Retailers have gotten mobile religion. They are rushing to release branded mobile apps to consumers. In the retailer apps I’ve reviewed, the focus is on pushing out product price and availability, so that a shopper can obtain this information anytime, anywhere. But is that really a strategy, or is it just a Sears & Roebuck catalog that fits in your pocket? Sporting my iPad 3G on storewalks recently has given me the feeling that it will be a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll (sorry, Jack Black) with multichannel commerce.
Pottery Barn has an excellent e-commerce web site that I frequently use in competitive assessments to illustrate clean simplicity of product showcase that lets you fall in love with the product (well, not me, but other people). However, they released a mobile catalog app, and here’s what users of the app have to say. “I don’t understand what this is supposed to be… It is pointless. I’m surprised PB isn’t a little more saavy with their app.” Another user of the app said, “Pottery Barn can usually be counted on as a source for quality and style; unfortunately this clunky app has neither of those things.” Walmart’s app got better reviews, but customers are quick to point out gaps that would cause the app to meet what they expect of Walmart. One user said, “The whole point of getting a store’s app is to view their weekly ad. Duh…” Another Walmart app user said, “Please add an option to upload pictures, request prints and pick them up at the store… please?” A user of Home Depot’s app said, “You can’t create shopping lists unless the product is in a project or ad! Fix the list feature and it may make sense!!!”
Of course, reviewers clearly expect a lot from these free apps, and to be fair, these apps also had very positive reviews. But as a multichannel design strategist, I can’t ignore the fact that these tech-savvy customers have a clear picture in mind of how mobile technology could improve their interactions with retailers. It seems to me that retailers would be wise to expend some effort to get an equally clear idea of how their customers expect to interact with them in this relatively new channel, and to focus design efforts on supporting those types of interactions where feasible. It’s striking to me that user reviews are not harping on lower prices or more coupons, which is a frequent type of feedback encountered in e-commerce forums. Instead they focus on how customers want to evolve their shopping interactions using mobile shopping tools. And notably, their expectations for different retailers are different, as illustrated by the comments above. Moreover, the variation isn’t random. It models how customers shopping expectations vary in different retail contexts, which is very valuable information for retailer’s multichannel design efforts.
When e-commerce was as new as mobile retail is today, say 1995 – 1996, when Amazon was pretty lonely in its market niche and my friend Warren Bare was in his basement inventing the first really big career web site, this depth and breadth of feedback was not to be found anywhere, and the people who knew how to catch and incorporate such feedback into new design work were few and far between. The situation is quite different today, as a perusal of social media sites quickly reveals. There is no excuse for releasing retail apps whose design concepts don’t model a deep understanding of how a specific retailer’s customers shop and make decisions in their particular category of merchandise.
I’m developing some materials on specific ways to do this type of purchase modeling for a talk I’ve proposed to SXSW 2011 entitled, “Digital Ethnography for Design Innovation.” Please vote for my talk, if you haven’t already, at:
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/8232
