Mobile Commerce

Most retailers today know that mobile is everything. Consumers are increasingly researching products, reading customer reviews and making purchases via their smartphones and tablets rather than desktop computers and laptops. It's a trend that will only continue to increase.

Responsive commerce has become one of this year's hottest buzzwords as retailers aim to optimize their online sites for mobile shoppers. However, understanding just what this design strategy is, knowing whether or when to implement it, and justifying the expense to key decision makers all remain key challenges for many companies. Here then is a crash course in responsive commerce and why it might be time to consider whether it can provide your customers with the seamless shopping experiences they've come to expect across devices.

Amazon.com is aiming to make holiday shopping easy for consumers with the introduction of #AmazonWishList, a hashtag that allows individuals to add products into their Amazon wish list directly from their Twitter accounts. With a significant m-commerce season predicted for the remainder of 2014, more brands and retailers are turning towards wish lists to allow shoppers to save favorite items and send reminders to purchase prior to the holidays. Amazon's partnership with Twitter is making wish list shopping even easier for consumers.

Nordstrom recognizes that a single picture speaks over a thousand words. In partnership with Twilio, a software and cloud-based communications company, Nordstrom employees can now send real-time photos of trending pieces and attire to customers through MMS messaging with their standard 10-digit business phone number. Before the launch, businesses sent multimedia messaging (MMS) communications mainly with a 5-digit number — a short code developed for mass messaging and marketing. This process proved to be an inconvenience for companies as it's expensive, costing over $10,000 per year to maintain, and takes months to install. 

Sept. 9 was Apple's big day. The tech giant introduced its new iPhone and long-awaited Watch. While both of those products may be big news, what's inside them — specifically Apple Pay — may prove to be the biggest headline of all. Apple Pay promises to give consumers a safe, convenient way to make payments, no credit cards needed. With Apple's new iPhone 6 model, a shopper will be able to make a payment without the need to wake the screen display or open an app.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know by now that Apple launched a bevy of new products and services yesterday in a star-studded (can you say Bono?) event in Cupertino, Calif. Of all the the major announcements — the launch of the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus, the Apple Watch and Apple Pay — the latter is arguably the most important news for retailers.

Hillshire Brands sees the promise of Apple's iBeacon, software that's been embedded in iOS 7 for a year. With iBeacon, Hillshire can track a shopper wheeling through a grocery store and send his iPhone a coupon or an ad for sausages just as he approaches the right cooler. Hillshire says consumers in 10 U.S. test cities who received iBeacon messages via apps such as recipe service Epicurious have been 20 times likelier to buy its

the e-tailing group's fifth annual Mobile Mystery Shopping Index sought to identify the retailers that are excelling at giving consumers the best mobile shopping experience. In the second quarter of this year, the e-tailing group benchmarked the mobile consumer experience from information gathering through purchasing and customer support. Here's a sampling of the results:

Holiday 2014 is right around the corner, and it's going to be mobile. For the first time ever, according to Branding Brand's Mobile Commerce Index, the majority of online retail visitors will come from smartphones and tablets, not desktops. This historic shift requires retailers to prepare for the holidays with a mobile audience in mind.

Want to know more about beacon technology, including how it works and how it’s changing the future of mobile shopping?