Google launched two new mobile commerce services that are likely to have a big impact on the retail shopping experience. Google Wallet and Google Offers are new Android apps that will enable customers to pay for products and redeem coupons with one mobile interaction at the point of sale. This convergence of mobile features promises to be a big step forward in the retail customer experience.

Google Wallet can use multiple cards, including a new prepaid Google card that the customer can use to make contactless payments at the point of sale. Google Offers is a marketing program that lets users redeem digital coupons that are dowloaded from mobile sites or swiped at the point of sale.

Field trials will take place in New York and San Francisco, with a wider launch scheduled for this summer. Google partnered with Citi, Sprint, MasterCard and First Data to launch the NFC payment service, but the platform is open to anyone who wants to join, said Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s vice president of commerce. Retailers partnering with Google include Macy’s, Toys ‘R Us, Subway, American Eagle Outfitters, Walgreens, Noah’s Bagels and more.

Tilenius described a more long-range vision for Google payments and deals. Google imagines that when customers enter a store, their NFC Android phones will automatically determine the location and begin working with Google Wallet and Google Offers to tailor the shopping experience. A welcome screen will launch with a shopping list based on your previous buying habits. I could see how this would be a good response if I requested it, but I certainly don’t want it to occur at times that are determined by someone other than me. I’ve asked several dozen millennials what they thought about such location-based services, and their response was more negative than positive, unless they had complete control over the experience. Watch a video of one of the negative responses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1kOFVY3Bw.

To check out, the customer swipes the NFC phone across the reader and Google Wallet will automate the payment, and will include loyalty card and coupons if they exist. All three data elements are transmitted to the terminal at once. The cashier confirms, then the customer signs.

Google has said they plan to expand the functions covered by Wallet, including tickets, IDs, and health insurance cards. It will be interesting to see how retail decision-making will be impacted by these types of digital capabilities.

Regardless of the implementation specifics, these new features will definitely affect the way that customers interact with retailers. Retailers who start now to understand multichannel shopping behavior will definitely be more prepared to do battle in the digital shopping world that is rushing upon us. Usography is focusing a significant amount of time and resources on field research to understand how millennials (Gen Y) shoppers expect to shop using digital tools. Take a look at a sample research session at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFdo1jKphSQ. Using field data, Usography is helping retailers plan their digital design strategies.

Senator Jay Rockefeller finally introduced the long-awaited Do Not Track bill that is likely to wreak havoc on data-driven design strategy. The bill restricts the ability of companies to collect information on consumers who have indicated they want to opt out. The bill creates a universal legal obligation for companies to allow customers to opt out of being tracked on web sites and mobile devices, and authorizes the FTC to punish companies who don’t abide by the regulations.

For retailers, the bill could have significant consequences, especially if it functions like the “Do not call” legislation of a few years ago, with one call covering all the possible companies involved. It’s not clear what the final bill will allow and disallow. I agree with the need for privacy, but I think retailers should be able to track people anonymously without restriction, meaning that all personal identifiers are left out of the record.

We’ve conducted quite a few interviews with millennial females about privacy (see video about location tracking at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1kOFVY3Bw).

We’ve found that, once people understand the benefits of being identified, they are usually in favor of surrendering a limited amount of personal information. Retailers will have to find a formula that incentivizes the opted in customer in order to be granted permission to track them. I think the best way to do this is also the best way to gain long term relevance: Provide value-add content that engages customers on a topic of common interest related to the product or service offering of the company. This path not only supports various programs like opt-ins and social media campaigns, but also helps SEO/SEM and long-term loyalty in the Attention Economy.

“Recent reports of privacy invasions have made it imperative that we do more to put consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to their personal information,” Rockefeller said in a statement. “I believe consumers have a right to decide whether their information can be collected and used online. This bill offers a simple, straightforward way for people to stop companies from tracking their movements online.”

After a user makes a request to stop being tracked, the companies in question would only be able to continue collecting certain information on customers if it’s absolutely necessary in order for the site or service to function. That information must still be anonymized or destroyed after its usefulness expires, and the user must still give explicit consent for the information to be used that way.

For more info about the bill, see: http://tinyurl.com/5u8kxp2.

Thanks to Eric Schmidt of Google announcing that mobile has taken off much more rapidly than expected, and also to the surprising traction that the Android is experiencing in the marketplace, mobile is HOT. I’m happy about this from a shopping research perspective, because I think that mobile helps consumers make much better decisions than they were able to make in the past.

But I’m having a hard time with the concept of mobile as a channel. The more I think about it, the more mobile web seems almost arbitrarily associated with the mobile phone. The mobile phone came first, with big clumsy units tethered to car terminals as some of the widespread examples. But mobile is really NOT something more than it is something. Mobile is your digital data source (retrieval and capture) when you are NOT at a computer in your home or office. This is depicted in the image below, which is based on a painting below by Paul Klee, Rouge et Noir. It's the interstices that are interesting, Life.

At first blush, this is of course, semantics. But “just” semantics, I don’t think so. The solutions we have today are based on the phone, and on web sites made small. If you subtract phone calls, SMS, email, quick hit info sites that provide addresses or weather, games, special purpose apps, and Facebook, there’s not much left. That may seem like a plethora of programs, but the needs for mobile information are much broader than that. At any moment, I would like to have more information about my health, my finances, the whereabouts of my children, my marketability, decision making factors and alternatives, and much more.

The path from here to there is not simple. It will start when the user experience strategists and designers break out of the phone and little web paradigm that we currently are stuck in, and imagine a connected life. This is the kind of ethnographic research that Usography is conducting, and pitching to retailers. To give retailers first of all a multichannel digital design strategy and conceptual user experience, but then to go further and place mobile within a larger life context, so that we can solve needs that haven’t been solved before digitally.

I don’t think people 30 and older will usher in new forms of shopping, because it will require substantial personalization and customization, that they have disregarded in droves up to this point. It may be millennials, who have customized Facebook profiles as a matter of course. Or it may be the next generation, the digital natives, whose experiences have been supported by digital since they reached the age of awareness.

]]> http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/it%e2%80%99s-not-mobile-it%e2%80%99s-life/feed/ 0 http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/buy-com-tops-the-usography-social-commerce-scorecard/ http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/buy-com-tops-the-usography-social-commerce-scorecard/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:52:51 +0000 Paul Bryan http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/?p=238

Usography ranked 100 top retailers on the basis of the number of social commerce features they implement on their primary e-commerce site. Buy.com came out first with 9 of 15 possible points. The social commerce features Buy.com has include: - Email to a Friend - Product Reviews - Wishlist or Registry (Gifting) - Share via Social Media - Facebook Like - Shop Together - What Others Are Viewing Now - Facebook Login - Facebook See Friends Who Liked One feature that Buy.com does not have but others in its competitive set have, is in-page Question & Answer. This is helpful because customers can see what others have asked that they are also wondering about. It lowers barriers to purchase that might not otherwise be discovered. Usography works with retail clients to develop a UX Strategy that takes into account customer segmentation, purchase behavior model, and competitive space. The Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard (available free at: http://www.usography.com/scorecard) is a very basic version of the user experience reports that Usography produces for its retail clients.

]]> http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/buy-com-tops-the-usography-social-commerce-scorecard/feed/ 0 http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/retailer-social-commerce-scorecard-spring-2011/ http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/retailer-social-commerce-scorecard-spring-2011/#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:55:47 +0000 Paul Bryan http://www.digitaldesignstrategy.net/?p=230

Today we published the Spring 2011 Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard. The Scorecard reflects retailers’ efforts to expand efforts to take advantage of the social commerce phenomenon that has taken the digital world by storm over the past two years. It gives retailers a quick, easy to use tool for evaluating competitive offerings in the area of emerging Social Commerce feature sets.

The Scorecard lists the 100 retail sites reviewed, and links to their product detail pages that were current in March 2011 when the evaluation was done. The Scorecard can be found online at http://www.usography.com/scorecard.

Many retailers are getting on board with social commerce, but there are still many gaps, despite the attention social commerce has received in strategy blogs like this one.

To create the Scorecard, we reviewed the e-commerce web sites of 100 top retailers in March 2011. Retailers were assigned a total score based on the presence or absence of 15 social commerce features, which are listed in the Scorecard. Buy.com came in first place out of the 100 top retailer sites evaluated for the Scorecard, with 9 out of 15 possible points. Buy.com was followed closely by Urban Outfitters, who came in first place in the previous Social Commerce Scorecard.

Our research with Gen Y and multichannel shopping has shown us that a large percentage of younger, Facebook-oriented shoppers want to share their finds with their peers, and have a specific approach that they want to use. They vary for different people, but individuals typically have one preferred method. If retailers don’t support that particular method, then they may miss an opportunity for a trusted referral. If this happens over thousands or even millions of customers, then we’re talking about a sizeable amount of lost revenue.

The Retailer UX Scorecard is the basic version of more extensive competitive and best practice reports produced by Usography in the area of multichannel retail. More detailed reports are available on a monthly or quarterly basis, filling the need for an inexpensive way for all team members and executives to stay current in the state of the art of digital retail user experience. Contact me for pricing information.

Social commerce is the combination of social media and digital commerce into a single customer experience. We’re in the early days of digital social commerce, although the analog version has been around for eons. Social commerce is taking many forms in these early stages, but I think we have a long way to go before reaching a steady growth state.

I love social commerce because it gives a voice to the common man and woman that earlier didn’t exist on such a scale. Consider “J” below.

I don’t know if J ever got any material satisfaction. But I know s/he enjoyed expressing intensely negative feelings in a forum that was relevant to the purchase.

This is new. Gone are the days of the one-way onslaught of artificially generated awareness. Today the path to success for retailers is contextual relevance. In the pre-Internet advertising model, the customer’s relevance weas related to how closely they fit the projected image and would buy products to associate themselves with that image (still true of course). But in social commerce, companies are relevant because they fit into the life context of a group of people.

The winning retailers will be those who embrace the two way conversation, and are able to place themselves meaningfully in the context of on-going relationships. It doesn’t make sense for retailers who have the means to continue to avoid plunging into the realm of community, because it is inevitable. The winners will develop a voice that fits the communities they reach out to, and shapes the communities they develop themselves. As I’ve stated before, the “brand voice” is even more critical than it was when the voice did nothing but talk. Now it needs to listen, and see how people relate to it, and what they want to hear from it. Usography has field research methods as well as less expensive remote digital ethnography methods to help retailers understand their customers’ expectations, and design a multichannel customer experience that is social, mobile, and local.

I have often read in forums that Google innovates and designs without user input. This was apparently not the case with Google Web fonts. They conducted surveys and usability tests to capture user data. The most favorable responses were on ease of use, availability, dependability, features, and price (free).

The Google UX team (see photo below, looks rather light-skinned and un-diverse to someone from the southeast U.S.) watched people interact with the web fonts. They segmented users and documented workflows for each segment. Then they brainstormed goals and priorities based on the research. The brainstorming day was followed by an Agile design sprint in their Seattle office.

This sounds like pretty straightforward UX research to me, so I guess the rumors I’ve read about are not true. My only suggestions for rounding out the data would be coding the discussion forums dedicated to Google fonts, and shadowing designers in an agency as they go through their font-seeking routines.

A study on mobile search and digital commerce by Performics showed that 49% of mobile searchers made a mobile purchase in the past six months. Furthermore, 84% of respondents who use mobile web say they use search to find retailers. These data points indicate that paid mobile search and mobile SEO should be a major component of retailers’ mobile strategy, and not just an extension of the approach used in other digital channels.

Performics conducted the 2011 Mobile Search Insights Study with ROI Research. The study, which focused on people who use a web browser on a mobile device, also concluded:

- 57% use the mobile web more than once per day

- 77% have used mobile search more than five times in the last month

- 75% said that mobile search makes their lives easier

- 63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information

- 32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers

The study found the following usage patterns of mobile usage:

- 74% while running errands

- 56% while attending social events

- 47% while commuting

The prevalence of mobile usage during these types of activities underline the importance to retailers of reaching customers through a mobile search experience. Statistics about mobile tasks emphasize this point further:

- 84% look for local retailer information (phone, address, hours)

- 82% find online retailers

- 73% find a specific manufacturer or product Website

- 71% learn about a product or service after seeing an ad

- 68% find the best price for a product or service

- 63% search before purchasing offline in a store or from a catalog

To read the Performics press release, see: http://tinyurl.com/5vajkhm

QR codes are well-known in Japan, where they were invented, but only recently are becoming more common in the US. QR stands for “Quick Response.” QR codes are small white squares with squiggly black patterns on them. Swiping a camera phone over the code reveals its hidden purpose, which is to build a bridge between the physical world and the online world. A web page appears on the phone with far more detail than could be placed on the product or location where the code was scanned. In an unobtrusive way, they give people who want more information what they are looking for, while requiring only a very small surface area.

QR codes are especially attractive for retailers, who strive to use all available space for product presentation, rather than using it to display information about those products. The lack of space in the retail environment causes a channel disconnect, because online, the amount of information that can be presented about products is virtually limitless. QR codes can bridge the channel disconnect, making all digital content available through a mobile device in the store. Swiping a smartphone across the code can produce extensive product details, comparisons, usage instruction, photos, videos, interactive brochures, games, opt-in signup for more information or coupons, forms, and more. There is really no limit to the information that the code can bridge to on the web.

The link between physical stores and digital channels will revolutionize the role of user experience in large retail companies. Previously, stores have generated the lion’s share of revenues, and the online offering a much smaller percentage. User experience teams have been focused specifically on designing online interactions. With QR codes, the store experience and digital design are blended into a single experience, via a mobile device like a phone, iPad or tablet. So UX strategists must think creatively about how to exploit their new in-store stage. Multichannel customer experience and design strategy are areas that Usography has focused on for several years, and I’m looking forward to helping retail partners figure out the best approach to optimizing customer experience across channels.

QR codes are easy to create, and they are very cheap or free, depending on the service you choose to create them with. With Google’s free QR code creator, users can simply enter the link to send users to, and it generates an image of a tag that you can distribute. They don’t take any special equipment or technology to deploy, although the person reading them must have a camera phone and one of the many free code-reader apps. The codes can be preprinted on packages or simply affixed to a shelf, a wall, or other object. Usography’s QR code is shown above.

QR codes are likely to appear everywhere before long in the US, because of their unique ability to link a person from something they’re viewing in the physical world, to a location online. The main limitation with QR codes is that whatever information results from scanning the code must be engaging within the first few seconds, and it must be fresh. Otherwise, the early days of web frustration will be redundantly revisited all over again. This time, it’s not a click that has wasted their time, but a physical action and request for information.

Another limitation, although less significant, is that only a certain segment of the population knows what to do with the codes. That population is likely to grow very rapidly as the codes appear in more and more public venues.

Usography has conducted ethnographic research on mobile shopping with Millennials (see sample session video), and the result of those observations have led to a list of questions that I think retailers should answer in the process of evolving their mobile commerce strategy. The questions are listed below.

1. What are our goals for mobile commerce?

Obvious, but it’s still the first question. Some retailers are at the stage of having revenue goals and projections for the next 5 years of mobile commerce. Others are just experimenting, because they consider their stores as the real playing field. How wrong they are! That was last century. Things are changing rapidly. At a minimum, retailers should define the portion of their sales they expect mobile to support for the next 24 months. They should also set adoption figures that can be measured, such as the number or percentage of customer visits that are attributable to mobile devices.

2. What percentage of our overall digital commerce resources should be spent on mobile?

The percentage of resources to spend on mobile is a decision each retailer has to make on the basis of its business strategy and long term vision. Unfortunately for retailers, the two massive trends of mobile and social commerce are hitting at roughly the same time, making it difficult to focus resources in a coherent roadmap. They were just getting used to e-commerce! The conservative nature of many retailers, who place the lion’s share of their emphasis on physical store locations and operations, are likely to underestimate how important mobile and social commerce will be. I think it will take them by surprise the kinds of revenue shifts that are possible within short periods of time. Think about Borders or Blockbuster, wildly successful companies who got stuck doing business as usual with stores and then were suddenly surprised to find themselves upended by digital-savvy competitors.

3. How will mobile shopping differ from store or web shopping?

This is a critical question that most retailers will not find the resources to explore, but in the end will lead to answers for all the other questions in this list! Retailers need to spend time experimenting and researching in the field to formulate a multichannel shopping model. As always, customers will take the most convenient route possible, and will shun push messages other than discounts. But how will they shop? How will needs, product category and assortment, lifestyle, social influences, location, product messaging, and technology work together to produce transaction patterns that can be measured and analyzed? What are customers’ expectations about their interactions across different devices and channels? And how will that vary over time as mobile and social tools mature over time? These are questions that Usography focuses its research and design strategy efforts on, and we feel that this is largely unexplored territory in the multichannel retail customer experience.

4. Will we release shopping apps or deploy a single digital design that is scaled to all channels?

For most retailers, Usography’s recommendation is that they focus on a scalable digital user experience that encompasses mobile phones, tablets and iPads, interactive kiosks, interactive digital signage, and, of course, e-commerce web sites. That single, consistent digital experience should be guided by the research recommended in Question #3 above. There are a few very high profile retailers, who have top of mind recognition across a wide variety of customers, who could enjoy significant continued adoption of their iPad app. Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot. For most retailers, this kind of branded pap will be avoided by customers who only want to achieve a quick shopping objective and move on. But iPad catalogs are so beautiful and show products in such an epic design, retailers won’t be able to resist the vanity piece. So go ahead and produce an iPad shopping app, but keep an eye on the adoption revenues and numbers, and update and extend the app as warranted. In the meantime, don’t abandon the process of designing a scaleable digital design that is consistent across all customer touchpoints.

5. What is a home run for mobile in terms of customer experience?

After the research and data analysis is done, what would the silver bullet for the mobile be? This is obviously not an easy question to answer, but I don’t think retailers can out-dream reality on this front. The tools are coming together, not as a burst of solutions looking for a problem, but as a massive cultural shift in life from offline to online. Watch a Jetson’s cartoon episode sometime, and note all of the wild, imaginative technology that has only become a reality in the last 3 – 5 years. The pace of innovation in digital, mobile, social has accelerated, and if your customers can imagine it, it will probably be a reality soon. So go there first!

6. What kinds of sharing or social interactions would benefit customers’ mobile shopping interactions?

As noted above, the two massive trends of social and mobile commerce are gaining traction at the same time. Shopping is a social activity, always has been and always will be. But the circle of advisors has recently gotten much, much wider, and smarter, and quicker. While planning mobile design strategy it is critical to consider the kinds of sharing that mobile shopping will engender. It may not be the same as the type of social shopping interactions that would occur at home or in the office. Location and immediacy of contact are much more relevant in mobile than they are in a stationary access context.

7. Which devices will we support?

The only acceptable answer to this question is “all of them.” But the resources devoted to different devices will vary considerably. Tablets and iPads have been shown to have higher conversion rates than other mobile devices, up to several times higher. But the optimal resource allocation also depends on other shopping factors that are particular to a category of merchandise and retail format. How much thought have customers typically put into a purchase before they visit your store? Your web site? Your mobile site or app? How many other retailers are in the consideration set for a given product category? When there is down time, is your product assortment one that customers would want to assess or dream about? How important are lists? Instruction? These factors and many more differentiate the experience in terms of device used for shopping.