Mobile Commerce Guide

CONTENTSPAGE

3 INTRODUCTION: Mobile commerce is on a tear By Giselle Tsirulnik

5 The state of mobile commerce: The best is yet to come By Shelia Dahlgren

8 Why mcommerce is key and how to successfully enable it By Dan Lowden

11 Understanding mobile and social commerce By Wilson Kerr

14 In-store mobile engagement enhances the shopping experience By Dan Lowden

16 Mobile transforms the retailer’s relationship with consumers By Nolan Wright

18 Tips to succeed when building a mobile Web site By Jason Taylor

20 Spotlight on HSN: Mobile commerce is a multichannel environment By David Whiteside

22 How video can increase mobile site conversions By Giselle Tsirulnik

24 Will simply repurposing the ecommerce site work? By Marci Troutman and Steve Timpson

26 Five common mobile Web mistakes - and how to fix them By Matthew Poepsel

28 Using SMS and short code marketing to drive traffic to stores By Eric Harber

30 Dos and don’ts of mobile commerce site and application design By Shawn Myers

PAGE

32 A better approach to mobile couponing By Gary Lombardo

34 Four key types of shoppers and how to reach them via mobile By Lindsay Woodworth

36 The effect of HTML5 on mobile strategy By Ted Verani

38 Our failure to launch the killer mobile commerce app By Ann Gambardella

40 Case studies on mobile commerce sites and applications By Giselle Tsirulnik

44 Legal dos and dont’s for mobile commerece By Ross A. Buntrock, Michael B. Hazzard, G. David Carter and Jason A. Koslofsky

46 Bridging the gap between brand and buyers By Dave Lawson

48 Do retailers get mobile commerce? By Shawn Rowen

50 Making payments simple on mobile commerce sites By Keith Brown

52 Mobile payment and billing best practices By Rodger Desai

54 Generating consumer confidence in mobile commerce transactions By Janet Jaiswal

56 Tips for optimizing mobile as part of paid search campaigns By Daina Middleton

58 Mobile commerce’s role in transport By Jonatan Evald Buus

PAGE 2 Mobile Commerce Daily CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE 2011

Mobile Commerce Daily covers news and analysis of mobile marketing, media and commerce. The Napean franchise comprises Mobile Marketer, MobileMarketer.com, the Mobile Marketer Daily newsletter, MobileMarketingDaily.com, MobileCommerceDaily.com, MCommerceDaily.com, the Mobile Commerce Daily newsletter, MobileNewsLeader.com, Classic Guides, webinars, the Mobile Marketing Summit, Mcommerce Summit, Mobile FirstLook and awards. ©2011 Napean LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

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INTRODUCTION

The time is now for mobile commerce, whether it be through deals, mobile coupons, mobile-commerce-enabled sites or loyalty-driving applications. Retailers and brands alike need to realize that if they are not providing their customer base with some form of mobile commerce, they could very well be losing in the customer acquisition and retention areas.

Here is the good news. Most retailers know the deal. Al-ready retailers such as Walmart, Target and The Home Depot are on the mobile Web, and technological advances are now forcing them to rethink their mobile Internet strategies.

Better phones, faster network speeds and more demands from consumers are forcing many big and small shops to roll out second-generation mobile Web sites and applications that incorporate more than just product information and a “locate a store near me” feature.

Billions servedNowadays, consumers want personalization, mobile check-out, social media integration, reviews, rewards, mobile cou-pons and so much more out of their shopping experiences. It is the job of retailers and brands to make sure that they meet these needs anytime, anywhere, on every medium. Mo-

bile is that one-stop shop.

According to The Yankee Group, mobile transactions are ex-pected to exceed $1 trillion by 2015. Forrester predicts mo-bile commerce sales will reach $10 billion in 2012, up from the predicted $6 billion this year.

This guide is designed to help retailers and marketers with their mobile commerce strategies.

Articles from industry experts with tips, best practice and case studies for mobile sites, applications, SMS, social media and videos will help readers make tactical and strategy deci-sions in an age when consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across channels.

Special thanks to Rimma Kats for her excellent layout and art direction. Thank you to the advertisers and to the ad sales director Jodie Solomon.

Thank you to editor in chief Mickey Alam Khan for his guid-ance in organizing and editing this document. And thank you to all who participated in creating this one-of-a-kind educational resource. Read every page and create a new chapter in your organization’s mobile commerce efforts.

Mobile commerce is on a tear

Who would have thought 10 years ago that consum-ers would be willing to not only search and browse

the Web on their mobile phones for products, but also make purchases on their devices? Could anyone have ever fath-omed their customer base would demand a mobile applica-tion or Web site where they could research, shop and buy right from the palm of their hand?

Giselle [email protected]

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The state of mobile commerce: The best is yet to comeBy Sheila Dahlgren

But the growing worldwide adoption of browser-en-abled smartphones and tablets, coupled with the con-tinuing rollouts of 4G networks, should lead to growing penetration in mobile commerce globally.

Supporting statsIn August 2010, Adobe polled 1,200 consumers, mostly smartphone users, in the United States and found that 38 percent of those surveyed were purchasing from their mobile devices.

The most popular product categories were movies, music and games (43 percent), followed by clothing, shoes and jewelry (30 percent).

The vast majority (73 percent) spent $499 or less com-pared to $1,081 spent online over past 12 months, with proportionally more 30-49-year-olds, men and iPhone users (BlackBerry users were not that far behind) spending more than $250 compared to their peers.

To drive mobile commerce further along, marketers have to build great user experiences, a task more complex than designing for the PC with its single form factor.

Great user experiencesThe delivery of rich, relevant shopping experiences is chal-lenged by the variations in screen sizes, processing power and mobile operating systems.

In this fragmented environment, mobile-optimized Web sites deliver the greatest reach.

Adobe research suggests that businesses under-stand this. While most were planning their mobile strategy in 2010, more than 80 percent stated that within the next 12 months they would be launching

T he disparities underscore the potential for greater mobile commerce adoption under ripe conditions. Japan has some of the world’s most advanced

mobile technologies and infrastructure, with 3G sub-scribers claiming the vast majority of its population.

mobile-optimized sites.

Some stated they would embrace a hybrid strategy that includes an optimized site and mobile applications.

This research also shows that users instinctively tap their mobile browsers for shopping content instead of down-loading an application in an app store.

That said, apps do have a place. Focused servic-es such as geo-targeted promotions and person-al and social shopping utilities are best consumed in an app.

In the case of utilities such as mobile payments, integrat-ing the service right into the device via an embedded chip


makes the most sense.

Limitations of mobile Regardless of whether the content is delivered through a mobile Web site or an app, user experiences have to ac-count for the limitations of smaller screen sizes and lower network bandwidth, and mobile marketers should apply their learnings from PC-based commerce.

Adobe’s 2010 mobile commerce studies indicate both consumers and retailers understand that smaller screens demand product-viewing experiences such as full-screen imagery and zoom.

Montrail’s mobile property is a great example of a mobile-optimized site that works for smartphones and tablets.

Pages dynamically resize, equipped with rich visual mer-chandising features including full-screen interactive zoom

in both HTML and Flash.

The ongoing push for richer and more relevant PC experi-ences to drive conversion and loyalty will create similar expectations in mobile, particularly tablets.

Influencing purchase intentOver the past few years, we have seen growing use of full-screen imagery, interactive zoom/pan, 360-spin and video, resulting in year-on-year improvements in key metrics.

In an Adobe mobile survey, the features rated most im-portant by a majority of mobile shoppers to influence a mobile purchase included easy checkout (57 percent) and product and pricing information (53 percent).

Visual information, such as full-screen product view, ranks as the next most important feature (42 percent).

Among visual tools, the greatest number of respondents (54 percent) identified 360-degree spin as the visual fea-ture that would influence their likelihood of purchase on a mobile Web site.

Other top features are side-by-side product comparisons (49 percent) and interactive zoom/pan (44 percent).

Mobile commerce metrics will come to mirror more closely the demographics, browsing and spending behavior seen in PC-based commerce.

Thus, I predict more people will shop on their mobile de-vices with popular product categories evolving beyond music and games, coinciding with increasing use of rich merchandising and visualization.

Brands and retailers need to leverage their PC learnings to improve mobile commerce experiences and look to global trends in consumer behavior and technology to inform the trajectory of mobile commerce, with an eye to continually improving user experiences.

Sheila Dahlgren is senior director of product marketing for the Omniture Business Unit at Adobe, San Francisco. Reach her at [email protected].


http://www.siteminis.com

Why mcommerce is key and how to successfully enable itBy Dan Lowden

Both the adoption statistics and analyst predictions are astounding—62 percent of smartphone users already report purchasing physical goods from their phones, according to an Adobe survey.

Additionally, mobile shopping will likely account for $163 billion sales worldwide by 2015, according to ABI Re-search, and 73 percent of retail brands are planning to

Mobile commerce as its own legitimate channel was validated last year as smartphone adoption soared to unprecedented levels and more consumers

turned to their mobile devices to search, browse and buy products anytime, anywhere.

enable a mobile channel in 2011, Econsultancy’s Customer Engagement Report finds.

But you do not need statistics to tell you that a mobile retail strategy is necessary—just look around and it is clear.

At home in front of the television, in line at the supermarket, waiting in the doctor’s office or at the air-port, what are the majority of people doing?

Ultimate shopping toolSmartphones along with a retail-branded mobile-op-timized Web site or rich application for the iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device have become the ultimate shopping tool.

These devices are easy to use and carry, affordable and unbelievably convenient to engage in a great shopping experience.

It is no longer a question of whether to enable a mobile platform, but rather how.

With half of the United States population ex-pected to own a smartphone by the end of 2011, retailers are quickly realizing the importance of creating a strong and personal mobile shopping experience for their customers that is strategic to mobile.

Retailers are quickly learning that a cut-and-paste from their ecommerce site to mobile will not satisfy their cus-tomers’ need for a rich mobile shopping experience.

Due to the shift to mobile, we believe that consumers and their always-on, always-connected, location-aware de-


vices represent a strategic new channel that retailers must recognize as fundamentally different than their other channels, but one that can unify them all.

Mobile shoppers have different agendas than ecommerce consumers.

60 seconds or lessOn the go, they want to be able to search, browse and buy products in 60 seconds or less in as few clicks as possible, and the channel needs to reflect that.

A smartphone-opti-mized Web site and rich app should include key features such as large, rich product images, detailed item descrip-tions, an ever-present search capability, rat-ings and reviews, store locator, social sharing,

easy checkout and even promotional offers and product video demonstrations. But as more retailers enable a strategic mobile channel, what will we see next? Technology advances so quickly

that while strict mobile commerce was the news of 2010, a true cross-channel retail integration emerged as the story for 2011.

Consumers, used to re-searching products on their phones while on the go, are now pulling out

these devices while in the retail store to learn more about a specific product by scanning a UPC or QR code and re-ceive instant mobile offers and promotions.

More than half of consumers already report using their phone while in the retail store to check-in, com-pare prices and search for discounts, according to a

report from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies.

Retailers now have the power to provide their custom-ers with all that valuable information within their own branded rich application.

As we move forward, not only are we going to con-tinue to see top retail brands develop a mobile com-merce channel, but also the enablement of in-store mobile engagement through their own branded rich app.

Dan Lowden is vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX. Reach him at [email protected].


http://www.knotice.com/unite

Understanding mobile and social commerceBy Wilson Kerr

This is finally changing as businesses and consumers alike discover iterations that provide simple solutions to prob-lems they want solved.

A good recent example is the “daily deals near you” craze and Groupon and its kind are capitalizing mightily. By con-verting traditional sales and offers from local businesses into aggregated feeds delivered to subscribers via mobile sites, applications and email, they deliver tracked, pay-for-performance sales lift and foot traffic for a percentage.

The mcommerce miss Another simple way to solve a current problem for increasingly mobile con-sumers is via a mobile-optimized site.

This might seem obvious, yet, in July of 2010, a scant 12 percent of retailers who sell online had one, according to Acuity Group. Just because phones are Web-enabled does not mean a standard Web site is useful to a mobile consumer.

Retailers have been working on iPhone apps and social networking engage-ment and many seem to have forgotten about mcommerce. Consumers are left to fumble on small screens, as “pinch and zoom fatigue” hurts sales and keeps mobile traffic artificially low. This, in turn, reduces the perceived need for a mobile-optimized site by businesses.

Seek sales versus clicksRemember the Groupon example. Tracked incremental sales, rather than impressions or clicks, are a better way

F or too long, the promise of mobile has been based on technology that the mobile industry has heralded as beneficial, while consumers were scared away.

to gauge marketing success, especially since 50 percent of Americans will own a smartphone in 2011.

Facebook posts and tweets with links that are accessed by a mobile user instantly become pathways to a mobile commerce site where transactions can occur. These social hyperlinks are shared and spread via social graphs. Banner ads, text messages, emails, and even print ads and signage (via QR codes or NFC) accessed by mobile consumers are similarly transformed into sales drivers.


How big could mobile commerce be? Even with low re-tailer adoption mobile commerce in the United States doubled from $1.2 billion in 2009 to $2.4 billion in 2010, with “explosive” 2011 growth predicted, according to ABI Research.

Extend your current investments and infrastructureHow to take advantage? Retailers should partner to build integrated mobile commerce sites fueled by their current online retail “technology stacks” to extend and leverage these resources into the mobile and social commerce space. Simply scraping and shrinking a site via transcoding ignores key differences in purchasing behavior and stan-dard A/B testing becomes problematic.

Remember, a mobile-optimized site is not an app and there is nothing to download. It is accessible on any mo-bile phone via the regular site address or any link, and au-tomatically reformats itself to the optimal layout for each and every mobile device.

Online retailers should remember, there is no mobile Web. There is only the Web accessed by mobile consumers on the go, via devices with smaller screens. A standard site generally offers a poor customer experience and low con-version rates. Mobile optimization fixes this.

Social commerce: share the wealthOf the 750 million Facebook users, the most active 200 million-plus access Facebook via smartphone. Smart re-tailers will use Facebook and Twitter to promote special deals exclusively for their opt-in audience, and convert sales by linking to a mobile commerce site page where the special offer can be acted upon instantly.

A small but growing number of retailers are taking this a step further by offering full, integrated Facebook com-merce functionality within their branded Facebook page. “Like” button integration allows products or purchases to be shared across connected social graphs. This social com-merce is a hot area to watch next year.

Conclusions and predictionsMobile commerce will grow rapidly in 2011 as brand-ed apps fade in importance in direct proportion to in-

creased data speeds, accelerated location-enabled smart-phone usage, and the creation of mobile commerce sites by retailers.

The user experience difference is profound and our retail customers see an average five-times increase in mobile traffic and conversions simply by launching a mobile com-merce site. Mobile commerce is predicted to reach $119 billion by 2015, representing 8 percent of online sales, per ABI.

Accessed increasingly by mobile, Facebook is poised to be-come a place where discounts, sales and offers are not only shared, but increasingly parlayed into converted sales via links to mobile-optimized sites. Transactions that le-verage this same technical integration and occur within Facebook will not be far behind.

Wilson Kerr is a Brookline, MA-based location-based ser-vices consultant. Reach him at [email protected].


http://www.skava.net

In-store mobile engagement enhances the shopping experienceBy Dan Lowden

Over the last couple of years, retailers realized that a grow-ing portion of their site traffic was coming from a mo-bile device, and so many have enabled (or are considering to enable) a smartphone-optimized Web site or iPhone, BlackBerry or Android app to increase consumer adoption and transaction rates across mobile devices by making the mobile shopping experience quick, easy and convenient.

Now, retailers are seeing a new consumer demand they need to meet: the integration of the in-store shopping ex-perience with mobile engagement.

In-store/mobile integrationConsumers are increasingly pulling out their phones in the store to check-in, research products and look for dis-counts.

More than half of consumers already report using their phone while in the retail store to check-in, compare prices and search for discounts, according to a report from Chad-wick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies.

Retailers are realizing they have a tremendous opportu-nity to develop a mobile strategy that enhances the in-store mobile experience within their own branded rich ap-plication to drive sales, increase loyalty and gain valuable in-sight on consumer engagement within their stores.

Today, bricks-and-mortar retail stores still account for more than 90 percent of sales for the majority of retailers, but there is little known about customer-buying behavior in-store. Web analytics are great for tracking and understanding consumer behavior online, but what about retailers’ ability to measure the efficacy of their in-store operations?

T he mobile landscape is rapidly evolving as smart-phone adoption continues to soar amongst con-sumers. Consumers are using their smartphones at

home, when mobile and in-store to make a more edu-cated purchase decision through searching, browsing and buying anytime and anywhere.

With most multichannel retailers, there is only measure-ment of online activity such as visits, conversion rates and abandonment. But with that investment in metrics only applying to 10 percent of retailers’ business, a significant amount of consumer insight is simply not available.

Consumers, simultaneously, face a variety of challenges when it comes to shopping in-store. Many go to the store but do not buy anything or either forget to bring their promotion to the store or pick up coupons in the store that are not relevant to the product they need to purchase. Customers may leave the store dissatisfied with their ex-perience and the retailer never finds out.


A retailer-branded in-store rich app for the iPhone, Black-Berry or Android device that enables store-visit-based marketing, store product research, QR code scanning, store exit messaging and a promotional management and analytics dashboard will solve many of these issues by driving in-store sales, enhancing customer loyalty and gaining consumer insight.

Hypothetical scenarioImagine the following use-case scenarios. A woman named Sam needs to visit her local store and plans to use the retailer’s branded app to enhance her in-store experience.

1 p.m. – As Sam walks into the store, she receives a wel-come message and is asked to check-in. After selecting

“check-in,” the retailer’s app automatically opens and she receives a promotional product offer only available in that specific store. She can then update her Facebook page to share the great special offer with her friends.

1:10 p.m. - Sam uses the retailer’s rich app to scan the bar code of an item to learn more about a product that she is considering purchasing. Through the app, she watch-es a product expert video demonstration and sees that the item has received 4.5 stars with great overall third- party reviews.

1:20 p.m. - Sam passes by a demo station offering various products for sample. She looks through them, finds her favorite, scans the QR code and rates the product four out of five stars. Then, based on her choice, the retailer sends her a promotional offer enticing her to buy the item while in the store. Sam, then satisfied she has everything she needs, heads to checkout.

1:30 p.m. - As she is leaving the store, Sam receives a message thanking her for visiting the store with a link to a store survey. She fills out the survey, alert-ing the retailer to a floor sales associate that was par-ticularly helpful during her visit. Once the survey is complete, she is offered a discount coupon good for her next trip. Sam leaves the store satisfied with her ex-perience, and the retailer has closed a sale and gained consumer insight.

Each of these mobile touch points is a measureable activ-ity by the retailer to easily track, measure and understand consumer mobile use-case patterns.

Many top retail brands have already started to develop their in-store mobile strategy since it provides them with the mobile tools that they need to engage with their cus-tomers and drive sales and relevant promotions.

At the same time, customers will appreciate being em-powered by gaining access to personal offers and product knowledge so that they can make more educated purchase decisions.

Dan Lowden is vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX. Reach him at [email protected].


Mobile transforms the retailer’s relationship with customersBy Nolan Wright

We are in the early days of mobile, but for those of us who lived through the transformation that was driven by the Web, two things are clear: mobile will be even more transformative than the Web, and the rate of change will be faster.

Defining a mobile strategyWhat should a company do? First, recognize that mobile is strategic to your business today.

Once you face that fact, the next step is to outline and execute on a mobile strategy. Fortunately, we can look at what we learned from the Web to help us on that front.

The evolution of most Web strategies followed three basic phases: exploration, acceleration and innovation.

“Exploration” was characterized by small brochure-like Web sites built by outsourced resources and run on a Web server.

Companies quickly started “accelerating” their Web devel-opment activities by making Web sites more engaging to customers, moving some development functions in-house, and began to use application servers.

Ultimately, the Web became strategic to almost every business, and Web sites turned into full-blown transac-tional Web applications.

Companies used the Web to transform their relationship with their customers.

Most Web development went in-house and enterprise Web application platforms became ubiquitous. Companies either embraced the Web’s transformative capabilities or got left behind by those who did.

We can look at mobile exactly the same way with one ex-

T he proliferation of smart devices and applications is changing the relationship between companies and customers.

ception: mobile introduces a new element of complexity – a variety of device platforms.

In the Web world, one company dominated – Microsoft.

In the mobile world, there are multiple players: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, BlackBerry and Hewlett-Packard, not to mention the mobile Web.

An effective mobile strategy has to deliver the best pos-sible user experience across a plethora of different device platforms all at the same time.

Clearly the race to exploit mobile apps is on.


In the January 2011 “IDC/Appcelerator Mobile Developer Survey,” 55 percent of companies identified themselves as in the “acceleration” phase of mobile app deployment, compared to 44 percent last year.

Cloud computing becomes central to mobile Smart devices are powerful computers whose full power and utility are best realized when they are connected to the cloud.

Today, we live in a multi-cloud world.

Companies need to not only think about how they connect their mobile apps to enterprise cloud resources, but also about how these same apps can leverage cloud resources outside the enterprise, whether it is services provided for push notifications, social interactions, commerce or any other value-added, third-party service.

This desire for cloud-connected mobility was another theme underscored in the “IDC/Appcelerator Mobile De-veloper Survey,” with 87 percent of developers saying their apps will connect to a public or private cloud this year, up from only 64 percent last year.

Once companies start to fully leverage the cloud, mobile apps will engage the customer before, during and after the transaction – something the Web could never do.

Let me illustrate: merchants are using push notifications to send promotions to their customers as they drive near their stores.

Merchants are also harnessing the geo-location and cam-era functions of the phone to create a feature to help customers keep track of where they parked their cars. Mobile apps are leveraging quick response (QR) codes to drive customers to new promotions or high-ticket items, and to help customers locate merchandise online that is out-of-stock in-store.

Disruptive mobile apps reward customers with additional loyalty points when they use Twitter and Facebook to dis-tribute photos of their visit, or when they swipe specific QR codes to learn more about products.

These companies have moved into the “innovation” phase of the development cycle and are using mobile to trans-form their relationships with their customers.

Moving from exploration to innovationToday, most companies are still in the early “explora-tion” or “acceleration” phases of development – their mobile apps are informative or engaging, but few are transformational.

Just as we saw with the Web, companies who realize that mobile is strategic to their business and begin to drive rev-enue through their mobile apps will gain a huge advan-tage over those who wait.

Nolan Wright is cofounder and chief technol-ogy officer of Appcelerator, Mountain View, CA. Reach him at [email protected] .


By Jason Taylor

Tips to succeed when building a mobile Web site

In order to reach a new generation of digitally-savvy con-sumers – and not miss out on any potential purchases – brands must extend their online presence to all available channels to create an easy, personalized user experience and reach consumers through the varying ways they are interacting with brands.

Since mobile is one of the most important mediums for brands to engage consumers, it is important to understand what makes a successful mobile Web site for businesses to implement an effective multichannel strategy that will en-hance brand awareness and drive revenue.

I. Create comprehensive, consistent brand experienceTo accomplish a successful multichannel strategy, busi-nesses must start by viewing mobile as a key extension of their overall online strategy.

Consumers will expect the same branding aesthetics and core functionality on a mobile site as they experience with the brand’s existing online presence.

This means not falling into the trap of implementing a mo-bile site with a “storefront” template, but instead creating a completely customized mobile interface that extends the full power of the corporate brand and business strategy.

Just as important, businesses must extend all key aspects and core functionalities of the traditional Web site to their mobile site. For example, key functionalities of a retail site include a full product inventory with a rich image gallery, comprehensive search functionality, suggested products, store locator tools, marketing campaigns and PDP.

II. Support for all Internet-enabled phonesA successful mobile experience is one that works for all users, regardless of their device.

As consumers are increasingly using smartphones, tablets and other connected devices as a primary gateway to the Internet, it is crucial for businesses

to incorporate a true multichannel customer experience into their overall sales and marketing strategy.

In fact, the current smartphone landscape is so broad – with more than 5,000 different types of Web-enabled mobile phones – that a device-agnostic mobile strategy is necessary for brands to reach the entire market without alienating any potential customers.

By supporting all phones, from higher-end smartphones to feature phones, brands maximize their ability to capture all potential revenue coming from mobile customers.

To ensure that your mobile Web site is optimized for the multitude of different phones and operating systems available, brands must choose a strong mobile platform layer that delivers the capability and performance to sup-port all types of phones – providing all users with a posi-tive mobile experience.

A strong mobile platform also possesses the ability to in-stantly recognize the type of phone from which a mobile user is accessing the site, and create a mobile view that is optimized to the capability of that specific phone.

This means not just ensuring that core functionality is working on every phone, but also dynamically rendering a view that is best optimized for the specific device.

III. Support all payment optionsAs ecommerce managers are well aware, empowering consumers with a variety of payment options is key to in-creased conversion rates and maximizing sales.

For brands to maintain consistency from desktop ecom-merce to mobile, it is essential for mobile sites to support all payment options that are available on the traditional ecommerce Web site.

These include standard payment options such as support for all major credit cards and “Bill Me Later” features as well as more advanced methods of payment including support for PayPal’s Mobile Express Checkout.

To illustrate why brands should accept payments through PayPal on mobile, the company processed $27 billion in


payments in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 26 per-cent from the same period in 2009.

Additionally, login information and customer history should be made available across

channels to ensure that ecommerce and mobile commerce customer accounts are interchangeable.

For example, if a customer logs in to the online store and begins the shopping process, he or she should be able to complete checkout later via a smartphone or tablet, and vice versa.

IV. SEO mattersAs search engine use on mobile devices has become com-monplace – and since more than 20 percent of market-ing emails are consumed on mobile devices – a success-ful mobile strategy must align with a brand’s traditional SEO practices.

To accomplish this, deep links – a link to a subsection of the Web site beyond the homepage – must be optimized for mobile. If a mobile user clicks on a deep link from a search results page, that link must direct them to the mo-bile Web site rather than the traditional Web site.

Similarly, if mobile users receive a marketing email from a brand, all links they visit must take them to the mobile-optimized view. This will drive roughly 30 percent of traffic to a brand’s mobile site. Additionally, deep linking prac-tices must work for all Internet-enabled phones – even less advanced models with limited Javascript support.

By paying close attention to mobile SEO, brands will en-sure that their mobile sites maintain high page rankings and speedy load times regardless of the user’s smartphone operating system.

V. Track your successAfter investing in a mobile site, it is only logical for brands

to track and measure its success.

A strong mobile platform should not only provide busi-nesses with analytics tools that track the mobile site’s per-formance, but also enable the site owner to integrate with leading analytics software such as Webtrends, Omniture, Coremetrics and Google Analytics.

This seamless integration allows brands to continue to leverage the analytics tools that they are accustomed to using for their ecommerce Web sites.

Tracking is a vital way for brands to gain a deep under-standing of mobile consumer behavior, and as brands track the success of mobile promotions and cam-paigns, they will receive powerful educational informa-tion that can be used to determine and refine future mobile strategies.

VI. Mobile is an important piece of the multichannel puzzleMultichannel commerce, with a strong mobile footprint, is a crucial vehicle for brands with traditional ecommerce Web sites to synchronize the online shopping experience and open up powerful new sales channels.

Mobile is a key part of the multichannel experience, which at its most basic level, means supporting your customers wherever they are.

The consumer is increasingly mobile, moving from smart-phones to tablets, Facebook to in-store kiosks, and beyond.

In this new era of connectivity, with a growing number of devices and platforms for consumers to choose from, brands must engage consumers on their terms – regard-less of channel.

To prevent lost sales and ensure that they maximize all potential sales, brands must maintain a consistently high level of performance across all channels – beyond tradi-tional ecommerce – to guarantee consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Jason Taylor is vice president of platform strategy at Usablenet, New York. Reach him at [email protected].


Spotlight on HSN: Mobile commerce in a multichannel environmentBy David Whiteside

With an optimized mobile Web site and applications for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows and Nokia platforms, HSN’s functionalities have expanded.

What we have seen is that, in addition to shoppers using our mobile offerings on the go, they are using them as a TV remote control to shop as they watch.

Mobile apps and WebWe are optimizing customers’ experiences, making it eas-ier for them to quickly buy items that have been recently featured on TV.

Mobile has quickly become HSN’s third channel, expanding beyond television and Web offer-ings, and is today one of the business’ fastest-

growing channels.

For mobile phone apps, we have placed the item on air on both TV channels directly on the homepage.

If customers like what is on TV, they can get more infor-mation and buy the product.

Customers can see almost the same information that is available on our main Web site: product description, customer reviews, large product images, shipping in-formation, related items and links to shop all items for that brand.

In addition, all the promotional offers available are dis-played such as ”Buy More and Save” and our free shipping events.

For our customers with HSN charge cards, they can take advantage of the same “Extra Flex” and deferred pay promotions.

It is important that our customers have the ability to shop any of our platforms and be able to enjoy the same op-tions that they have come to love and expect from HSN.

Other changes include showing the same daily promotional billboards from our Web site on our mobile platforms. Our customers let us know that they wanted to be offered the same deals and preferred a consistent look and feel – and we responded accordingly.

Mobile shopping cartWe recently expanded our shopping cart functionality to give customers a fully-integrated cart with HSN.com.

When customers login, they see all the items already in their shopping bag, can add additional items and purchase any or all.

The same discounts, promotions and coupons are offered so customers can take advantage of the great deals we have to offer.


Customers can also add/edit their shipping/billing address, add credit cards and select various shipping options. We believe we have one of the richest and most complete checkout experiences available on mobile platforms com-pared to our competitors.

Along came iPadFor our iPad app, we wanted to provide an experience that is complementary to both HSN TV and HSN.com.

Customers already shop HSN.com from their iPad’s Inter-net browser, so we did not want to just recreate a shop-ping experience or enlarge our mobile platform to the size of the iPad display.

Instead, we created a unique, video-centric shopping app that allows our customers to interact with the app while

watching TV.

We have PayPal on mobile. We also provided 13 addi-tional channels, so customers can view items that have recently been on TV within the category they are inter-ested in, giving them unique jewelry, fashion, kitchen and other channels.

In addition, customers can create their own personal-ized channels, so if they are interested in brands such as Badgley Mischka, Andrew Lessman and Emeril La-gasse and categories such as digital cameras and skin care, they can define a channel to watch videos fea-turing the most recent product airings based on their preferences.

Mobile videoHSN was the first retailer with live TV on its iPhone app, and our live channels and videos continue to play a promi-nent role in what we offer to our customers.

We currently have more than 15,000 videos available for our customers to watch.

We have seen great success with our mobile platforms and are pleased with the results we have seen to date.

We are now in our third generation of mobile offer-ings in less than two years and continue to enhance our mobile experience.

Over the last year, we have evaluated the metrics from our platforms and leveraged the feedback from our customers to provide the easiest-to-use experience possible.

The customers’ ability to find products and checkout quickly has greatly improved, and we have delivered a consistent brand image and user interface across the three channels.

Now that we have the core functionality, expect HSN to implement additional features to maximize the experience on the customer’s device in a consistent manner with our offerings on the main Web site.

David Whiteside is senior manager of mobile at HSN, St. Pe-tersburg, FL. Reach him at [email protected].


How video can increase mobile site conversionBy Giselle Tsirulnik

As consumers, we all understand that the look and feel of a product is an important factor of the purchase decision.

A video depicts the product features and benefits expo-nentially better than a static image, text or audio and can better drive sales.

“Retailers should encourage consumers to interact with videos and reward the customers for doing so,” said Srini Dharmaji, founder/CEO of GoldSpot Media, Sunnyvale, CA.

“Social interactions – to share it on Facebook or Twitter – download product coupon, product reviews and other calls to action within the video will drive better sales and also helps viral promotion of the product,” he said. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets make the po-tential for mobile video within retail sites a real opportu-nity for retailers.

These devices make mobile video more feasible. There is the bigger size screen, they have more processing power and they have Wi-Fi.

More than half of mobile video is being watched via Wi-Fi so there are no worries about mo-bile networks being congested, according to Rhythm NewMedia.

These smartphones and tablets are the primary drivers of mobile video consumption.

Value of mobile videoVideos on a mobile site or within an app entice con-sumers to look around a mobile Web site, leading them

Retailers first learned the value of sight, sound and motion after incorporating videos into their PC sites. With the proliferation of smartphones resulting in a

spike in mobile shopping, retailers should now be figuring out ways to incorporate video into their mobile sites to influence purchase intent.

to spend more time there and bringing them closer to purchase.

“One of the best ways to influence a purchase decision is through sight, sound and motion,” said Michael Hirshoren, vice president of sales at Rhythm NewMedia, New York.

“Retailers can now offer informative short-form and long-form video describing their products,” he said.

“Consumers want to understand what they’re buying and can be informed beyond text and images.”

Brands need to think about creating video products spe-cifically for the mobile Web because it gives a great op-portunity to close the sale or provide more information.


A consumer on a company’s mobile site is showing inter-est in that particular brand and its products and services just by being there.

Adding a short 15-to 30-second promotional product vid-eo may help bring that individual to make a sale.

Videos should be easy to find on a brand’s mobile site.

If video content is buried within site navigation, three of four clicks deep into the mobile Web site, it may never realize its potential.

It is important, therefore, to find a way to feature video content either on the homepage or other high-traffic sec-tions of the mobile site.

Influence purchases“The ability to showcase a product with video offers con-sumers a greater understanding of their purchase,” Mr. Hirshoren said. “It gives the product many dimensions and brings it to life.

“[Retailers] can have an expert or celebrity describe the product,” he said. “You could have designers of the prod-uct discuss what makes it unique and their motivation for design.

“You could also have testimonials from existing buyers on why they purchased the product. You could show the product being used in everyday life or in an exotic envi-ronment. The options are endless.”

Online video is easier to deploy, as Flash is ubiquitous on the PC Web.

Mobile devices present quite a few challenges in terms of video formats.

For example, HTML5 video tags do not work the same way on iPhone and Android devices.

Feature phones support 3GP/3GP2.

Deploying videos on mobile sites is not as straight-for-ward as doing it online.

Although challenges exist, the opportunities are much stronger.

“A video can help the product stand out from just a text or images,” Mr. Hirshoren said. “It gives the prod-uct dimension and provides the consumer more product information.

“This can make them feel more comfortable or excited about their purchase,” he said.

“When a retailer meets these fundamental consumer needs, it will eventually drive overall sales.”

Giselle Tsirulnik is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily. Reach her at [email protected].


Will simply repurposing the ecommerce site work?By Marci Troutman and Steve Timpson

Picture this – several people sitting in a conference room from various internal disciplines of your company: mar-keting, merchandising, operations and IT.

The meeting begins. How do we approach the mobile space? One of the first responses usually is, well, let us just take our ecommerce site and scrape it over to mobile, and then we are done.

Box checked. Let us move on to social media. Meeting over. Well, not so fast there, buckaroo.

Specific objectiveWhen we talk to clients, one of the first things we have to establish is what is each company’s objective for going mobile. Not just the entire company, but also each internal division of the company – each may have a different rea-son for mobilizing the company’s online properties.

The use of the term “repurpose” when describing the ac-tion of taking ecommerce to the mobile space has been used frequently, but may be somewhat misunderstood, depending on who you are talking to in a company.

Why? Because the term has multiple meanings. The first one is to reuse something for a different purpose on a long-term basis without alteration. The second meaning is to alter to make more suited for a different purpose.

Both may have a play in the space depending on a com-pany’s mobile strategy.

It is somewhat amusing since the first question should be: What are the goals your company has in the mobile space?

Under the first definition of repurpose a client would have no budget to mobilize its site, and is comfortable in allow-ing the ecommerce site in its full state to be used on the

Will simply repurposing the ecommerce site work? This is a question that is often asked inside many companies.

mobile Web, no adjustment, and no change. We call this “full site view.”

This client has little funding for mobile, little concern for their mobile user, or no interest in going after a user in the mobile space. In other words, by definition this client is repurposing the full ecommerce site to reuse for a dif-ferent purpose, on a long-term basis, without alteration.

Under the second definition you take the ecommerce site and change it so that it has a different user experience with a smaller screen and form – the mobile appliance.

In other words, the assets that should be repurposed are the data assets, not the entire scope of the presentation


layer as viewed on the PC – the mobile version of the company’s brand should be designed for the mobile view, where the assets that are working on the PC are running through a mobile presentation layer that works for the user and, in fact, are altered to make the experience more suited for a different purpose, that of a mobile user.

There is not a right or a wrong answer to this question, there is only your business strategy.

Statistics and forecasting would say mobile customer ex-perience is the critical growth element to your ecommerce over the next five years, however you intend to approach the methodology.

ConsiderationsSo now that we have set the table, here are a few things to consider when taking your site mobile:

1. Start with the end user in mind first: What do you want your customers to experience on the mobile? Remember it is a long-term brand relationship.

2. All elements from the PC experience may not fit into the mobile experience. Choose these with a use case in mind.

3. Remember that speed of use is different on the PC compared to the mobile. Users are willing to stay and browse on the PC, but they are not so inclined on a mobile device – they want fast interaction on mobile.

4. Always remember the social aspect of mobile – this is a phone first, and is used for sharing and building relation-ships and a community, the mobile Web, apps and tablets are also used for this medium.

So, will simply repurposing the ecommerce site work?

Maybe yes in the short term, but definitely not in the long run. As soon as companies realize that the mobile pre-sentation layer is fundamentally and distinctively different from a PC experience, the better off they will be.

Marci Troutman is CEO of SiteMinis, Atlanta. Reach her at [email protected]. Steve Timpson is president of SiteMinis. Reach him at [email protected].


Five common mobile Web mistakes – and how to fix themBy Matthew Poepsel

Unfortunately, companies who have raced ahead to meet the mobile revolution have stumbled across a number of obstacles along the way.

In our extensive research, we have identified five common mobile Web mistakes that companies frequently make on the road to mobile success. We also offer strategies for overcoming these obstacles to better capitalize on mobile Web opportunities.

Mistake 1: Not understanding performance from the user perspective It is impossible to gauge how mobile users are actually ex-periencing your mobile site and its applications when con-sidering only the infrastructure within your datacenter.

Your Web servers and load balancers may be running just fine, but there are many more variables beyond the fire-wall to consider. A glitch anywhere between you and your mobile Web visitors can disrupt their experience.

Optimizing mobile site performance must begin with a true view of the user experience across your highest-pri-ority devices and geographies – for example, iPhone users in North America.

By seeing first-hand which user segments may be vulner-able to poor performance, you can take steps to isolate

In what is fast becoming a one-Web world, users are de-manding superior Web experiences and highly satisfy-ing, convenient, on-the-go mobile site speeds regardless

of their mode of access.

and fix faulty performance-impacting variables before mobile users are even aware an issue exists.

Mistake 2: Falling short of expectations, particularly when it comes to speed Most mobile users expect to make sacrifices in terms of content depth and feature-richness in exchange for the convenience of any time, any-place mobile Web access.

One thing mobile users will not sacrifice, however, is speed. Users continue to rank speed as more important than functionality in determining the overall quality of an online experience. This is not surprising, given that mobile users typically use their devices for urgent needs such as checking flight status, confirming reservations, comparing price options and making appointments.

Urgency heightens expectations for speedy downloads. If you fail to meet the need for speed, you may pay a steep price.

Retailers aiming to deliver a consistent user experience across their main Web site and their mobile site may be maintaining too much content on their mobile site.

The rule of thumb for mobile-optimized sites is to keep it clean by reducing unnecessary heavy content based on the knowledge of what mobile users want and expect when they are on the go.

Mistake 3: Not preparing for peak traffic loads Smartphones are quickly emerging as the computing plat-


form of choice, particularly with younger audiences, and with more users, it is no longer good enough for your mo-bile site to be prepared for only “ordinary” business condi-tions. You also have to be prepared for peak conditions.

As with their traditional Web sites, retailers must ensure their mobile sites, mobile apps and infrastructure can handle peak traffic conditions such as the holidays or when you are leveraging a mobile ad network to drive increased traffic to your site.

Even if you are using a third-party to host your mobile site, you need to verify its ability to handle heavy traffic because if not, visitors see your brand and will hold you accountable for any poor performance, regardless of any underlying vendor arrangement.

Mistake 4: Failing to recognize and redirect mobile users to your mobile site You cannot deliver a strong experience if it is impossible for users to find you on the mobile Web.

For retailers with dedicated mobile sites, ensuring easy ac-cess means detecting and redirecting mobile users away from your main, fixed Web site and to your mobile site.

This includes making sure any sponsored or organic search engine links redirect mobile users in a similar fashion. Oth-erwise, users will get routed to your Web site which may result in poor mobile Web experiences.

Mistake 5: Not knowing your mobile users Do you know your mobile customers – really? Without genuine insight, you might be tempted to offer mobile users your regular Web site that works well with your Internet customers.

But most feature phones and even smartphones cannot support the complex, high-bandwidth Flash and Ajax ap-plications at the heart of your site and certainly not given the diminutive screen size of the phone. Your feature- and content-rich Web site can pose usability, navigation and screen layout issues on handheld devices.

Before embarking on a mobile initiative, you first need to determine the best mobile design option for your business that allows your users to easily and successfully interact using mobile devices.

Remember, your users are going to access your mobile site in the real world – their real world. You have to under-stand their top needs before you make significant invest-ments in a mobile Web initiative.

Delivering fast, reliable mobile Web experiences is critical for businesses seeking to take advantage of the opportu-nity provided by increased mobile access.

Fortunately, your mobile Web performance can be en-hanced using the same tools as the traditional Web.

By leveraging established metrics, technologies and best practices, you can obtain operational efficien-cies while proactively optimizing performance for your mobile presence.

Matthew Poepsel is vice president of strate-gic performance at Compuware, Lexington, MA. Reach him at [email protected].


Using SMS and short code marketing to drive traffic to storesBy Eric Harber

There is really nothing more mainstream than a parade. And retailers still primarily use mass-market approaches to get shoppers into their stores, such as broadcast adver-tising, print advertising and Sunday newspaper circulars and inserts.

But while the parade is still a Thanksgiving Day staple, Macy’s has adapted with the times, and has added key on-line, social and mobile elements to its marketing mix.

Leading retailers that have a strong ecommerce presence

In 1924, Macy’s held the first Thanksgiving parade, allow-ing its employees to celebrate the holidays while draw-ing attention to the department store. It was a grand

statement that appealed to everyone – really, who does not love a parade? And it continues to this day.

have embraced email marketing, but there is still a ques-tion of focus – should it be used to drive customers to shop at a Web site or at a store?

Good old SMSSo while email can certainly be the basis of campaigns to increase store traffic, another digital medium is more ide-ally suited for it: good old SMS.

What separates SMS from other mobile marketing chan-nels is the personal connection with customers—one that comes with great responsibility.

Customers have to opt-in to receive these messages—meaning you are likely to be communicating with people who are positively predisposed, but you need to nurture that with compelling content and offers.

You cannot purely advertise – you have to inform.

For retailers, the true power of SMS is that it is a new tech-nology with unique capabilities that solves an old prob-lem: What do I have to do to get you into my store today?

Mobile loyalty programs built on SMS campaigns can help.


Business intelligence to create relevant offersA good SMS platform ties directly into retailers’ CRM sys-tem, allowing for a 360-degree view of each customer. This intelligence is critical—consumers are going to stay opted-in for SMS campaigns only as long as the offers are relevant and the content is compelling.

There is not anything more compelling than a good deal, particularly on something that a consumer is already considering buying. Cross-channel marketing systems provide the data to make that offer. SMS can provide links to mobile coupons that can be used at the point-of-sale.

Be exclusive. Use SMS to offer something that is not available anywhere else—other than your store. This can be either special promotions for mobile loyalty club mem-bers, or early information on events for the general public. Product launches, special sales or in-store appearances are excellent fodder for SMS campaigns.

Accentuate your brands. Hot brands are a tremen-dous asset. By working closely with these brands, re-tailers can create special joint events with offers for specific customers.

Ideally, these messages drive customers into the store to buy products while checking out what else is in stock.

Be social. Get mobile. Mobile marketing and social media continue to converge. Consumers are already connect-ing with their favorite brands on social media, using their mobile device.

The logical progression is to extend that connection right to their phone, through compelling content that reaches them when they are not on Facebook. In this case, SMS is an ideal bridge between social media such as Facebook pages and stores.

Get hyperlocal. Mobile marketing offers incredible oppor-tunities to target customers by geography—they can opt-in to receive location-specific messages.

There are many misconceptions about hyperlocal—it is not like a carnival barker trying to grab people off the street with in-your-face offers.

Instead, it should be subtle, relevant and compelling: “It’s Mother’s Day this week and we see you’re nearby. Come in this morning for 10 percent off of jewelry.”

They are here, but their minds may be elsewhereStore shelves provide limited capacity to offer thorough product information.

Research shows that once shoppers are in the store, when they cannot find answers on products, they are using their mobile devices to read prod-uct reviews, check product stock and compare prices.

Unfortunately, this may mean that they are checking out the competition. Mobile provides an opportunity to keep them engaged when they are doing in-store product re-search. Using short codes or QR codes, lead your consum-ers back to branded, rich content on products that will reduce the urge to comparison shop.

While SMS may not offer the pageantry of a parade, it certainly provides an important means to connect your cross-channel mar-keting efforts, engage with your customers on their most personal devices and incent them to visit your store and drive rev-enues/purchases.

By using engaging, personalized content, you are not ad-vertising—you are providing valuable information that is going to get them into your store, and enhance the experi-ence throughout their visit.

Eric Harber is president/chief operating officer of Hipcrick-et, Kirkland, WA. Reach him at [email protected].


Dos and don’ts of mobile commerce site and application designBy Shawn Myers

Dos:1. Keep it simple. Design your mobile site so it is easy for consumers to find what they are looking for.

Simple layouts and pathways will make it easy to navigate your site and quickly locate the products they want.

Your site should reflect your brand presence but does not need all of your Web site’s functionality, as not all of it is relevant in a mobile environment.

Features such as detailed product information or video demos may be valuable on a Web site, but given limited space and bandwidth, might be frustrating on a mobile device.

A focused, fast and simple to use mobile experience will provide greater customer satisfaction and higher conversion in the end.

2. Design with the unique capabilities of mobile in mind. Mobile provides new and unique ways to engage your consumer.

New touch points, such as store locaters, promotions and product availability, can assist consumers in finding the items they are interested in, whenever and wherever they want to engage with your brand.

Incorporate the most used and useful features from your Web site as well.

Consumers still want to know about return policies, po-tential shipping costs, size charts and product reviews.

The most frequently used features should also be central to your mobile site.

Building out a mobile commerce site or application is a big investment with potentially big returns, if done correctly with the consumer in mind. Below we

share some of our learned best practices around mobile site and application design.

3. Personalize the experience. Consumers do not share their mobile devices, so it is the ultimate means of reach-ing an individual.

Enabling consumers to find the products that interest them right away, with little to no searching, provides for a better overall experience and higher conversion rates.

Personalization can also help customers discover products of interest without the need for extensive site browsing.

4. Be consistent across channels. Remembering a con-sumer’s preferences and maintaining consistent personal-ization across channels improves interaction and engage-ment with your consumers.


Consumers want to seamlessly interact with your brand across all channels without feeling like they are not recog-nized or remembered at each new touch point.

They do not see the world in terms of marketing channels. They simply want to interact with your brand and prod-ucts through whichever means is easiest at the time.

5. Promote your capabilities. The adoption of mobile sites and apps is still in the early stages.

Only now it is it becoming commonplace for retailers to have optimized mobile sites.

Make sure you communicate to customers that they can engage with you in these channels.

Promoting the availability of your mobile capabilities in traditional, as well as new channels such as Facebook and Twitter, is the best means to get consumers to try them and for you to learn about how they deliver value.

6. Track your results. Understanding how consumers use your mobile capabilities is critical to improving over time.

Making sure you track what is working and how con-sumers are interacting with your mobile site will en-able you to continuously optimize and improve your site over time.

Don’ts:1. Do not change your brand for the sake of mobile. Do not try to make your brand something it is not just because you are participating in a new channel.

Mobile is a way to enhance a brand relationship with a consumer, not to try to fundamentally change it.

2. Do not forget about customer service. Make sure you maintain excellent customer service no matter where your consumers choose to reach you.

Be responsive to your consumers and educate them on how best to interact with your brand in new channels.

3. Do not fire and forget. Building out a mobile site is not a one-time event. The site demands attention and needs to evolve just as your traditional ecommerce sites have evolved over time.

Dedicate resources to the channel and stay on top of new trends and best practices.

4. Do not wait – iterate. Consumers have shown that they want to engage with your brand on mobile devices.

There are many platform providers who can help you get started today with optimizing your mobile site and experi-ences for your consumers.

Shawn Myers is director of product marketing at MyBuys, Redwood City, CA. Reach him at [email protected].


A better approach to mobile couponingBy Gary Lombardo

A study by Gartner also showed that mobile couponing was one of the top activities for consumers who use mo-bile devices for shopping.

Mobile couponing is not right for every retailer, and is most logical for retailers with bricks-and-mortar stores, particularly those who have seen success with paper-based couponing.

What will separate retailers who are successful with mo-bile couponing from those who are not will be the ap-proach they take to mobile coupons.

Specifically, retailers who will succeed with mobile cou-poning are those who approach it differently. Some ways to approach mobile couponing differently could be to:

Make mobile coupons available on your mobile Web site – OK, this does not seem all that radical (and it is not), but many retailers who have a mobile strategy and offer mobile coupons only do so as part of their native applica-tion and not part of their mobile Web site.

The reason why you will want to do so is that you will

Mobile couponing is one of the hot areas in mobile commerce today. Mobile couponing is the fast-est growing and most obvious mobile marketing

application according to Borrell Associates, with mobile coupon spending expected to grow at a rapid cumulative average growth rate of nearly 78 percent.


reach a wider audience with the mobile Web, particularly as a richer experience evolves on smartphones.

Also, many retailers today already offer coupons through their traditional Web site, so extending coupons to the mobile Web is a no-brainer.

Create mobile coupons that are store specific – As mobile Web sites and native apps are able to use the mo-bile devices’ GPS, being able to deliver location or store specific coupons to the mobile consumer will become a reality.

The benefits are enormous. Not only will the shopper be able to understand what deals they can find in that par-ticular store, but retailers will be able to promote and sell excess inventory in a particular store, increasing effective inventory management.

Personalize mobile coupons – Making coupons rele-vant to the preferences, time and location will help not only personalize coupons, but make them more likely to convert customers.

For instance, target coupons based on past purchasing be-havior or selected preferences for when consumers sign up for coupon alerts. A consumer who likes men’s cloth-ing would rather only receive coupons for those products, as opposed to women’s clothing that he would not be interested in.

Allow for consumer opt-in alerts other than SMS – Today, most mobile coupons are issued via SMS. Provide alternative mechanisms for notifications, such as email or RSS.

Let consumers opt-in for notifications that work best for them.

Integrate coupons into the core mobile shopping experi-ence – Make mobile coupons and offers an integral part of the consumer mobile experience.

Letting consumers browse what coupons are available are a great place to start, but tying them to part of the overall mobile shopping experience will maximize effectiveness.

For instance, when a consumer scans a bar code on a product in-store, searches a product, browses to a product page, or undertakes another activity on the mobile store-front, serve up relevant coupons tied to the product they are looking for.

Provide coupons through location-based services – Location-based services (LBS) offer a huge opportunity for retailers, particularly when mobile coupons and offers are tied to the experience.

While consumer adoption of LBS is still low (about 4 percent, according to a November 2010 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project), the consum-ers who are bothering to check into your location are invested consumers, or in other words they really want to do business with you (otherwise, why bother checking in?).

Apparel retailer Gap has done a great job tapping this opportunity by tying offers to foursquare check-ins, and coffee shop chain Starbucks has done the same for mayorships.

As LBS evolves beyond check-ins and mayorship re-wards, and allows for quality of experience to highlight best places to shop (among other new capabilities), ad-ditional opportunities will arise for coupons and offers through LBS.

Offer coupons through other channels – One of the major challenges for consumer use of coupons is actually finding coupons.

Making them available through your mobile Web site or native app is a great place to start, but should not lim-ited there. Distribute them through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and through blogging efforts, but also through coupon aggregators such as Yowza, 8Coupons, Zavers, Coupon Sherpa and Cellfire.

Find the one that makes sense for your brand, and increase the reach.

Gary Lombardo does mcommerce for Demandware, Bur- lington, MA. Reach him at [email protected].


Four key types of shoppers and how to reach them via mobileBy Lindsay Woodworth

In this article, we identify four types of shoppers and pro-vide ideas that retailers can use to reach them when incor-porating mobile into their marketing plans:

• The bargain hunter• The digital native• The loyalist •The roamer

Bargain hunter“I like to use my phone to research products and then buy where it is cheapest.”

Bargain hunters seek out discounts at their favorite stores, but will also check out competitive stores before purchas-ing. They look for coupons and promotions online and are beginning to rely on mobile sites and smartphone apps to research products and find discounts.

They like to shop in stores but will order online or via mo-bile if the price is right. Bargain hunters take advantage of stores’ loyalty programs and will share deals with friends via social networking.

This consumer group is becoming a dominant force, with 79 percent of smartphone users demonstrating bargain-hunting characteristics by downloading mobile coupons and 73 percent finding it useful to receive an instant coupon as they pass by an item in a store (Accenture 2010).

Ways to reach the bargain hunter:1. Create in-store signage with QR codes next to products that offer, when scanned, a coupon along with informa-tion on the product and user reviews.

2. Integrate mobile into existing loyalty programs by ask-ing shoppers to opt-in with their phone number. Send ex-clusive mobile VIP offers and use past purchase informa-

K now thy customer. A critical goal of any retailer, right? What happens, though, when you identify multiple types of customers each with a different

demographic, buying strategy and communication prefer-ence? It can quickly become overwhelming.

tion to send SMS discounts on related products.

3. Through existing advertising, offer a text-in for a cou-pon for a free sample redeemable in-store. The bar code coupon is quickly scanned by a salesperson and retailers can acquire additional consumer data.

Digital native“SMS, Facebook and Twitter are my preferred methods of communication. I love downloading music, playing games and buying tickets from my phone.”

The digital native is a tech-savvy younger individual not easily reached by traditional media.

This group spends a lot of time online and will use mobile phones to access content regularly.

Also, this group is hooked on SMS and prefers to engage with brands through this channel.

For marketers, this is good news because more than 90 percent of SMS messages are opened and read compared to less than 40 percent of all email.

Data shows that this market is ready to use phones as a wallet.

A recent report from Mobio says that 51 percent of con-sumers have made a mobile payment within the past three months and 82 percent see themselves making one within the next year.

Digital natives are not as interested in price promotions so marketers should focus instead on this audience’s appetite to be entertained through games and eye-catching brand campaigns, and find ways to integrate online, social and mobile to create true multichannel campaigns.

Ways to reach the digital native:1. SMS and more SMS. Offer a mobile opt-in club for ex-clusive offers. Include keywords and short codes in all campaigns. Use trivia games, on-package contests or text-to-win.


2. Use a tech-savvy celebrity endorsement and offer “money can’t buy” experiences. Create a branded mobile site with behind-the-scenes information and integration with Facebook and Twitter.

3. Create a game around the brand or retail line. Use con-tests via Facebook or SMS promotions involving prizes. Use SMS to gather consumer feedback and offer social currency for participation.

4. Offer small-ticket items and digital goods to be pur-chased via mobile.

Loyalist and the roamerLoyalist: “I am prepared to be loyal to a brand or store, but expect to be rewarded for doing so.”

Roamer: “I am a bit fickle in my buying behavior and can be influenced if the offer or reward is right.”

Although at different ends of the loyalty spectrum, both these types of consumers’ loyalty need to be earned or bought.

Loyalists are most comfortable with experiences they know.

Traditional rewards programs are currently serving the needs of a loyalist, with 34 percent of businesses using these strategies.

However, retailers are missing an opportunity to interact with smartphone-using loyalists.

The fickle roamer is always looking for a better deal or reward. This group often follows trends and are willing to try new things.

This group shows bargain-hunting characteristics, and ac-cess to the mobile Web allows roamers to search for better offers and actively switch from brand to brand.

Ways to reach the loyalist:1. Extend the loyalty program’s reach by including mobile. Members can text in their reward card number to tie it to their mobile phone. SMS messages can be timed for greatest impact, with offers and promotions via mobile coupons based on spend patterns and shopping behavior.

2. Loyalty program offers integrated into a smartphone application and mobile site provide a more engaging ex-perience, complete with a scannable mobile loyalty or pay-ment card (Starbucks does this really well).

3. Offer better rewards or more points to members who sign up through mobile.

Ways to reach the roamer:1. By regularly sending SMS campaigns and coupons to opt-in subscribers, the slowest days or hours can be pro-moted and foot traffic generated. Mobile alerts drive one out of three recipients in-store and 27 percent of those make a purchase (Harris Interactive/Placecast 2010).

2. Earn the roamers’ purchases through eye-catching campaigns that offer instant gratification. Include a social networking component so it is easy to share.

3. Offer an on-package text-to-win contest. Customers text in and get a link to a mobile site with contest infor-mation, creating engagement with the brand.

Lindsay Woodworth is director of marketing at 2ergo, Ar-lington, VA. Reach her at [email protected].


The effect of HTML5 on mobile strategyBy Ted Verani

Brands, retailers and marketers are quickly realizing that mobile Web provides the broad reach and flexibility that is critical for reaching today’s consumers at a fraction of the cost of native applications. And who does not want to reach their target audience in an efficient and effective manner?

While 2010 was the year of the application, 2011 shaped up to be the year of mobile Web. This is largely due to enthusiasm for HTML5 and its

promise to bring the “write once, deliver everywhere” guarantee that Web browsers have historically delivered to PCs, as well as the ability to deliver an app-like experi-ence across all browsers.

What is HTML5? There has been a lot of confusion around HTML5.

In the last year, the term became practically synonymous with flashy (pun intended) Web sites and mobile sites that use CSS3 and JavaScript.

In reality, HTML5 is simply the latest evolution of HTML, the language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) oversees the specifications of HTML, and due to the scope of specifi-cation and general nature of standards bodies, work has progressed slowly for the last few years, with completion estimated in the spring of 2014.

Nonetheless, as details of the specification are released, these features are incorporated by browser makers and used by mobile Web developers to do things such as store data locally (much more than can be done with cookies), grab location from the device and enable a canvas, letting developers create an experience that historically was only available using Flash.

Here are a few HTML5 features proving why those of us in mobile Web development are so excited about this stan-dard:

• Geo-location – simplifies the pinpointing of location by giving access to GPS API on the handset. • Canvas – allows for 2D drawing and shapes, making it possible to create graphs, animations and games.• Embedded audio and video – enables seamless access to multimedia content within a Web page.• File access – provides access to photos, audio files, email attachments and other files on your device straight from the browser. • Improved form-based input – supports line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation directly from browser.• Offline caching and local storage – enables Web apps to function like native apps by accessing information saved


to the client, even when there is no Internet connection.• Web workers – speeds up processing of site content without hurting its performance by running background scripts directly in the browser, but independently of user interface scripts.

Handset supportToday’s advanced smartphone browsers support select HTML5 enhancements, as well as JavaScript and CSS3.

This enables companies to develop mobile sites that fea-ture improved graphics and functionality for an app-like rich-media experience from a visual perspective.

With the advent of HTML5, the mobile Web presents the best option for an effective, cross-platform strategy across all devices, putting you in control of your content at much less cost than native applications.

For these reasons and more, there is a lot of enthusiasm for HTML5.

However, until it becomes a broadly supported standard, we probably will not see significant use of its functional-ities beyond experimental sites.

Mobile Web as your anchorIf you have invested in developing a native app – do not worry – well-executed apps can be very impactful in de-livering the wow factor and convenience well after its first use.

But if a cool app is your showcase, then a mobile- optimized Web site is your utility.

This is where people land when they enter your URL in their mobile browsers or discover your site by conducting a search.

And a mobile site that seamlessly redirects from your di-rect domain is complementary to your broader marketing activities, since it can be easily tied into campaigns and programs via email, 2D bar codes, search engine marketing, social media, SMS blasts, mobile ads and other vehicles.

For these reasons alone, your mobile Web presence should

be the anchor of your mobile strategy.

Many content owners and marketers are not waiting for HTML5 to be fully deployed.

These marketers realize that even at its current state, the mobile Web presents a scalable and cost-effective way to reach customers across thousands of mobile devices in a meaningful manner.

And with advanced mobile browsers supporting early HTML5 features, mobile Web sites can already serve a rich, app-like experience to almost half of consumers in the United States who use smartphone devices.

Ted Verani is vice president of sales/marketing at Trilibis Mobile, San Mateo, CA. Reach him at [email protected].


Our failure to launch the killer mobile commerce appBy Ann Gambardella

How many times have I left a store empty handed because I could not find the item in the size or color I needed?

How many times have I found no one available to answer questions, check prices or look in the backroom for a miss-ing size?

How many times have I left a store because the line was too long or I did not want to carry the item home, think-ing I would just order it online – only to never order it – or order it from a different retailer?

In-store engagementWhat if I could walk into a store, scan an item, view in-formation about the item and its availability beyond the sales floor, and then order it through my mobile device? Voila.

The magic of online commerce merged with real-world retail shopping to form a perfect and more fulfilling shopping experience.

In 2007, I was the chief information officer for a start-up company called Convergent Retail.

Convergent Retail, in collaboration with a shop-ping mall operator, would offer a new service to mall shoppers.

Shoppers would sign up to receive a handheld mobile de-vice with an embedded scanner, which could be used for all of the purposes I described above, at any participating store in the mall.

At the end of their shopping trip, they would return the device a satisfied customer, knowing that any items they ordered while on their trip would conveniently show up at their door within a week.

What happened?

A s a consumer and and retail technologist ex-pert, I was convinced the idea would catch on like wildfire.

The retailers just did not want it.

Though many were not very forthcoming with the reasons why, those reasons that were shared with us by corporate and store personnel were somewhat surprising:

• We do not need this – customers who cannot find what they want will just buy something else• We do not want any customers taking pictures or scan-ning things while they are in our store• Our associates are well trained, and we do not want to discourage customers from engaging with them• I do not want this in my store because corporate would


not ever give me (the store manager) credit for the sale.

Why was this surprising?

Because it reflects what I found to be a major, but common, disconnect with what the corporate retailer wants and what its customer wants.

In some ways, the entire experience brought me back to the very early days of ecommerce.

As director of application development for Barnes & Noble, I led a team charged with launching the very first Barnes & Noble Web site.

At that time, bricks-and-mortar retailers thought that online shopping would have limited reach outside of those items that you do not need to see, touch or try on.

Online versus in-storeOnline retailers predicted that bricks-and-mortar stores would become dinosaurs and ecommerce players would dominate.

The truth is that they were both wrong, and they were both right.

What really happened is we discovered that customers love having options – the option to browse and buy online, to shop, pick-up or return at a store, to leaf through a cat-alog or to get personal customer service over the phone.

Those retailers who understood this, and effectively played their channels off of one another, would thrive.

Mobile commerce will bring the convenience and expanded selection that only comes with on-line shopping into the real-world store experience.

And after having spoken with so many every-day shoppers, sales associates and store manag-ers, I know that someday there will be a retailer who gets it.

A retailer who understands the age-old adage, “Give the customers what they want” is a retailer that gets it.

And that retailer will also understand that the technologi-cal challenges of mobile commerce, especially in today’s world of powerful smartphones, represent a simple exten-sion of the ecommerce backbone in which they have al-ready invested so much.

The real secret lies in how smartly you market it to your customer. And then the other retailers will follow.

Ann Gambardella is a mobile application consultant at Appesque, Fairfield, CT. Reach her at [email protected].


Case studies on mobile commerce sites and applicationsBy Giselle Tsirulnik

For those who got a head-start and built their sites and apps in 2010, 2011 marked a time for updating these mo-bile destinations to better serve consumers.

Here are some examples:

Office Depot expands mobile strategy with commerce-enabled appAs part of its “Office Depot Anywhere” strategy, Of-fice Depot rolled out an app for iPhone and Android devices that lets users browse and purchase products.

The app creates a mobile shopping cart that follows the user across multiple devices. For example, customers

In 2011, retailers and brands steadily launched mobile commerce sites and applications and saw much success.

shopping at http://www.officedepot.com might get inter-rupted and not complete their order. Upon opening the Office Depot mobile app on their smartphone, they will see that their shopping cart has followed them.

“We’re finding customers are using mobility more and more to assist in the product research, comparison pric-ing and buying process at retail,” said Barry Litwin, vice president of ecommerce at Office Depot, Boca Raton, FL..

“This shift has been occurring for some time, but is becom-ing more significant as the growth and sophistication of smartphone devices and tablets continue to penetrate the market,” he said.

Crumbs iPhone app sells gift certificates to drive sales and in-store visitsCrumbs Bake Shop has rolled out a one-of-a-kind incen-


tive within its newly launched iPhone application to drive sales and increase visits to its stores.

The uniqueness in the Crumbs app is that it allows users to design and send customized birthday- or holiday-themed gift certificates, redeemable at any Crumbs location, to friends and family from within the app itself. The powerful incentive is meant to drive sales and increase visits to the Crumbs stores.

“As we grow the Crumbs brand as the national neighbor-hood bakery, we want to continue to connect with our consumers in new and exciting ways that underscore our existing initiatives such as successful specials with foursquare,” said Jason Bauer, cofounder/CEO of Crumbs, New York.

“Through the Crumbs app, we aim to make it easier for customers to buy on-the-go, as well as view and share our gourmet cupcakes with others via their iPhones,” he said.

StubHub increases mobile ticket sales via Android appEBay’s StubHub is letting consumers buy and sell tickets to sports, music and theatre events via an Android app.

Ticket sellers can manage existing ticket listings via the app.

The StubHub Android app includes features that showcase live events based on the user’s preferences and location.

“StubHub’s Android app product provides great features for both ticket buyers and sellers,” said Dre Madden, head of digital marketing at StubHub, San Francisco. “The app allows buyers to hook in to all of StubHub’s ticket inven-tory, view upcoming events, browse by team, artist, show, venue, and buy tickets directly from their phone via our customized mobile checkout.

“We are providing sellers with the convenience of view-ing their orders and managing their listings,” he said. “For

example, sellers can change the ticket prices and delete or deactivate tickets on the fly.”

Walgreens: Mobile is key component of multichannel loyalty strategyWalgreens is seeing much success in using mo-bile as a means of driving loyalty among its customers by providing choice, control and convenience via the channel.

In fact, Walgreens found that an astounding number of consumers are accessing its mobile app and more than half of prescription refills be-ing done via mobile are be-ing done through the scan feature.

Additionally, the company said that the number of pre-scription text alert subscribers has surpassed 1 million.

“Mobile is a key component in our multichannel strat-egy, which is helping to create more loyal custom-ers,” said Jim Cohn, spokesman for Walgreens, Deer-field, IL. “People want choice, control and convenience – and mobile is one of the channels through which we’re offering customers more reasons to come to us.

“We’ve gotten significant traction with our mobile ap-plications, which really are like having a drugstore in the palm of your hands,” he said. “More people are us-ing our refill scan technology because it adds another level of convenience and it’s time-saving technology our customers truly value.

“Ordering a prescription refill has never been quicker or easier.”

American Airlines aims for enhanced customer experi-ence via mobile booking Android appAmerican Airlines is enhancing the custom-er experience via an Android app that lets trav-elers book their flight and keep up to date with travel information.


Android customers can check-in for flights and re-ceive gate, seat and flight status information. Addi-tionally, travelers can view terminal maps.

“The Android app is the latest in a series of mobile technol-

ogies that American has developed to give its customers more control over their travel experience,” said Stacey F. Frantz, director of corporate communications at American Airlines, Fort Worth, TX.

“We know that our customers are increasingly relying on their mobile devices to stay connected while on the go,” she said. “So our mobile technology strategy is aggres-sive and at the heart of every technology initiative at the company today.”

Dover Saddlery spurs sales with mobile commerceMultichannel retailer Dover Saddlery Inc. launched a commerce-enabled mobile Web site to increase its consumer touch points and boost sales of its equestrian products.

Dover Saddlery and its subsidiary, Smith Brothers, partnered with Unbound Commerce Inc. to power the mobile site at http://m.doversaddlery.com. The retailer is attempting to capitalize on the surge in purchasing by consumers via smartphones.

The mobile initiative is an extension of Dover Saddlery’s ongoing efforts differentiate via a high level of customer service.

Dover CEO Stephen Day said that the retailer’s customers are active people – in the stable and the field or at horse shows.

Mr. Day said that by being more convenient and by provid-ing anytime-anywhere service, Dover could capitalize on mobile’s unique ability to serve its customers whenever

and wherever they have a need.

Garnet Hill mobile sales increase 300 percent in two monthsSpecialty retailer Garnet Hill saw a 300 percent in-crease in mobile sales since the company rolled out its mobile commerce site in mid-December 2010.

Users can shop women’s apparel, children’s clothing and home décor. The mobile-optimized site was built and is powered by Usablenet.

Garnet Hill has seen growth in browsing and shop-ping on mobile devices while its site was still in beta.

BMW’s Mini Financial Services enables payments via mobile WebBMW’s Mini Financial Services has launched a mobile Web site that lets smartphone users process payments and common account requests using their handsets.

Developed internally, the Mini Financial Services mo-bile Web site runs in a browser, whereas typi-cal applications need to be installed to run on a mobile device.

After a secure login from a smartphone, customers will have access to the six most common features: make a payment, re-cent activity, statements, payoff quote, payment history and account summary.

“In terms of our strategy behind the launch of the mobile site, I can boil it down to one word: convenience—it is all about giving more options to our customers,” said Tom Stepanchak, general marketing manager for BMW Group


Financial Services, Woodcliff Lake, NJ. “2013 is the tipping point where more consumers will use smartphones to ac-cess their Internet than PCs.

“Fifteen years ago before the Internet was anything, peo-ple had to write checks and send them to us, then people could pay online, and this is another step in that evolu-tion,” he said. “We knew that we had to provide this mobile functionality.

“We know it is only a matter of time before our customers expect this type of functionality on their smartphones.”

Retailer Cabela’s distributes coupons via commerce-enabled mobile siteHunting, fishing and outdoor gear retailer Cabela’s Inc. launched a commerce-enabled mobile-optimized Web site to enhance its multichannel presence and drive sales.

Cabela’s tapped mobile commerce specialist Digby to create a shopping ex-perience letting custom-ers buy its outdoors gear and clothing via their mobile devices.

Cabela’s mobile site com-plements its ecommerce Web site and catalogs with the goal of driving sales of its products that are sold in more than 30 stores in the United States and Canada.

“Essentially, our initial goal in our partnership with Digby was to provide mobile devices that cannot com-plete checkout on our standard ecommerce Web site Cabelas.com with the ability to place an order,” said Derek Fortna, Internet marketing manager at Cabela’s, Sidney, NE.

“Digby enabled us to integrate with our standard Cabelas.com checkout while requiring very little effort from our internal IT department,” he said.

ShopRite exec: Mobile is not an emerging mediaWakefern Food Corp.’s ShopRite is ramping up its mobile initiatives and claims to be the only grocery retailer with a

presence across Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and the mobile Web.

The technology, powered by MyWebGrocer, lets ShopRite customers access online specials and create digital shop-ping lists from their smartphones.

The ad-supported apps for iPhone and Android are built specifically for each platform with the goal of optimizing the user experience.

“Our goal was to help our customers save time and money,” said Cheryl Wil-liams, vice president of marketing for ShopRite at Wakefern Food Corp., Ke-asbey, NJ. “Our ShopRite Weekly Specials apps and mobile site allow shoppers to browse an online version of our weekly sales circular and add items directly to their grocery-shopping list from any Web-enabled mobile device.

“Now shoppers can search for savings virtually anywhere they are,” she said.

“Our mobile initiatives are easy to use and perfect for any customer looking to save time and money.”

The mobile commerce Web site and apps space is grow-ing everyday, with new brands and retailers joining the bandwagon.

The brands that have long ago made their entry there are launching on new smartphone platforms, since device-agnostic is the way to go.

Retailers and brands will continue to revamp their mobile sites and apps in 2011, with video, cou-pons, social media, personalization, ratings and re-views becoming an important aspect of every mobile destination.

Giselle Tsirulnik is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York. Reach her at [email protected].


Legal dos and don’ts for mobile commerceBy Ross A. Buntrock, Michael B. Hazzard, G. David Carter and Jason A. Koslofsky

Before you start sending out content, you see an article about a class action over unsolicited text messages. You scratch your head and wonder if your new company needs to be worried about any laws.

A company looking to enter the mobile commerce arena must not only carefully review industry practices such as the Mobile Marketing Association’s guidelines, they must also make sure they comply with several different laws.

Below are some “dos” and “don’ts” for mobile operations to help avoid the pitfalls that have beset other companies.

Do:1.Consult your attorney. The rules of the road for mobile commerce are still in their infancy and continual flux.

As such, parties engaged in mobile commerce must stay abreast of these changes and ensure that they seek guid-ance from attorneys that are familiar with this rapidly evolving area of the law.

2. Obtain express consent before sending a text mes-sage to a mobile user.Mobile marketing is generally an “opt-in” process – the mobile user must affirmatively ask for the content before it is sent.

Under existing case law, unsolicited text messages are subject to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and other laws.

You should keep a record of the express consent in case it is disputed later.

Premium text messages, in which an additional charge

You have got a great idea for mobile content that you want to sell through mobile devices. You have created your company, designed a killer user in-

terface, honed the content, and are ready to engage the mobile user.

is added to the recipient’s wireless bill, require a “dou-ble opt-in,” and again you should keep records of the express consent.

3. Clearly and prominently display opt-out, pricing and other critical terms in the text message and in any advertising.Federal and state advertising laws generally require adver-tising not to be deceptive or misleading.

If you are running a mobile sweepstakes, for example, fed-eral and state laws will also require certain information be included and may require alternative entry opportunities. The quickest ways to get in trouble in mobile is to hide or fail to disclose a charge to the customer.

If your content is a one-time fee or a monthly subscrip-tion, the mobile customer should not be surprised by the charge on their wireless bill.

Make sure your advertising discloses the charges promi-nently before the customer signs up.

A user or customer should always know how to remove


themselves from receiving mobile content. Texting STOP is the industry standard.

4. Follow industry guidelines.Although the industry guidelines, such as the Mobile Mar-keting Association’s guidelines, are not law, failure to fol-low them can sink a mobile operation.

The wireless carriers and their trade organization, the CTIA, conduct thousands of audits in an effort to find mobile operations that are not in compliance.

If a wireless carrier perceives a violation of the guide-lines, it may suspend your ability to send text messages to its users.

5. Understand the tax consequences of your mobile commerce.Increasingly, states are passing new laws with an eye towards collecting sales tax payments for purchases

made online.

And, as consumers and sellers are increasingly relying on mobile devices to make and fulfill purchases, figuring out what tax obligations must be fulfilled will continue to be-come increasingly complex.

Don’t:1. Use consent to one entity’s marketing to send on behalf of another entity.A mobile user may consent to receive text messages from a certain company, but that consent should not be used to send text messages on behalf of any other company.

Even if the companies are related or have similar content, the mobile user must consent to the specific mobile con-tent that is sent.

2. Ignore a consumer’s expectation of privacy.As with any retailer, a company engaging in mobile

commerce should not ignore its consumer’s expectation of privacy.

To the extent that the company maintains data about its custom-er’s purchases, it should avoid disclosing that data to third parties without prior consent.

In short, consent, disclo-sure and following changes in the industry are the keys to avoiding legal troubles with mobile operations.

Ross A. Buntrock, Michael B. Hazzard, G. David Carter and Jason A. Koslofsky are attor-neys at Arent Fox LLP, Washing-ton. Reach them at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].


Bridging the gap between brand and buyersBy Dave Lawson

Never before have marketers had the opportunity to match that ubiquity with the immediacy and personalized nature of a marketing-based connection.

When it comes to commerce, more than any other weap-on in a marketer’s arsenal, the mobile device is a type of trusted advisor for users. It is also a powerful tool to mo-tivate and support a purchase decision and even delivers a better lifetime ownership experience.

On the whole, mobile offers marketers the chance to more meaningfully connect with consumers at multiple touch points. With many effective layers across the horizon, one

Mobile is clearly more than simply a means to com-municate today. For marketers, the medium rep-resents reach nirvana, effectively bridging the gap

between brand and consumer.

can extend the brand relationship with deeper and more meaningful interaction, purposefully built to address con-text and deliver relevancy.

Overload of informationSpecifically, the mobile Web opens a myriad of opportuni-ties for marketers to connect with and serve consumers at each phase of the customer life cycle.

As an example, widely quoted statistics tell us as many as 75 percent of customers leave a store without making a purchase when they had entered ready to buy. A big rea-son for this comes from an overload of information and an overabundance of choice.

Take better care of those overwhelmed customers by link-ing them to a device-optimized mobile experience, one that includes product comparisons and user reviews to help educate them and affirm their choice while still in the store.

But the experience needs to be designed around the user context and customer needs at the point of engagement. In most cases, a contrived standard experience will quickly lose value and will not be able to satisfy needs of the busi-ness-driving majority.

Delivering value for the consumer in a decision-support role helps to bridge the gap between the online, the physi-cal world and the in-store experience.

Consider as well the benefits to others in the retail ecosys-tem. These mobile interactions are designed intentionally to help the shopper stay in-store, both digitally (no navi-gation options, so less shopping around) and physically.

The interactions also can empower store associates and their managers with selling tools that change the tradi-tional dynamic for interacting with customers.

Certain purchases over a mobile device come with high expectations. Purchasing ringtones and selling MP3 downloads all come with obvious expectations of mobile


experience at the time of purchase.

For other types of transactions via mobile, the purchase stage provides a specific supportive function versus the vehicle for the purchase itself.

Such purpose-driven mobile experiences can include con-veniences such as receipt confirmations, notifications and alerts, delivery details and tracking information once an item ships.

Most consumers will not buy a refrigerator over a mobile device. However, the purchase of that refrigerator can be supported via mobile, with delivery details, warranty con-firmation and other high-value convenience communica-tions.

Other purposes of mobile as it relates to the stage of the consumer’s lifecycle include driving the awareness of your offering, creating a better ownership experience, making it

easier for her to buy again, and rewarding her loyalty to amplify key brand lift metrics such as likelihood to recom-mend.

The breadth of the mobile landscape should allow you to hand-deliver a customized and contained experience for each stage.

Providing consumers with a valuable, purposeful mobile experience helps to forge a stronger relationship between customer and brand. The best mobile experiences are rare-ly about the brand – beyond the consumer feeling that “Brand X gets me.”

The best experiences are matched with the best fit, offering consumers something useful at the exact time and place they need it. Once the best fit is established, you can then plan what mobile experience to offer within the context of the brand. Do so, and everybody wins.

Dave Lawson is the director of mobile engagement at Kno-tice, Akron, OH. Reach him at [email protected].


Do retailers get mobile commerce?By Shawn Rowen

Each time, virtually all retailers tell us they expect more revenue to ultimately come from the online channel than they did just 12 months earlier.

Yet in our most recent report, “After the Storm: Connecting with the New Online Consumer,” retailers told us their biggest challenge to realize these goals moving forward resides in their ability to keep up with evolving consumer behavior. This means mobile.

The proliferation of new digital channels, brought on mainly by shoppers’ rapid adoption of personal mobile devices and their willingness to use them in ways few retailers could have predicted just a short time ago, has brought about the need for a genuine redefinition of what shopping really looks like – and could look like in the very near future.

Do retailers “get” mobile commerce? We would like to think that in theory, they do. As you can see from Figure 1 below, retailers – in aggregate – clearly understand that the trend of customers using mobile device to shop is not going away.

The sources of revenue in retail have changed, and they continue to change.

Whole swathes of retail categories are moving to new

F or several years now, RSR Research has conducted an annual survey asking retailers to identify the role that ecommerce and its related digital channels plays

within their enterprise.

channels as the primary transaction point – consider digi-tal media like books and music as a prime example – and even in cases where this is not happening, how shop-pers discover and select products is being fundamentally changed by new channel opportunities.

These shifts are changing the cost structure and even the fundamental strategy of retailing. RSR has long called this a transformational shift.

However, until the customer recently embraced mobile devices as shopping tools, it has been somewhat easy to ignore.

When revenue from other channels for a store-based retailer amount to about as much as a flag-ship store might generate, it might feel a lit-tle premature to call for a rethink of the retailer’s business model.

That is all about to change. Is 2011 the tipping point year, when it becomes accepted that reve-nue and shopping behavior driven from new chan-nels will have a fundamental impact on how primary channels operate?

Very possibly – our survey respondents certainly seem to expect some major restructuring in the channels that col-lect transactions in the very near future.

In fact, if more than a quarter of a company’s revenue comes from online, and potentially half of that is via mo-bile, a store-based retailer has some serious questions to answer about the number and location of their stores in the very near future.

And where are these mobile sales happening? At a shelf? At your shelf? Or a competitor’s?

The mobile frontierAs we have seen, retailers “get” mobile in theory. But get-ting it in theory and getting it in practice are two very different things.

Figure 1: Big Revenue Changes

Source: RSR Research, January 2011


Have retailers done the necessary research to build rel-evancy? How about infrastructure? Do they know what is required to offer customers an exciting mobile shopping experience?

In late 2010, RSR also participated with RIS News in a cross-channel study of RIS News’ readers.

One area where retailers showed particular aggressiveness was consumer mobile.

This year’s ecommerce benchmark shows little deviation from that intent.

Retailers made impressive strides in the last year – 44 percent of respondents report that they have added “buy merchandise,” “register/redeem gift cards,” and “check or-der status” via mobile just in the last year (Figure 2).

Clearly, investments in mobile capabilities have only just begun.

If the adoption plans that retailers share here give any indication, this coming year will indeed be the year that mobile investments reshape how consumers interact with retailers – 44 percent of respondents say they have budget to create shopping list functionality on consumer mobile, 38 percent believe they will implement the ability to receive coupons and offers, and another

Figure 2: The Steep Mobile Learning Curve

Source: RSR Research, January 2011

31 percent say consumers will be able to redeem these coupons and check loyalty status by the end of next year.

Another 31 percent have put the ability to use bar codes to check price or availability on the longer-term wish list.

As a result, we believe that retailers clearly “get” the need to be in customers’ hands via mobile devices, whether through enhanced mobile sites or applications that offer a reason and incentive to download for regular use is a brand-personal decision and subject to an entirely different conversation.

From the results of our research, the overall understanding is there. But there is a long road that must still be traveled, and 2011 will most certainly tease out who is navigating this understanding best.

Steve Rowen is a managing partner at RSR Research, Denver. Reach him at [email protected].


Making payments simple on mobile commerce sitesBy Keith Brown

In the United States, the “ForeSee Results Report on Mobile Shopping” indicates that 33 percent of all survey respondents had accessed a retailer’s Web site using a mobile phone (compared to 24 percent in 2009), and an additional 26 percent said that they plan to use their mobile phone to visit a company’s Web site, mobile Web site or mobile application in the future.

More than 190 million consumers will use their mobile phone to make payments within the next 24 months, according to Gartner.

In other words, says the research, more than half of online shoppers either do, or plan to, use mobile commerce. In Europe, Britain is leading the way in smartphone adoption, and the European mobile commerce market is predicted by Juniper to be worth $316 billion by 2012.

It is a rapidly growing market, and the consumer appetite for mobile commerce is clear. Mobile commerce is not just for small payments any more, either.

Retailers are starting to report larger amounts being spent over mobile.

British retailer Marks & Spencer reported recently that a customer had bought two sofas worth $4,405 over a mobile phone, indicating that the days of mobile being restricted to small payments made via SMS or reverse billing are well and truly over.

This pattern mirrors the early days of online shopping, with consumers increasing the amount they will spend over a mobile all the time.

The arguments for providing a mobile commerce site seem to be pretty clear. But are there any barriers to adoption?

Again, there are lessons we can learn from the ecommerce trends of online payments a decade or so ago. Consumers became confident in making payments online once they were convinced that their payments were secure, and when it became simple to do.

The same applies now to mobile commerce: make sure the whole payment process is fast, simple and easy-to-use.

Provide the best possible security, in compliance with payment regulation such as PCI DSS Level 1 (Mobile Commerce Daily reported research from Mobio that indicates 94 percent of consumers would pay via mobile if they thought it was secure).

And use familiar payment methods that replicate the experience of the now traditional online


stores – in other words, debit or credit cards, rather than asking consumers to learn a new payment system.

Customers expect to be able to pay using the method that they choose, not that is dictated by the platform they are using to shop.

These customers also expect to have broadly the same experience whether shopping on a fixed computer, an iPad, a netbook or a mobile phone.

This means that not only must a brand’s mobile commerce site or app design be consistent in look and feel with its Web site, but that it should also be easy to navigate and use.

This includes allowing consumers to pay in the same way

as they would from any other online point: their credit or debit cards (or pre-pay cash cards), without pre-registration. They also expect to be able to spend as much as they wish and can afford.

Impulse purchasing is an important factor in mobile commerce (some charities are reporting increased donations from mobile), and lengthy registration or identification processes can increase the likelihood of a consumer falling out of the buying process.

Our experience is that two or three clicks on a mobile phone are about the limit for most mobile consumers from selection to purchase.

Payments should be able to be made on any mobile phone, on any network and using any debit or credit card.

Not being able to provide ubiquity of access and purchase can translate into lost custom, even from previously loyal customers.

If you are going to offer mobile commerce, it should replicate the ecommerce experience as closely as possible.

Keith Brown is managing director at paythru, Amersham, Britain. Reach him at [email protected].


Mobile payment and billing best practices By Rodger Desai

However as this space heats up and adoption increases, today’s consumers and merchants are increasingly presented with, and at times baffled, by the variety of mobile payment and billing options available.

The industry now defines mobile payments across online and offline methods of payment.

For example, online methods of mobile payments are now allowing consumers to buy an app in an app store, shoes online, digital weapons for their avatars and transfer money using just their mobile phone number.

Other offline mobile payments methods, such as near field communication, are also rapidly evolving, with the largest areas of growth including retail and ticketing.

However, while mobile payment and billing options abound, the most successful will be those that reduce transaction abandonment, encourage billing transparency and accuracy and avoid the need for operator care.

Barriers to adoptionSecurity, privacy fears, fraud, slow and failed payment transactions and billing errors are considered some the biggest obstacles to consumer and merchant adoption.

A recent report by Mobio Identity Systems cited security concerns as the largest barrier to market, stating 94 percent of consumers would make a mobile payment if guaranteed it was secure.

As a result, better education will be needed in order to establish greater trust, an exercise not too dissimilar to what the online payments industry underwent years ago.

T he mobile payment industry has seen considerable growth over the last year with global mobile payments forecasted to increase from $162 billion in

2011 to $984 billion in 2014 (Yankee Group 2010), and the United States mobile payments market forecasted to reach $612 billion by 2015 (Aite Group, 2010).

Additionally, while premium SMS has historically served the industry well, in order to meet today’s growing demands, a more intelligent mobile payment and billing system that is more closely integrated with the wireless carrier’s network assets will be needed to ensure the same level of security, balances and checks that consumers and merchants want and have come to expect.

Best practiceWhile challenges remain, new developments in the mobile payments and billing space are making progress.

Key success factors and best practices for the future include:


Payment choice- Mobile payments adoption and success for operators and merchants hinders on offering consumers multiple payment choices.

To avoid transaction abandonment and ensure greater conversion rates, the industry will need to provide the same level of choice that consumers have become accustomed to at a bricks-and-mortar level.

By offering flexible mobile payment options such as subscription, try-before-you-buy, gifting, pay-per-event, lay-away, freemium and discounting bundles consumers are more inclined to buy, therefore increasing conversion rates and merchant revenues.

Intelligent billing- To avoid abandoned transactions and reduce risks at the merchant and carrier level, it will be important to offer

intelligent billing and routing options.

For instance, legacy technologies such as PSMS are unable to support new content types such as physical goods or low margin/revenue share goods e.g. digital albums, tracks or services.

Therefore, it will be important to offer multiple payment methods in order to convert sales.

Other important factors to consider include enforcing regulatory limits, monitoring insufficient pre-paid funds, instilling merchant location permissions and establishing over-credit allowance for post-paid subs.

This, in turn, reduces fraud, while ensuring a seamless user experience.

Transparency and accuracy- Billing transparency will also play a fundamental role in the industry’s crusade to instill consumer confidence and trust in mobile payments.

For instance, when a consumer makes a payment, it will be necessary to create a more familiar billing experience, similar to what consumers have become accustomed to with credit cards, such as seeing the correct merchant name, detailed item description and merchant customer care number on a consumer’s mobile phone bill.

Establishing key authentication measures will also be critical in ensuring the right transaction is delivered and billed to the right consumer to eliminate need for carrier care, chargebacks and merchant refunds.

With the huge growth in consumer virtual goods purchases, it will be important for carriers and merchants to review their current mobile payment and billing strategies to ensure they are not only delivering a seamless, secure, user-friendly experience, but also ensuring that consumers are provided with choice and that billing is intelligent, transparent and accurate.

Rodger Desai is CEO of Payfone, New York. Reach him at [email protected].


Generating consumer confidence in mobile commerce transactionsBy Janet Jaiswal

To capitalize on this exploding market, companies are experimenting with new features to build out their mobile commerce channel and drive traffic to both their ecommerce and physical store.

In the past year, mobile commerce has doubled in vol-ume and by 2015 consumers in the United States alone are expected to spend nearly $24 billion annually from

Internet-enabled mobile devices.

Ebay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have already sold billions of dollars of merchandise through their mobile commerce sites and applications.

Marketers are looking to increase mobile application revenue through new and innovative methods that include geolocation-based services and behaviorally-targeted advertising.

Additionally, businesses are looking at how they can transform mobile phones into financial payment platforms.

All of this requires consumer trust and confidence.

Users are understandably nervous about conducting mcommerce transactions.

A Harris and TRUSTe survey of U.S. adults, for example, found that a whopping 82 percent are concerned about privacy or security on mobile devices.

In such a nascent market, retailers need to do as much as they possibly can to build trust among consumers.

Businesses must build strong security and privacy protections into their mobile commerce sites and applications from the very start and – also importantly – need to promote that protection to consumers.

All other things being equal, when customers feel a company is taking their security and privacy seriously, they are less likely to turn to the competition.

The four top consumer concerns for mobile commerce – and how to address themBelow are the four biggest areas of security concerns for consumers in regards to mobile commerce, as well as concrete steps that businesses can take today to address them.

1. Payment – If you ask for credit card information, find a secure commerce platform provider that understands mobile commerce and offers protections, such as SSL-encrypted transaction support and alternative payments such as PayPal and Amazon’s payment system.


Alternative payment systems reduce transactions steps and help improve the process for small devices that have a limited screen size. Plus, they give customers the ability to pay with platforms they already trust.

2. Secure information collection – Only ask for information that you absolutely need and do not collect extra information until after you have established a trusted relationship. Consumers value convenience and simplicity in mobile commerce so apply this principle to your information collection practices.

When you collect Personally Identifying Information (PII) such as credit card numbers, be sure that the data is encrypted during transmission and remains encrypted where it is stored, including when it is turned over to other vendors.

3. Geo-location – A consumer’s geo-location is considered a gold mine – especially when tied with profile

information – because it allows a retailer to tailor an offer so it is more relevant and timely.

However, be sure to ask permission before you collect this information and explain why you are collecting it.

For many people, sharing their location data is extremely sensitive, and they will need a good reason to do so, as well as your assurances that data will be protected.

4. Behavioral-based advertising - Collecting behavior based information through your mobile site or mobile application can often enhance the service you provide to customers.

However, be aware that this information should not be shared with a third party unless it is used to support the primary service that you are providing the customer.

If the data is for other third party purposes, make sure you obtain customers’ permission before you collect that information.

Mobile commerce is growing and holds a lot of promise for the retail industry.

Partners such as security and privacy experts can be used to make sure that you adhere to the highest industry practices to meet its growing potential.

By addressing security, trust and privacy issues upfront, businesses can give their mobile commerce channel the best possible chance for success.

Eighty-five percent of consumers restrict at least one type of information when interacting with a mobile application.

Limit the information you request early on and later – when you have gained their trust – request a more detailed profile where you can collect additional information through incentives such as user discounts and exclusive perks.

Janet Jaiswal is a senior director of global product marketing at Tealeaf Techology. Reach her at [email protected].


Tips for optimizing mobile as part of paid search campaignsBy Daina Middleton

Marketers can capitalize on this shift by dynamically managing mobile paid search separately from desktop search. All trends and data indicate mobile’s share will only continue to grow in the foreseeable future.

Mobile experts should approach their search marketing peers to help bridge the gap and ensure they are aware of the benefits of optimizing mobile as part of paid search campaigns. The following tips provide an effective starting point to capitalize on those advantages.

Manage mobile paid search campaigns independentlyThere is a strategic consideration for marketers independently managing mobile paid search.

When managed independently of desktop-based paid search programs, mobile campaigns produce as much as twice the click-through rates (CTRs) and can reduce costs by as much as 60 percent, on average, across large keyword portfolios.

The opportunistic costs per click (CPCs) available in mobile search are substantial.

Mobile CPCs decreased in December 2010 for the seventh straight month, while they averaged just 43.2 percent the cost of computer CPCs.

Marketers not managing mobile paid search independently miss out on this advantageous pricing but, as more dive in, competition and costs will climb so marketers shoulda act quickly.

Replicate your desktop campaign in mobileFor marketers not already managing an independent mobile campaign, do as Google recommends and mirror desktop campaigns for quick, expansive setup in mobile search.

S earch is growing rapidly as a percentage of mobile advertising and, based on Performics’ data, mobile devices’ share of the paid search market will soon

eclipse 10 percent of all impressions for actively managed campaigns.

Mobile marketers should extend keyword, copy, bid and landing page best practices from the desktop campaign as a basis for optimizing the standalone mobile campaign.

Doing so makes it easier to customize these features for greater performance. Marketers that accelerate their rollout of smartphone-optimized landing pages and mobile-specific copy continue to improve quality score.

For example, placing a call to action in an easily located spot on the landing page makes it easier for searchers to navigate Web sites on a mobile device.

Subsequently marketers should also consider optimizing mobile Web pages to shorten the checkout process.


Additionally, mobile marketers must evaluate their keyword portfolios to determine which keywords from desktop campaigns do not make sense, remove them and add keywords that work for mobile.

Increase visibility on the mobile SERPWhen taking a critical look at keyword portfolios, marketers should also ensure high visibility for brand terms and essential, related keywords.

Mobile searchers are less likely than desktop searchers to scroll down the search engine results page (SERP). Unlike desktop search, a position three ad may never be seen on a mobile screen since mobile users are also short on screen space.

Recently, however, Google extended its instant previews visual search results tool to the mobile realm, making it

easier for searchers to find and choose the right result faster. This makes it even more important to optimize keywords for greater visibility in mobile search.

Customize campaigns specific to the needs of mobile usersMobile marketing is first and foremost local marketing.

Mobile devices enable users to search on the go. In fact, one in three mobile searchers uses a location in their search query.

Given the context of this new search audience, marketers ought to test location-specific keywords or look for hours of the day that drive significantly higher mobile traffic. It is also critical for marketers to optimize for and aggressively promote store locators to ensure visibility to the mobile searcher.

“Click-to” actOnce searchers track down the information they need through their mobile devices, it is essential that they have the ability to take action, whether through a mobile commerce transaction or by going to the marketer’s physical store they’ve just located.

“Click-to” mobile search ads (click to call, click to download) have proven effective for helping mobile searchers find what they need while providing marketers a customizable means to suit their goals.

One Performics client’s mobile program, for example, saw $223,098 in total sales (Web and click-to-call) and 9,248 store locator actions during a 10-month period.

For that same client, upon launching mobile click to call, mobile sales increased by 54 percent and ROI for the mobile program improved by 52 percent.

By implementing these tactics from paid search into a mobile campaign, mobile marketers can begin to reap cost-effective benefits while achieving greater visibility with a savvy mobile audience.

Daina Middleton is CEO of Performics, Chicago. Reach her at [email protected].


Mobile commerce’s role in transportBy Jonatan Evald Buus

Companies running services in an open environment, where commuters do not pass through gates, have the straightest approach to realizing mobile commerce: Enable commuters to buy and receive tickets on their mobile phones.

Companies running services in a closed environment, where commuters gain access by passing through gates, require additional investment in upgrading their gate infrastructure with NFC capabilities.

This article will focus on mobile commerce in an open environment using mobile remote payment.

Mobile commerceToday’s consumers expect to interact with merchants through the mobile phone, their most personal communication device.

Mobile commerce may benefit transportation immensely: the cost of selling a mobile ticket is up to 97 percent lower than selling the same ticket at the counter.

In comparison with selling the ticket through a vending machine, companies may realize large cost savings through less maintenance – emptying coin trays, replacing paper and repairing/replacing damaged machines.

Additionally, mobile commerce greatly improves customer service as commuters save time by avoiding lines and enticing loyalty programs, that are capable of reaching consumers anytime, anywhere, may be introduced.

These programs provide important differentiation to the competition and helps attract new customers.

Contrary to the services introduced during the Internet

Public transportation companies (bus, metro and rail) have an immense opportunity to increase self-service and improve customer satisfaction by extending their

existing commerce platforms into the mobile channel.

revolution a decade ago, consumers expect mobile services to be fully integrated with the multichannel spectrum.

Mobile transactions must be adequately reflected in other parts of the multichannel spectrum and vice versa.

In transportation this means that mobile commerce solutions must be integrated with relevant core systems.

The reasoning is simple: a seat cannot be sold twice.

Experience from commercial rollouts, show that consumers expect the same product catalog for both ecommerce and mobile commerce.


In comparison to other retailers, where mobilizing thousands of products will generally only lead to a poor user experience, transportation companies may be considered specialty retailers, with a sufficiently limited product selection, allowing them to consider mobilizing their entire catalog.

While even a fairly limited selection will present challenges to the user experience, the alternative is a fragmented silo where consumers must still access other parts of the multichannel spectrum.

For instance, if certain discount tickets, intended for departures with few passengers, are not available via mobile commerce (likely due to complex business rules), consumers still have to access the ecommerce site in order to verify that the discounted ticket is not available.

This leads to consumer frustration and greatly decreases the value of mcommerce.

Mobile paymentMobile commerce uses the same technologies as ecommerce to secure transactions, including PKI and 128-bit SSL encryption.

Additional security layers may be added through integration with the carrier networks, allowing an mobile commerce app or site to automatically identify the customer’s mobile number when the transaction reaches the server.

This data, which is not available in ecommerce, allows mobile commerce transactions to be secured using two-factor authentication either at the level of the merchant, payment service provider or acquirer.

2-FA may be enabled for both “traditional” payment schemes, including card payment or stored value accounts, and for alternative payment schemes such as carrier billing.

Merchants want to enable as many payment options for mobile commerce as possible, while keeping the following in mind:

• Payment should not require pre-registration through another channel• Payment processing cost will vary. For instance processing cost of a card-based payment is generally much lower than using carrier billing for the same payment.• Enable “1-click payment” by offering to securely store payment details

Any mobile commerce solution must obviously be PCI DSS compliant, but a properly architected solution may push PCI compliance to the PSP.

Jonatan Evald Buus is executive vice president of open systems/chief technology officer of CellPoint Mobile, New York. Reach him at [email protected].


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Mobile Commerce Guide