Timing is everything when shopping with mobiles
Recently I was heading home from work and a thought hit me out of the blue: I had to get a gift for my my friend’s birthday and I needed to get it now! It was a bit late so I needed to locate something that had exactly the right gift — I was thinking about a rare sci-fi dvd — and which was open to accommodate my poor planning. It got me to thinking about how the industry is responding to the need for mobile information in the retail sector. Industry segments are waking up to the fact that increasingly, consumers are considering how mobile phones could make their shopping experience easier. A recent article on Searchnewz reports on the mobile search phenomenon and its implications for the retail sector. However, the article doesn’t mention an important element of the retail experience: timing.
The ability to access the information you need, when you need it, quickly and accurately, can greatly influence the retail experience. Innovations like Google Checkout will have important implications for accessing the retail sector via mobile phone. Forbes has reported that in the U.S., Yahoo has secured a deal to sponsor search listings on go2 mobile search results. This partnership reflects a better understanding of the actual “mobile search” market. Michael Bayle, senior director, business development, Yahoo Search Marketing remarks that “Consumers are using their mobile phones to search for local information everywhere they go, so delivering our listings to go2’s broad mobile user base just makes sense.” Which it does — but what we’re asking is, how will these partnerships and technologies it make customers’ lives easier? What information, and what form of interaction, do customers want from their mobile handset?
82ASK constantly fields questions from consumers looking for specific items whilst out and about. Customers ask us for suggestions, locations of shops, best price information — all the things you’d expect retail consumers to ask, and, quite frankly, to be able to find rather easily on the net, or by dialling around a few shops. But as we all know, directory enquiry web searches and general mobile web searches are, more often than not, unweildy away from the desktop. So, no wonder consumers have been slow to adopt the clunky, slow search interfaces available on the very limited number of mobile handsets that support them. And how many situations would you find yourself purchasing mail-order goods on the move? People do not want to search when they’re on the move - they want to find!
82ASK of course provides bespoke answers to specific questions, which our customers find helps their retail headaches. This isn’t necessarily because we find information that they couldn’t (although that certainly happens!) — it’s because we get the answer they need when they need it, generally within minutes of asking, wherever they happen to be. They don’t need to halt the experience to find the information, it’s more of a ‘fire and forget’ activity, leaving them free to amble to the next shop. In the retail experience, timing is everything!
