours on retail sites, an average of eight minutes and 12

seconds per visit and pure play e-tailers eBay and Amazon proved most popular, with general

merchandise retailer Argos coming third.

These three sites accounted for 30 per cent of all retail site visits on the day while the top 100

retail websites accounted for 62 per cent of all retail visits.

Amazon.com and its UK counterpart experienced the largest increase in market share

compared to Cyber Monday 2011, accounting for 12.18 per cent of all retail visits, up from

10.85 per cent last year.

Commenting on the huge popularity of the day, James Murray, Digital Insight Manager for

Experian Marketing Services said: “As we predicted, Cyber Monday smashed previous online

shopping records with Brits making a massive 112 million visits to online retailers on Monday.

“This represents a 32 per cent increase from Cyber Monday last year and is the biggest single

day of online shopping we’ve ever witnessed.

“There is still plenty of shopping time between now and Christmas however, and in particular

we are expecting a lot of last-minute panic buying online on Christmas Eve as consumers take

advantage of click-and-collect services.

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“Marketers need to be aware of these trends so they can engage with their customers at the

right time to maximise sales in what could be a bumper Christmas year for online retail.”

Experian also noted that two mobile sites were among the fastest moving websites on the day,

with eBay UK Mobile and Argos Mobile coming third and sixth respectively, highlighting the

growing relevance of m-commerce.

Indeed, new research by technology specialist Usablenet found that mobile site traffic soared

36 per cent compared to last year with a nearly 10 per cent rise in traffic via tablets.

Carin Van Vuuren, Marketing Chief for Usablenet, said: “The rise in tablet traffic is significant

for retailers, especially with iPad leading this growth, as not only is it becoming the fastest

growing channel, but users have a higher basket value than smartphone shoppers, and it is a

more convenient shopping experience due to a larger screen.

“We work with our clients to provide a seamless brand experience across all channels and

devices to provide an enhanced and engaging experience that responds to and shapes

changes in purchasing behaviour.

“Cyber Monday has demonstrated that, despite challenging economic conditions, reduced

consumer confidence and a decline in retail sales, consumers still have considerable appetite

for spending.

“The next three weeks will be critical for retailers as the countdown to Christmas is in full

swing.”

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The Detroit News

Retailers adapt to mobile shoppers

December 20, 2012

The rapid-fire adoption of smartphones and computer tablets has given rise to a new kind of

consumer this holiday season: the mobile shopper.

Retailers are adapting quickly to people's almost-symbiotic relationship with their iPhones,

Androids, Nooks and other high-tech gadgets by launching shopping apps just for the holidays

and giving special deals to those who shop with iPads and the like.

Data from retailers show that people buy more when they shop using a tablet, which happens

mostly from their couches. Smartphones are typically used on the go, at work and pretty much

everywhere else, mobile commerce experts say. Michigan consumers who shop online —

whether on traditional computers or on smartphones or tablets — plan to spend about $1,350,

nearly 73 percent more than those who plan to shop only in stores, according to a Deloitte LLP

survey.

"Consumers want to be more innovative in the way they shop," said Mark Davidoff, Michigan

managing partner at Deloitte. "… They want to be in the hustle and bustle. But they are now

carrying their trusted partner with them in all of this — their smartphone — to allow them to be

smarter, multidimensional shoppers while in a store."

Deloitte surveys show 43 percent of Michigan respondents said they own a smartphone, up 6

percentage points from 2011. According to its survey, almost two-thirds or 64 percent of

smartphone owners in Michigan plan to use their devices for holiday shopping.

There has been a more than 400 percent surge since 2010 in mobile shopping's share of

online Black Friday holiday sales, according to IBM's Digital Analytics Benchmark survey.

About one of every six online Black Friday sales this year used a smartphone or a tablet, IBM

found.

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Tablets have had a meteoric rise. They took three years to reach 40 million units in U.S. sales

in recent months, according to comScore, while smartphones took about nine years to reach a

similar level.

Nationwide, Chicago-based consumer research firm e-tailing group estimates that 1 in 3

people will use their mobile devices to make a purchase between Black Friday and the new

year.

Ron Elkus, co-owner of clothing boutique The Shirt Box in Farmington Hills, is among those

who prefer a smartphone to a traditional computer to shop online.

"I find that it's handy, it's easy and it goes with me wherever I go," Elkus said. "… In the future,

people will be able to do everything on their iPhones; everything will be contained in that little

device. If your website is not up to par, then you'll be missing out."

Retailers understand the power of mobile shoppers and more cater to them. Wal-Mart Stores

Inc. this past weekend offered only its mobile-app users savings of up to 40 percent on its top

holiday gifts, including toys, video games and electronics. The world's largest retailer said its

mobile traffic is highest on the weekends, so the offer was made on Sunday to catch that

traffic.

Mobile shopping isn't problem-free. Entering credit card data on a smartphone can be slow,

some websites aren't user-friendly and quickly purchasing multiple items at different stores is

far too difficult, technology experts like Jason Kincaid of web publication Tech Crunch said.

Analysts say consumers also should beware of identity theft and downloading unfamiliar apps

that may compromise personal data.

But companies such as Usablenet are working to solve some of these problems.

The New York-based company is creating the mobile experiences that draw in consumers via

their smartphones and tablets.

Chief Marketing Officer Carin van Vuuren called smartphones a consumer's "third hand"

because they have become indispensable.

The company, which started out creating technology to make websites easier to navigate for

the visually impaired, now work with stores internationally to make their m-commerce usable,

sleek and, most important, simple.

"This is the first major holiday where (retailers) have to think about a multi-channel strategy,"

van Vuuren said. "The sites are for one brand, but the experiences have to be different. People

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browse and shop differently on smartphones, tablet and traditional computers. Yet these

experiences have to complement one another."

For example, L.L. Bean created an easy-to-navigate smartphone site that has a banner across

the top that promotes the retailer's 16 days of pre-Christmas sales. Users must return daily to

see the new sale, van Vuuren said, which increases the chances of making a sale.

Men especially feel comfortable with m-commerce, a market that retailers are sure to notice in

the years to come, said Liat Ben-Zur, senior director of software strategy and business

development at Qualcomm. The company also is paying attention to people's use of what are

known as "proximity-based" couponing and experiences. It's another way of saying that

retailers can better track shoppers, their preferences and try to entice them into a store

instantly.

"Proximity-based strategies give you the capability to know what devices, places and people

are next to you right now," Ben-Sur said. "Studies show how that changes consumer behavior.

If you knew that Banana Republic was having a 50 percent off sale as you walk by the store,

chances are you'd go in to check it out."

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Chain Store Age

IT Hot Buttons

December 27, 2012

From mobile payments to mining big data for customer insights, savvy retailers are using all

the tools at their disposal to engage and connect with shoppers and provide relevant,

convenient and personalized shopping experiences across all channels.

As retailers competitively position themselves for growth in 2013 and beyond, there are a

number of hot buttons or key considerations that will be driving their strategies. Here is a look

at some of the top ones:

Marketing and IT collaboration

Reaching today’s digitally connected, channel-surfing and social network-linked customers

requires a certain set of skills — and it also requires something that, until very recently, was

almost unheard of in retail: close collaboration between IT and marketing.

A recent survey by IBM drives the point home: Sixty percent of marketers point to their lack of

alignment with the company’s IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching today’s

consumers.

“This research indicates that as new channels continue to mature and consumer habits evolve,

marketing and IT have no alternative but to emerge from their traditional silos and form a

strong partnership that puts the business in a position to succeed,” said Yuchun Lee, VP, IBM

Enterprise Marketing Management Group. “CMOs and CIOs, an ‘odd couple’ in some

respects, will be the catalysts in forging this union and enabling the types of personalized

multichannel brand relationships that today’s customers demand.”

Some retailers are already making the leap, from Saks Inc. to Macy’s to Guess?, all of which

are working to blend the expertise of their CMOs and CIOs. Supermarket retailers are also

making the leap. Similar to many other retailers, Salt Lake City-based Associated Food Stores’

IT and marketing teams historically operated completely separate from one another,

occasionally joining efforts on separate projects, according to Jason Sokol, the company’s

director of marketing.

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But all that changed when the company began exploring a new loyalty program that would

allow them to tie actionable data back to consumers.

The team chose a platform (from Accelitec, Bellingham, Wash.) that allows it to deliver

targeted promotions, email marketing and electronic daily deals, similar to those found on

Groupon or LivingSocial.

Associated launched the program in its Macey’s banner in October and had 50% of its

shoppers using the program in less than two months, greatly exceeding its goal. Associated

expects to deploy it within additional corporate and membership stores. The IT and marketing

partnership has been and will remain the driving force behind the rollout, Sokol noted.

Social Analytics

Social media is becoming such a strong part of the customer experience that 86% of best-in-

class retailers are using the channel as an interactive touchpoint, according to Aberdeen

Group. Yet, retailers still struggle with how to track social media activity and its impact on

sales. To avoid operating social channels in a silo, retailers are applying analytics.

Apparel retailer Caché understands that social media is a critical component needed to create

an intimate shipping experience between the shopper and the brand. Besides appointing a

social media manager dedicated to bolstering social media presences across sites such as

Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, the retailer is working on a community site, or a portal that will

incorporate social elements, including blogs, product reviews, a social Q&A page, “look books”

and links to social media pages.

The company is also delving into analyzing activity occurring on the portal through an

integrated reporting tool from its New York City-based mobile provider Usablenet. All pages

are tagged with code. As users share photos or comments with friends on their social media

pages, a dedicated URL is published on users’ friends’ social pages. As these friends click on

the link, the tagging solution captures the conversion back to the site.

A dashboard gives Caché users insight into what shoppers shared, how many people they

reached and new sales from connections. They can also look at specific timeframes and dates.

The program will launch during the first quarter.

Digital connections: the omnichannel imperative

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The Web has helped retailers break down the proverbial store walls, allowing shoppers to

interact with brands any time of the day. And with consumers quickly adopting emerging digital

solutions, retailers have gained new ways to interact with them. It also makes it easier for

retailers to connect with shoppers throughout the shopping experience, both at home and at

the store — the key to a successful omnichannel experience. Now retailers are evaluating how

to leverage these solutions at store level to improve the in-store experience.

“Digital solutions are what retailers need to revitalize the store experience, especially as more

millennials enter the marketplace,” said Eric Olson, VP education strategies, National Retail

Federation, Washington, D.C.

Retailers are adding kiosks, digital signage and proprietary mobile solutions to interact with

shoppers as they make purchase decisions at store level. But it is consumers’ personal smart

devices that could expand customer engagement. The technology helps chains localize

conversations, promotions and pricing — all efforts that build loyalty.

Hallmark Gold Crown leveraged the personal technology to deliver a digital catalog of its

popular line of Keepsake Ornaments. Created with Bangalore, India-based Infosys, the book is

available online and through a downloadable app.

Walgreens, Deerfield, Ill., made a similar move with its new mobile loyalty program, Balance

Rewards. Supported by a mobile app, shoppers show their digital membership card during

checkout to earn loyalty points.

The Mobile Store

Digitally connected consumers begin their shopping trip well before setting foot in a retail store,

often with much more knowledge than the average store associate — a crucial point forcing

retailers to embrace the power of mobility at store-level. But mobility involves two paths —

consumer-driven or employee-assisted.

On the consumer-driven side, retailers often launch apps that enable shoppers to browse

merchandise, scan bar codes or QR codes to learn more about inventory and, with the help of

Near Field Communication (NFC), pay for purchases. Seattle-based Starbucks pioneered this

process through its Starbucks Card Mobile. The free app enables users to input pre-paid gift

card account numbers that act as a virtual wallet and pay for purchases. Recently, Dunkin

Donuts joined the game with its own mobile app. Besides supporting mobile payments, it also

enables users to design and share electronic gift cards with friends and family via text, email

and Facebook.

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Employee-assisted mobile programs put mobile solutions in the hands of associates, a move

that is cultivating more informed sales associates who can help the shopper through the store-

level shopping experience. During its recent POS upgrade, Finish Line, Indianapolis, added

iPod Touch devices to the mix, allowing associates to conduct price checks, inventory

management processes and check out shoppers anywhere in the store.

Big Data

As retailers adopt digital solutions, the amount of incoming data is swelling — and becoming

difficult to manage and analyze with existing reporting tools. In fact, 40% of companies

struggle with how to integrate this data within business processes, according to Aberdeen.

In its quest to improve customer segmentation, market basket analysis and real-time

personalization cross-channel, Macys.com struggled to harness data volume coming from

multiple digital channels, including online kiosks and attributes related to its 60,000 products.

The solution: A high-performance BI tool allows analysts to build reports on products,

marketing and merchandising as they compare current information with its historical database.

Besides gaining “a unified view of data and performance across our omnichannel enterprise,

we more effectively measure the impact of online marketing initiatives and how this translates

into general sales, as well as sales by channel.” The automated report generation also saves

the company more than $500,000 a year in comp analyst time.

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Chain Store Age

Cache launches mobile app

December 27, 2012

New York -- Cache said Thursday it has launched a new mobile app shopping experience

through its partnership with Usablenet, a mobile and multichannel platform company.

Through the mobile app, customers can now receive relevant content and promotions in a user

friendly device. This introduction complements Cache's mobile web store and offers the full

range of Cache designs.

In partnership with Xtify, the app delivers push notifications targeted by location, history, and

user preference in order to deliver relevant information on new collections and promotions,

while simultaneously driving traffic to the nearest location. A double bar- and QR-code scanner

is designed to seamlessly connect customers with the warehouse information to locate designs

in alternate colors, options, and sizes, and create an easy ordering process. A streamlined and

secure checkout process paired with stored member registration information enables simple

ecommerce transactions.

"We are excited to partner with Usablenet given its experience in retail and its strategic

perspective on mobile," said Kevin Metz, VP of e-commerce at Cache. "We believe their

platform supports a positive shopping experience via mobile app, and ensures that the app has

a tactile and current feel. Usablenet aligns perfectly with our goals to make our constantly

changing collections readily available on mobile and to drive sales by connecting with our

customers through relevant push notifications and special deals."

166

Adweek

Fashion Retailer Debuts 'Pushy' Promos

December 27, 2012

If push notifications become a staple in mobile marketing for years to come, the industry can

point to 2012 when the tactic started to gain traction. With that in mind, fashion retailer Cache

was sure to include push notifications in its first mobile app, which began testing earlier this

month and will be promoted among the brand’s properties after the holidays.

As has been the case with many apps launched in 2012, when consumers download the

Cache app, they’ll choose between receiving push messages or not (basically, they're deciding

whether it's OK for a brand to periodically send them messages automatically based on their

location, shopping habits, etc.). Those that opt-in will receive automated notifications based on

their app activity, explained Kevin Metz, vp of e-commerce for the New York-based, female-

focused clothing retail chain. For instance, if a consumer browses the new arrivals or specials

section on the app, he said, that person will get a push message about specific items of

clothing they've likely just checked out.

“That’s pretty good,” Metz said. “It’s really recognizing the interaction with someone, while

getting them more engaged with the app and showing them the value of the push notifications.

We can set up timing rules, geographic rules. It’s more sophisticated than I thought it would

be.”

Cache’s 262 locations—many of which are in upscale malls—have been loaded into the app,

so Metz and his team can geo-target down to the store level. For instance, push notifications

can be sent to app users when they are within a quarter mile of a mall store in suburban

markets or within 500 feet for the brand’s New York City shops.

“We want to incent people to come in and see a new product or collection or to take advantage

of a promotion," Metz explained. "You have to provide value or it becomes spam. You have to

watch frequency, too. You cannot overuse the thing.”

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Cache's mobile app also entails a plethora of e-commerce shopping features like barcode

scanning and wish-listing. The brand generally targets high-income, well-educated,

professional women ages 30 to 50, competing with the likes of White House Black Marketand

Ann Taylor.

Tech provider Usablenet built the retailer’s app while utilizing a push notifications system by

Xtify. In the last year, ESPN, Airbnb, Walgreens and BET are among other brands that have

implemented push into their apps while working with Xtify competitor Urban Airship.

Usablenet CMO Carin van Vuuren suggested that push notifications have gone mainstream. “It

no longer feels like an invasion,” she said. “It’s feeling more like an invitation. It’s signaling a

greater degree of personalization in the app experience. Of all the app launches we’ve done

this year, half have included push notifications. We are seeing a lot more uptake.”

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Apparel Magazine

Cache's Usablenet-powered Mobile App Offers Easy Ordering

December 28, 2012

Specialty retail chain Cache, Inc. launched its mobile shopping app through its partnership with

multiplatform provider Usablenet. Cache developed the app in response to increased traffic to

its mobile site and allows customers to multitask while shopping thereby forwarding the

company's objective to engage with its customers in all environments. Through the mobile app,

customers can now receive relevant content and promotions from the Cache brand. This

introduction complements Cache's mobile web store and offers the full range of Cache

designs.

In partnership with Xtify, the app delivers push notifications targeted by location, history, and

user preference in order to deliver relevant information on new collections and promotions,

while simultaneously driving traffic to the nearest location. A double bar- and QR-code scanner

is a convenient in-store tool designed to seamlessly connect customers with the warehouse

information to locate designs in alternate colors, options, and sizes, and creates an easy

ordering process. A streamlined and secure checkout process paired with stored member

registration information enables simple e-commerce transactions.

"We are excited to partner with Usablenet given its experience in retail and its strategic

perspective on mobile," said Kevin Metz, vice president of e-commerce at Cache. "We believe

their platform supports a positive shopping experience via mobile app, and ensures that the

app has a tactile and current feel. Usablenet aligns perfectly with our goals to make our

constantly changing collections readily available on mobile and to drive sales by connecting

with our customers through relevant push notifications and special deals."

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Internet Retailer

Caché entices in-store shoppers with an iPhone app

December 28, 2012

Women’s apparel retailer Caché Inc., No. 544 in the Internet Retailer Second 500 Guide has

released an iPhone app targeted at in-store shoppers. The app includes a bar code scanner

that provides product information about the items shoppers scan and an opt-in push

notification system that sends alerts about sales and events at nearby Caché stores, with a

store locator, says Kevin Metz, Caché’s vice president of e-commerce.

Because it launched only about a month ago, Caché doesn’t have results to share from the

app. However, the app’s launch is only the start of the retailer’s increased focus on mobile

commerce, Metz says. “The more people we can get engaged and downloading, the more

impact it will have,” he says.

More than 90% of the retailer’s mobile traffic—accounting for about 30% of all its traffic

online—comes from Apple devices, Metz says. Consumers have downloaded the app about

1,000 times since it became available. That’s despite the retailer’s only promotion of the app

being a banner on the retailer’s mobile site that directs customers to download it from the

Apple App Store, he says. Caché will roll out a broader app download campaign next month,

he says.

When shoppers use the bar code scanner to find out more about items in store—including via

consumer ratings and reviews—they can also save them to favorite lists, share the items with

friends via e-mail, find the item in colors and styles not available in that store or put them in an

online cart to buy directly from their smartphones, Metz says. Eventually, the scanner, which

also works with QR codes, will bring other rich content to in-store shoppers, such as look

books or videos, he says.

The retailer aims for the app to provide targeted, timely promotions and messages to

customers, Metz says. “Otherwise, people would download it and my fear is: we’ve spent a lot

of money on this thing and it won’t keep people engaged to come back,” he says.

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The app uses software from mobile customer engagement vendor Xtify to tailor notifications to

a shopper’s preferences, customer history and location. For example, Caché might alert a

shopper when a new collection is available in a store near her, Metz says, or encourage a

shopper who hasn’t used the scanner yet to try it. The alerts may also include links, images or

videos.

“We built the app to be as much about the handheld mobile experience as the actual in-store

experience,” says Carin van Vuuren, chief marketing officer at Usablenet. “Together, the

mobile website and the app complement the store experience and lay the foundation for a

true multichannel experience for customers.”

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Website Magazine

Retailer Reveals In-Store & Digital Synergy

December 28, 2012

In 2012, the term “omnichannel” became more than a buzzword, as big-name retailers made

significant investments in streamlining the consumer buying experience across all channels.

During this holiday season, for example, Limelight Networks reported that 20-25 percent more

consumers planned to research and/or purchase holiday gifts on their Internet-connected

mobile devices this year compared to last year. A plethora of other reports also indicates that

consumers research products online before buying in store. These trends all lead to the need

for retailers to provide a consistent, relevant and intuitive experience across all channels.

Companies like Cache, a specialty chain of women’s apparel stores, recognize this need.

Recently the retailer introduced a new mobile app, powered by mobile and multichannel

technology company Usablenet, built to give consumers more real-time functionality and

engagement in-store.

The company reports that its new mobile app is a strong step in the direction of driving even

further synergies between the in-store and digital channels. The app differentiates Cache from

its competitors by focusing on the in-store experience. It includes:

-Geo-location capabilities and targeted messaging/offers based on where the consumer is in

proximity to a Cache store.

-In-store mobile barcode scanning that allows consumers to receive ratings, reviews, and other

info about a product immediately. This is about enhancing the in-store experience by making it

easy for shoppers to research products in the store.

-Push notifications (thanks to a partnership with Xtify) that deliver relevant information based

on what Cache knows about the customer's preferences. Using specific knowledge about the

behaviors the customer is using in the app to drive specific, targeted interactions.

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“We are excited to partner with Usablenet given its experience in retail and its strategic

perspective on mobile,” said Kevin Metz, Vice President of e-commerce at Cache. “We believe

their platform supports a positive shopping experience via mobile app, and ensures that the

app has a tactile and current feel. Usablenet aligns perfectly with our goals to make our

constantly changing collections readily available on mobile and to drive sales by connecting

with our customers through relevant push notifications and special deals.”