Mobile Commerce

As the year comes to a close, it's time for my annual roundup of omnichannel retail predictions for the year ahead. I'm focusing on a few interesting trends I saw come to light in 2013 that I believe will become even more widespread next year. Enjoy!

With the employee turnover rate typically high in the retail industry, particularly within brick-and-mortar stores, managing the process of finding and hiring qualified individuals is a challenge for many brands. It often proves time consuming and can be expensive. Such was the dilemma facing VILLA.

With consumer usage of smartphones continuing to skyrocket, it's past time for your brand to have a mobile presence, be it a mobile-optimized site, app or both. To help your efforts in generating sales from mobile devices, consider the following eight tips:

With the holidays just around the corner, online retailers must be well-equipped to support and engage the abundance of holiday shoppers. Along with a projected increase in online sales from last year, retailers need to be prepared for an increase in mobile shoppers who are ready to begin their holiday bargain hunting. With this in mind, I've compiled a few tips for companies looking to create a winning mobile engagement strategy this holiday season.

Shareable content, enhanced product images, live chat and improved search capabilities are among the key changes introduced Tuesday morning to the Toysrus.com and Babiesrus.com websites. The sites are said to have a fresh design and layout, revamped navigation, and new features to help everyone from deal seekers to last-minute shoppers easily discover savings and information about the company's offerings. In addition, the sites have introduced social shopping functionality, which allows visitors to organize their most-wanted items in shareable toy and baby boards, while also viewing the most popular and trending products on the sites.

In an effort to make it simpler for consumers to simultaneously browse its print catalog and research and buy from their mobile devices, Sharper Image embedded a “Buy  Now” capability into its holiday preview catalog. The catalog is chock-full of electronic, recreation, fitness and travel products, and was sent to 4 million households and businesses on Nov. 4.

Macy's continues its run as a leader in mobile by adapting a favored smartphone activity — sharing photos — for its signature annual holiday campaign. Through Dec. 7, consumers who post a photo or video of themselves mailing a letter to Santa from inside a Macy's store using the hashtag #MacysBelieve will have chance to be included in a Macy's television commercial. The mobile social strategy will help Macy's drive word-of-mouth for the campaign as well as foot traffic into its stores.

In this post-PC era, mobile is a business game changer. Enterprises acknowledge the need for mobile strategy, yet many of them are struggling to capitalize on the opportunities. Most enterprises need serious help in understanding and implementing mobile solutions. Existing processes are completely unsuited to meet the expectations of end-user consumers or consumerized IT end users. Here are four fallacies that consistently stifle enterprise mobile projects:

Thanks to a variety of improvements, including streamlining the checkout process, Toys“R”Us was found to be the retailer that delivers the best mobile site user experience, according to a new report from the e-tailing group.

Victoria's Secret is one of a few different retailers this holiday season that's incorporating augmented reality into its own branded application for both driving sales and engagement. The retailer is using augmented reality that's been built specifically into the Victoria's Secret mobile application. Victoria's Secret is launching the new feature to work with the brand's new winter style guide catalog. "It makes total sense for Victoria's Secret to integrate augmented reality into its own app as opposed to using a third-party branded app," said Ritesh Bhavnani, chairman of Snipp Interactive.