Retail Mobility: Laying the Right Foundation for Long-Term Success

Why Mobile Transcoding Technologies will Fade Quickly as Mobile Grows

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WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

Retail Mobility: Laying the Right Foundation for Long-Term Success

Why Mobile Transcoding Technologies will Fade Quickly as Mobile Grows

A world where mobile shoppers use their devices while filling their physical shopping cart and even paying in the check-out line is fast-approaching.

The smartphone is quickly becoming the always-present, always-on portal to the modern shopper, both as smartphone usage grows and as it gets more sophisticated. Mobile shoppers are already using their devices both on the go and in the store to search, browse, compare and buy productsa behavior that is growing by leaps and bounds. The Spring 2011 Consumer Pulse Survey from Deloitte revealed that 36% of shoppers have used their smartphones to research products online, and 34% of them browsed or bought products. Additionally, 43% of shoppers have used their smartphones to assist them while shopping in-store. A world where mobile shoppers use their devices while filling their physical shopping cart and even paying in the checkout line is fast-approaching. As a result, its hard to deny that the mobile platform is not only a unique engagement platform today, but it could be the most important platform to support the retailer-shopper relationship in the future. Because of mobiles strategic importance, retailers must approach it as a channel that benefits from its own independent strategy. Over time, the user experience, product assortment, and promotional strategy for mobile must all

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

be considered and built with an eye to consistency and coordination with other channels. But retailers must lay the foundation to leverage the unique capabilities of mobile and serve the distinctive ways that shoppers use it.

Interactions are short and speed-tooutcome is important. Mobile shoppers

User Experience

arent tolerant of user experiences designed for heavy browsing the way fixed web shoppers are. Less is more. Some products

Retailers must lay the foundation to leverage the unique capabilities of mobile and serve the distinctive ways that shoppers use it.

Product Assortment

perform much better on mobile than others, and tighter selections can drive more volume. Considering in-store use cases is important. Mobile promotions have the opportunity

Promotional Strategy

to be time and location sensitive in ways that fixed web promotions cant. Just copying the full website approach will result in missed opportunities.

The above are just the strategic dimensions that need to be optimized for mobile within the use cases that ecommerce and mobile commerce have in common. Once a retailer starts to consider the in-store use cases that make mobile unique, the need for an independent approach becomes even more striking.

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

MOBILE FIXED WEB

Mobile POS Payments Activity-Based Loyalty Geo-Fenced Marketing In-Store Engagement mCommerce eCommerce

Transcoding technology is a series of tools that allow a retailer to shortcut the path to mobile by scraping the content and features off of their existing website and reconfiguring them for the mobile web.

A Growing Strategic Divide

Mobile Transcoding Technologies: The Temporary Solution

In any technologys infancy, businesses that want to experiment will seek out implementation methods that are low risk and that re-use what they already have today. Usually, these methods work serviceably for a short time. Unfortunately, the short cuts that are taken in order get to market quickly, cheaply, and without much organizational investment mean that once the experiment is over the temporary approach has to be torn down and replaced with a more solid infrastructure that will work for the long term. For retailers with an ecommerce presence that have wanted to dabble in mobile commerce, transcoding technology has functioned for a couple of years as that short cut. Transcoding technology is a series of tools that allow a retailer to short-cut the path to mobile by scraping the content and features off of their existing website and reconfiguring them for the mobile web. Increasingly, the additional step is taken to put the mobile web in a thin wrapper to turn it into a native application. The scraping is done in real time, as to make sure the mobile site is an exact replica of the full website. Most transcoding technologies implement a rules-based engine that can also tweak the site as it

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

gets re-interpreted and have become more sophisticated over time, even injecting new features in some cases.

Transcoding Technology

FULL WEBSITE

MOBILE SITE / APP

Transcoding is the technology to support the experiment, not the strategy. But Mobile Commerce is no longer an experiment...

The advantages to this approach are easy to understand. It can be cheap, fast, and typically requires no involvement from the web or IT team to implement. But its also fragile and inflexible. The site or application that is served on the mobile device is hard-wired to the full website, and anything more than a small deviation starts to become unwieldy and expensive to support. Any changes to the full site cause expensive break-downs in the mobile site as rules have to be reconfigured or customized, and the minute a retailer wants to service shoppers on mobile in ways that are truly different than how they are served on fixed web, they find that they are confined by the expense. The result of these drawbacks is that transcoding is the technology to support the experiment, not the strategy. But mobile commerce is no longer an experiment, and retailers who want to lead need a more solid foundation for growth.

Service-Level Integration: Decoupling from Fixed Web

Building a more solid foundation means treating mobile as an independent system that can be optimized both strategically and technically for the unique service model it represents. Best practices for independent mobile systems doesnt mean that no dependencies exist, but it does mean that those dependencies have been abstracted into feeds that provide only the vital data building blocks

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

that mobile developers can use to build the best possible mobile web and rich application experiences.

Data Feeds

IT SYSTEMS

MOBILE PLATFORMS

MOBILE SITE / APP

Because transcoded mobile sites are completely dependent on the underlying full website, any change to that website can break or completely take down the mobile site...

Exposing web services to enable mobile, starting with the ecommerce platform, is relatively easy and doesnt extend project timelines significantly. By addressing mobile at the service level, a retailer also gains the freedom to extend to other key IT platforms like CRM, POS, and BI in ways that are mobile specific and support the unique data needs that the mobile experience requires as the mobile strategy evolves. In most cases, the trade-off of a couple of months to lay the appropriate foundation for future growth is worth it.

A Deeper Look: Transcoding vs. ServiceLevel Integration

While the benefits of transcoding technologies are easy to understand speed to market and a lack of IT investment the advantages of service-level integration require a deeper look into what the difference in technical infrastructure means. Stability Because transcoded mobile sites are completely dependent on the underlying full website, any change to that website can break or completely take down the mobile site as the transcoding technology struggles to interpret the change. Downtime not only has an impact on usage, as shoppers start to see the site as unreliable and may not return, but it also has a real impact to the top line. When the site is down, purchases arent being made.

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

This can be exacerbated further when transcoding is used within a rich application wrapper, as the wrappers themselves create another interpretive layer that adds to instability and potential downtime. Service-level integration means that mobile can maintain uptime regardless of the status of other systems, and the user experience can adapt gracefully based on the availability of other systems. Performance Mobile users are impatient, and speed-to-outcome is a huge consideration. Transcoding creates an active dependency because the interpretation of the full website happens in real time. Almost every action by a shopper involves a round trip to the ecommerce website to scrape and interpret the current page for mobile. While many transcoded sites have handled performance optimization by simply removing elements like graphics in that translation, feed integration at the service level lends a lot more flexibility to when and how the mobile site pulls in information from other systems. When calls are made, they involve the efficient exchange of raw data versus the technical gymnastics involved in scraping and rules-based interpretation. Additionally, the decoupling of mobile technical infrastructure from the full website creates advantages in terms of how the mobile experience, where users are less delaytolerant, is supported in comparison to the fixed web. Feature Portability One of the commonly communicated advantages of transcoding is that any custom features that have been created on the fixed web site are ported easily over to the mobile experience. However, in todays web commerce environment, many features are provided

Feed integration at the service level lends a lot more flexibility to when and how the mobile site pulls in information from other systems...

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

by third parties through an iframe or similar insertion technology. Good examples are ratings and reviews content from companies like Bazaarvoice and social technologies from companies like Facebook. Transcoding has difficulty drilling into these inserted features to recreate them, and when successful, creates additional dependencies that significantly increase the fragility of the mobile implementation. If the third party provider changes anything about the technical structure behind their solution, a practice that they are typically free to do without notifying their customers as long the web appearance doesnt change, this can break a transcoders replication rules. User Experience Across Platforms When mobile is treated independently, the system can be leveraged easily across the mobile web and rich applications native to different device platforms to create unique experiences in each venue. In a transcoding scenario, the same limitations that couple the mobile site to the full website will couple rich applications and other form factors like tablets to the mobile website. This means that retailers will be unable to truly create a rich user experience that is a hallmark and advantage of native applications, as any meaningful deviation from the transcoded copy will be fragile and costly.

In the end, the main reason for building a good foundation for long-term growth in mobile is not only a question of strategy; it also comes down to dollars and cents.

The Cost of Ownership

In the end, the main reason for building a good foundation for long-term growth in mobile is not only a question of strategy; it also comes down to dollars and cents. While the initial launch of a transcoded approach may be inexpensive, the lack of flexibility and fragility means that even small changes require expensive maintenance over time. Costs can become prohibitive as mobile starts to demand

WHITE PAPER: RETAIL MOBILITY: LAYING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

a more specialized approach, and this means that eventually a retailer can reach a point where they have to start over with a more flexible, independent infrastructure. The best thing that a retailer can do in approaching mobile is to understand the different technologies available and when they are useful. Transcoding technologies are a great opportunity to experiment, as long as retailers know that when the experiment succeeds they should start to look for a more sustainable approach.