Comments on: One way to assess your mobile strategy, today

By: Byron

Byron — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 04:18:45 +0000

I hope that Yahoo will invest in mobile site templates, their seems to be quite a few eCommerce providers doing this, and i now have about 14 – 17% of my visitors coming from mobile. unboundcommerce.com seems to be a solution, maybe their prices will recede in the near future.

By: PDF Dev

PDF Dev — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:07:10 +0000

@Frank What you say is true when you have an iPhone with a small screen and not accepting flsh, I have an Android with the biggest screen on the market and I can tell you that it is very cool to read the news on it, as much as with a real paper!
Mobile websites are just starting…

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:01:08 +0000

@David,
I wanted to respond to your comments about Unbound Commerce (if that’s who you’re referring to), as I’m from Unbound.
1) You state that all “sites look identical.”
All sites have unique look & feel & branding. They do share a common layout at this time, which is one of the ways we could make it so cost-effective.
Some of our customers have asked for more design options and in November we will be providing Custom Templates, which will provide the ability for unique page layouts. We already have our first customer signed up for this feature.
2) Unbound’s service absolutely does scale up & down for different screen sizes. I’m now looking at Blair Candy on an HTC EVO (bigger screen than an iPhone) and a Blackberry Pearl (very small screen); the site looks great! If you are experiencing a problem with some particular device, please let us know. QA never stops. support@unboundcommerce.com
3) No support for iPad. Absolutely right. We intentionally focus on small-screen, mobile devices that are carried everywhere. iPads are not currently among our supported devices because most companies find that their main site presents very well on an iPad-sized screen. (Flash support being another matter.) Our core techology could, however, deliver an iPad format, and we’d be happy to do that on a custom basis for any merchants who wants it.
Thanks for your interest in mobile!

By: Jennifer Farwell

Jennifer Farwell — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:54:46 +0000

Hi David,

Thank you for your opinion and for helping to generate useful discussion about mobile ecommerce on the blog. In regards to our mobile partnership, however, feedback from our merchants who are using Unbound Commerce has been very positive. As always, the aim is to provide a good customer experience, and the core metrics we’ve seen support this.

By: David

David — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:45:09 +0000

@Keith, very good points and spot on. If you haven’t checked out Yahoo mcommerce partner don’t waste your time. This has got to be the worst mobile implantation I have ever seen. Every one of their sites look identical and do not scale up or down for different screen sizes. Unbound sites look particularly bad on ipads and require basically the same amount effort to use as a regular site.

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:40:20 +0000

@Frank — It is true that web development tools will increasingly provide better support for mobile users, but mobile sites are not a fad.
1) Good mobile sites shouldn’t simply be a mini-site. They should have all the products and (most of) the functionality of the main site.
2) BUT, they do need to be formatted for the smaller screen. Users don’t want a lot of pinching & scrolling and data show they tend to bounce away from those sites pretty quickly.
3) AND a well-designed mobile site isn’t just smaller pages, but also reflects the most likely uses that mobile customers need. Face it: if a buyer had easy access to a desktop computer, they’d probably use that instead of a mobile. So, mobile sites are not typically used from the home or office — instead, are used from coffee shops and friendly gatherings and while commuting. The retailer’s site is not optimized for these use cases; the mobile site needs to be.

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:13:09 +0000

Mike: Companies who have launched mobile sites show a dramatic increase in mobile traffic. Finish Line mobile traffic jumped from 2% of total site traffic to 9% in just a couple of months and K&L Wines went from <1% of total to 10% after 5 months. (Neither did any marketing to generate mobile traffic.)
The lesson here is that traffic & revenue reports for your existing site grossly underestimates the latent demand from mobile customers. Which makes sense: if you don't have a mobile-optimized site, you can’t expect to get many mobile customers.

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:48:47 +0000

Mobile sites are a fad, they will fade out in a few years. I am not saying that mobile buying and browsing is going to die but more and more smart phone will support full browser pages and customer will want to see that wonderful design the store/site owner paid for.