What are the trends in mobile retail for 2014? The most obvious one is that online – and to some extent in-store – retail is going to be dominated by mobile technology. Paul Skeldon looks into his crystal ball in search of more advances in mobile this year.
Mobile payments and the rise of the tablet as a replacement for the domestic desktop PC and the laptop are key trends that are going to propel mobile along within the retail space in 2014. But these are a given and, frankly, a bit ‘whatevs’.
Read On:
Mobile Trends 2014 – part II
New Year resolutions for online retailers
Making a mint through mobile
Mobile optimisation for ecommerce
However, what is perhaps more interesting is to look at how mobile as a technology is really maturing and how that is going to start to impact how it is used as a commercial tool. So here are some of the perhaps less well-documented trends for m-commerce in 2014 and what impact they are likely to have.
Introducing Mobile 3.0
The tech industry is super-keen on software-eque iterative nomenclature, so many in the mobile business are looking at the next stage of mobile development as being Mobile 3.0.
While very few people can remember what defined Mobile 2.0 or 1.0 (1.0 was making calls and 2.0 was jabbing at a touch screen), Mobile 3.0 will see the arrival of much more context driven data that you don’t necessarily ask for but that makes your life a lot easier.
For example, your 3.0 calendar will tell you, based on your current location, that you have to leave where you now are to make your next appointment.
Mobile 3.0 won’t stop there either. All apps will be context rich and targeted to consumers more around what they like and where they are.
This is a boon for retailers as it means that they can start to be very clever with their advertising and targeting of offers and messaging to consumers. It also starts what is really at the heart of Mobile 3.0: building a personal, on-going relationship between the consumer and the brand to mutual benefit.
How will this work in practice? Well, take for example understanding where your customers are. Analytics can tell you they were online, possible on what network. But if you don’t know where they are or what they are doing then this information is worthless.
If they are all on wifi and standing within yards of your shop then ping them an offer. If they are all on wifi but sprawled on their sofas at home, not such a great idea.
Smart Data not Big Data
At the heart of this move to Mobile 3.0 and its context driven approach lies data. 2012-13 were certainly the ‘Big Data’ years, but to make context really work, everyone using mobile to engage with consumers is going to have to be smarter about what data they gather and how they use it.
While Big Data allows for the slicing and dicing of all manner of seemingly secondary information about customers, the move in 2014 – especially for smaller retailers without the deep pockets demanded by Big Data – is to be more focused on what data to collect and why you need it for special campaigns and specific, context driven engagements.
What the specifics are depends on your business and what you want to do, but the move it to smarter rather than voluminous.
Mobile offers the chance to garner really detailed information about the context within which a consumer is interacting with you and so it is this sort of data – perhaps even more so that than previously purchased stuff – that will start to become the real gold in the data mine. It is also the edge that mobile has over online.
Bluetooth Beacons
One of the other trends in mobile retail allied to this collection of data and understanding of context will centre around Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) services such as Apple’s Bluetooth Beacons.
These devices will create ‘ultra local’ interaction with consumers not just within a store, but with specific areas of the store and then allow the targeting of offers, information and more.
And again, understanding the context these consumers are existing in while they are interacting with you via Bluetooth is going to be key part of the Smart Data puzzle.
For part one of this series, click on the following link: Mobile trends 2014 – part II
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