Mobile Commerce's Rapid Developement

It's been a wild ride for the mobile community in the year of 2009. I'd say this is the year that really puts smartphones on the map. As far as capabilities goes, the iPhones and various Android (DROID) devices really pulled ahead with their mobile influences. The iPhone's app store itself nearly revolutionized and standardized the way mobile platform should be.

Just before Cyber Monday this year, Usablenet successfully launched 8 more ecommerce clients onto their mobile platform solutions; it appears Usablenet seems to be the vendor of choice when it comes to a quick turnkey solution to generate mobile sales. At my full time work, I've been asked to help brainstorm a full on mobile strategy for the company as well as work with various projects to help bring our retail products more mobile friendly (ie. local listings, product feeds, etc...).

Just today, I received a news alert about a popular comparison shopping engine PriceGrabber just launched an iPhone application. I'd argue that most ecommerce vendors probably has a product feed sent to PriceGrabber from their online marketing initiative; an application like this will inevitable force an ecommerce vendor to participate the mobile game regardless if they want to or not. This means that if your visitor found your product via PriceGrabber mobile, they will likely click on that product link; what happens next will make or break your mobile user experience. A mobile commerce ready website will redirect that user to a page that is formatted nicely to an iPhones screensize while an ecommerce site w/o mobile support will force that user to render the full website onto a small screen. Since PriceGrabber by nature is a "comparison" shopping channel, you should either get with a mobile program or hope your competitors haven't gotten around to it. In the same fashion, Google has been pretty much porting all of its search related products onto mobile (natural search, maps/listings, product search, news, images, etc...). Same goes to the some of the more aggressive coupon/affiliate marketing folks who's brought their services to mobile for online marketers (see my review "Affiliate & Coupon Sites Invade Mobile Experience"

As we approach to an exciting new year, now is a good time for every marketer to start thinking about a tangible mobile strategy.

eBay goes hardcore with mobile initiatives

eBay, not satisfied with its $500M sales via its iPhone app and mCommerce website, is now going to launch a second application for deal hunters. eBay Deals, is a vertical app that is customizable by users to find the best deals from eBay up to 8 categories. According to Internet Retailer, most advanced mCommerce players are launching a second "vertical" apps to help drive sales or special promotion but often will end the 2nd app once the promotion is over. eBay Deals is going to be a permanent solution which tells me two things: 1). eBay's mobile commerce effort to date has been lucrative, profitable and they see huge potential and 2). eBay has got a full team of mobile experts lined up to help maintain its increased intiative. Source: Internet Retailer

Affiliates and Coupon Sites Invade Mobile Experience

Recently, I shared a story where I placed an order via mobile using Amazon.com app and what a great mobile experience that was. With mobile users in mind, the folks at FreeShipping.org, a popular affiliate marketing publisher has decided launch an iPhone app to provide free shipping and discount coupons to all popular online retailers. As an online marketer by trade, it was nice to see my 8-5 job's affiliate marketing codes on the "FreeShipping" app. Whether an online retailer is ready or not, the mobile commerce is happening and cool apps like "FreeShipping" will take the eCommerce eco-system to mobile.

The "FreeShipping" iPhone app is the second app this company has produced. Their first app launched is called "Coupon Sherpa" (couponsherpa.com) which is catered towards accessing printed coupons for brick and mortar stores. Already an iTunes staff favorite, "Coupon Sherpa" is also providing great mobile experience for users. I can't think of how many times when I walk into a brick and mortar store wanting to buy something only wishing I had printed out the 30% off friends and family coupons that I saw on my favorite affiliate marketing websites. With this app, you can easily retrieve the coupon on your iPhone and show it to the store clerk.

Both apps are great compliments to each other and as for me, it becomes another great mobile experience addition!

Mobile Marketing in Practice

I work for a fairly large sized e-tailer within their corporate marketing group; our company oversees more than a dozen of familiar brands (catalog, online and brick & mortar). My job is to drive the best practices of online marketing and it has given me ample privileges to test out various emerging media(s). For one of the brands, I signed up with an external vendor to deliver a turnkey mobile commerce solution. This particular vendor offers an emulated checkout process which removed all the headaches of having to ask our IT team to lift a finger.

The program was quickly established approximately six months ago; for a large part, the brand I've setup has made a minimal effort to market and drive this program; all efforts have been driven by the mobile vendor to reach their SMS database. I've decided to give this program a serious go before the year is over.

I lined up our brand marketing team to discuss my plan of attack:

1. Set a side really good offers; ie. 50% off of a name brand item, like New Balance shoes or Levi's denims. I believe that our basic offers currently running on email, paid search, affiliate marketing & online advertising is doing a pretty good job, in those said channels. But in order to "hook" someone to use mobile as a new channel, this offer has to be really sweet and promote a sense of exciting and urgency via alerts! The merchants from our company will no doubt give some push back when I asked for an aggressive offer; but I re-assured them this is a one time test and I am not anticipating a high volume turn-out. We are just gathering some tests results here.

2. Setup an all around emarketing blitz to encourage our customers to sign up for SMS communication for the exclusive "hooks" or offers. This includes emails, paid search, landing page, or even a line or two on print initiatives, etc. SMS communication is a very personal thing; its the last line of communication that has yet to be flooded by SPAM. So we want to really demonstrate that only the wildest and worthy offers are being passed through this exclusive channel.

3. Work out a synchornized supporting marketing plan with our mobile vendor; after we've communicated with our customers; they will blast out a few consecutive SMS alerts to our customers + their optd-in DB. Each alert will be announcing an amazing deal to drive either mobile commerce conversion or atleast get the customers to take SMS alert coupon codes to complete an order online. Eitherway, I'll known by looking at this exclusive coupon redemption rate to see if this mobile channel have potential.

4. The mobile vendor, as a bonus will also list our brand as a "featured" mobile vendor during this testing period; once again drive more mobile commerce awareness to their reach.

This marketing plan is intended as a test to see if our customers are ready to make the switch to mobile communication and commerce. With a legitimate and aggressive offer; I plan to get a test result once and for all. If anything, I'll be able to walk away knowing if our customers are ready to make the mobile switch. Will provide some updates in the future, stay tuned!

Amazon.com Ups mCommerce with TextBuyIt

Amazon.com has been on the frontier of "m-commerce"; taking a strong position and making its online retail presence available to handsets/smartphones across the board. They've just upped the ante with a new service, known as TextBuyIt. As the program's name implies, you can now text or SMS an ISBN number of a product to "AMAZON" (262966) and expect to receive the price and some options to transact. Should you decide to reply with a response, a call will made to you by Amazon.com staff to help complete the transaction.

With TextBuyIT, Amazon now has added an extra level of coverage to their quest in mobile dominance. Considering only 19% of people have access to mobile internet, an astounding 69% uses text message service. If anything, I think this can create a simple comparison shopping engine effect when a customer is in a brick & mortar store. As matter a fact, other than being in a store, I can't think of another way to easily access an item's ISBN number. (Source: JupiterResearch and Internet Retailer)

The Mobile Experience has tested this service out for you. I typed in a book that I am currently reading which has the ISBN of 0-596-52733-0. Mind you that typing numbers in a text is a bit of a hassel, for instance, dailing a "5" would require me to hit that button four times. Imagine doing this for all ten figures. Within seconds, I received 2 emails. The first one just gives me a message on how to use TextBuyIt program via my reply. The second one gave me the book's name and price. No mentions of free shipping over $25. See the screenshots for yourself.