Mobile Commerce

Nearly every shopper bounces from store to store with two personal items at the ready: their wallet and mobile phone. While some traditional retailers might only focus on the first part of that equation, savvy brands must realize that the latter is of near equal importance. Here's what I've learned about retailers using mobile to build brand loyalty, improve the customer experience and boost sales:

Big data has been a buzz phrase within the retail industry for the past year or more. That said, get 10 retailers in a room together and you might get 10 different definitions for what the term means. For Rue La La, an online flash-sales retailer of women's fashion apparel and accessories, big data meant connecting information across vendors to help it create targeted marketing campaigns to reactivate dormant customers. 

When it comes to tallying up retail sales, it's easy to overlook the impact of mobile. Although millions of consumers spend hours a day on their smartphones, only a small number of transactions are actually completed on the tiny devices. In 2013, for example, $235.3 billion was spent online, according to comScore. Among this number, only about $25 billion was attributed to mobile transactions. While these numbers pale in comparison to the over $3 trillion that was estimated to have been spent last year on in-store sales, the opportunity for smartphones is much larger than it appears at first glance.

During the 2013 holiday season, Perry Ellis deployed Starmount's mobile selling and customer engagement solutions to better focus on line busting, engaging customers throughout the store and completing transactions on mobile devices. The solutions were rolled out in 60 Perry Ellis stores, boosting adoption rates and increasing the average transaction amounts for sales conducted with mobile devices. The top Perry Ellis stores conducted up to 16.4 percent of all transactions on mobile devices, enabling associates to deliver the high level of customer service for which Perry Ellis is renowned. 

This webinar discusses the trends that are impacting the world of omnichannel eCommerce and how you can deal with them.

About 87 percent of Americans watch television while using devices like smartphones and tablets, but most of that second-screen usage is unrelated to the show or movie, according to the NPD Group, a market research company. Now, in what could signal a new era for product placement, Target will feature dozens of products on a new episode of "Cougar Town," the TBS comedy series, and, at the moment the products appear on television screens, encourage viewers to purchase them on their second screens. The episode that airs on Tuesday at 10 p.m. Eastern will be simulcast online at ShopCougarTown.com.

Choosing the right payment processor is one of the most critical steps in making your e-commerce site as accessible and useful to your customers as possible. Depending on what you sell and where you're selling from, there are a host of factors to take into consideration that affect not only how much you'll be spending on your online experience, but how much your customers will be charged and how convenient it is for them to finally click the buy button. To help guide new merchants looking to establish their first business or veteran sellers looking for a better rate, here are five essential issues to evaluate when choosing your next payment processor: 

Let's say your company is ahead of the technology curve, employing mobile point-of-sale systems, customer relationship management software, the latest financial reporting software, e- and m-commerce applications and supply chain tracking. Great! But what sort of exposure are you looking at when the performance of that technology fails to meet organizational or, far worse, customer expectations?

No industry has been more transfigured in the past year than retail. Stores now behave like websites, tracking consumers as they browse. American malls have pretty much died (but may be on their way back to life). And in some parts of the country you can have your milk and eggs delivered to your home, along with your new iPod, on the same day. Those who lead the field strike the right balance between physical and digital, experience and affordability, and convenience and quality. 

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2014 economic forecast yesterday, projecting retail industry sales (which exclude automobiles, gas stations and restaurants) will increase 4.1 percent, up from the preliminary 3.7 percent growth seen in 2013. NRF also announced it expects online sales in 2014 to grow between 9 percent and 12 percent. "Measured improvements in economic growth combined with positive expectations for continued consumer spending will put the retail industry in a relatively good place in 2014," said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.