Tom Beecher, President and CEO of Cartera Commerce – a leading provider of omni-channel marketing solutions that increase revenue and customer loyalty for merchants, believes that retailers will evaluate their online presence and make it easier for consumers to engage with them on a small screen.
“I think they’ll look at mobile apps that make life easier for the consumer,” Beecher told Loyalty 360. “If you try and use a mobile handset to check out, it’s still pretty hard. Over time, you’ll see retailers totally rethink their web presence to really make it easy for consumers even on a small screen. You’ll probably see more apps that are retailer specific for mobile handsets that streamline the experience.”
Last month Cartera Commerce announced the launch of OfferLink, a consumer app that aggregates deals and offers from hundreds of online merchants.
The OfferLink app provides shoppers with a pocket-sized tool to find discounts, free shipping offers and coupons from their favorite online retailers. The app allows users to: shop and search by retailer category, receive alerts when their favorite stores share new deals, save offers for later and browse deals that are soon to expire.
OfferLink is available on the App Store for iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and will soon be available for Android devices.
“It’s a great way for consumers to access 1,000 online retailers and let the app do the work for them by tracking great deals from retailers they like,” Beecher explained. “We’ve been watching the mobile space for a while. Feedback has been good. A lot of consumers are engaged with it. Anyone who has downloaded the app is following, on average, 10 retailers. It can make like easier for consumers.”
For mobile app CEOs, Beecher said, that 2 ½-inch by 4-inch screen just doesn’t offer that much rom.
“They have to reinvent how they interact with the consumer,” he said.
Instead of viewing mobile as a single category, Beecher sees it as a behavior-based category.
“Instead of thinking of mobile as a single category, how do consumers behave differently with a tablet in their hand or a phone,” he said. “Online lends itself more to tablet. People can use a tablet while watching TV. It’s a big screen with good product images. We’re seeing tablet shopping approaching 10% of ecommerce shopping while mobile shopping is in the single digits.”
Location data, tying the online to the offline world, will be a big trend in the future, Beecher said.
“People can see an offer online, click to accept it, and have a QR code sent to their phone and get rewarded in loyalty currency on the back end,” he said.
On another hot topic, Beecher sees the digital wallet becoming more prominent.
“The big question is what’s in it for me as a customer?” he said. “If I have a half hour for lunch and want to go to Applebee’s, I can pull up an Applebee’s app and menu order. When I get there, my order is ready and they have my payment credentials so I can leave when I’m done. It’s really about how broadly you make the consumer’s life better.”
Mobile wallets will be less driven by financial players, and moreso by retailers and restaurants.
“How do they take friction out of the experience now?” Beecher said. “They don’t have to discount. The experience becomes more valuable than anything else. That’s how you build real loyalty – if you really delight somebody with that memorable shopping or dining experience.”