Mobile marketing presents a powerful opportunity for retailers to engage with customers in a more personalized interactive manner, to increase loyalty, generate word-of-mouth, and improve store and Web traffic.

In a recent article, Internet Retailer cites that The Nielsen Co. expects smartphone adoption to represent 50% of all phones in use by the end of next year. While the assertion is that smartphone adoption will drive m-commerce, it can be difficult for retailers to make the decision on whether to invest in creating a mobile site or a mobile app.

The decision is further hampered by barriers such as creating an experience that is compatible across different devices, different operating systems and screen sizes.

Look at your site analytics

If you aren’t already engaging consumers via mobile devices, you should at least know what your site looks like when browsed from one. Is the experience a good one or does it take a long time for your website to load? Do visitors need to scroll before finding information of value?

Use the same analytics criteria you use for standard web traffic analysis:

• What are your traffic sources? (Is there a percentage coming from mobile devices? If so, is that percentage increasing over time?)
• How long did they stay when they visited your site?
• Which page(s) did they view? (Depending on this data, your mobile site may only need a few key pages.)
• Are they returning visitors? (Again, look at your percentages and trend changes over time.)
• Did they complete a specified action? (e.g. complete a purchase)

Mobile sites are a good first step

Once you’ve determined that your analytics indicate a growth in your mobile web traffic, the creation of a mobile site can be a good first step.

Internet Retailer recently highlighted how Your Electronic Warehouse decided to build mobile versions of its three e-commerce sites - 4ElectronicWarehouse.com, 4Luggage.com and DiscountGolfWorld.com – because it recognized growing traffic to these sites from mobile devices.

Your Electronic Warehouse used site analytics to assess the return on investment in providing mobile versions of its e-commerce sites. As Internet Retailer states,

“Of that 8% of traffic coming to the sites, the clear majority come from smartphones. Of smartphone traffic, 39% stemmed from iPhones and 36% from Android devices.”

Wireframe then test, test, test

Use your analytics to determine what content from your main site should be added to your mobile site. Set up your mobile site’s domain – often a subdomain of your main website with “m” in the domain name. Wireframe the site and then test its functionality on different mobile devices. Keep testing to ensure the experience is consistent over time.

Promote it!

While your site should be configured to automatically detect and redirect traffic from mobile devices to a mobile version of your site, don’t forget to promote your mobile site everywhere. On your main website, your blog, your Facebook page, on Twitter, etc.

Simply put, monitor your traffic sources in order to trend increases in traffic from mobile devices over time. As the Your Electronic Warehouse example proves, optimizing your e-commerce site for your consumers using mobile devices can be good first step into mobile commerce marketing.

Mobile apps need to offer value

While it may seem like mobile apps have been around for ages, it’s still a relatively new technology (Apple only launched its App Store in July 2008). Developing a mobile application requires much more complicated coding than HTML and CSS, and there’s high demand for developers with the knowledge and expertise.

What’s the purpose?

We often hear retailers say that they want a mobile app. And while their enthusiasm to get involved in mobile commerce is great, as a responsible partner we encourage them to take a step back and understand the ‘what’ they want to do, before they settle on the ‘how’ they want to accomplish it (which is really the app).

• What value do you want the app to bring to customers?
• Does it need to integrate with social sharing sites?
• Does it require a mobile payment option?
• Does it need to incorporate a store-locator function via GPS?
• What about line of business integration such as CRMs or other databases?

Does it entertain and offer value?

Once you decide to create a mobile app, its creation should be approached in the same way retailers create a marketing campaign to target consumers. How many of your customers use mobile devices? How you can improve their shopping experience with your brand by creating a mobile app?

With thousands of apps to choose from, consumers aren’t going to use your app simply out of loyalty to your brand. Do your market research to ensure you’re not replicating an app already on the market.

We’ve discussed the importance of creating value in the mobile apps targeted at consumers  in a previous post. Your app needs to offer intrinsic value – make it a fun, interactive tool – and then provide an offer that rewards consumers for using the app.

The offer could be a coupon that can be redeemed in store or online. Your mobile customers are rewarded with an exclusive discount; you’ve created cross channel marketing synergy, and your brand benefits from deeper interactions with a more engaged consumer.

An example of an effective mobile app that offers great value is Best Buy Canada’s app, which allows consumers to browse, search and buy. It also features reviews and ratings and integrates with e-mail, Facebook and Twitter for social sharing.

How will you promote it?

As I mentioned before, you need to approach the creation of a mobile app as you would any other marketing campaign. Even if you build it, there’s no guarantee anyone will download and use it, especially if they’re not even aware it exists. You need to create pre- and post-launch promotional strategies.

You also should think about the life of your app. Is it targeted towards a seasonal campaign and so won’t be used after that campaign has ended? Or is it an app you want consumers to keep using over time?

If so, you should roadmap the features of your app so that you can plan for future releases. This will keep consumers coming back as long as those new features continue to add value.

Food for thought

When it comes to investing in mobile sites or mobile apps, consider the value of both. Because they are open to the Web, mobile sites can be used to extend reach, helping you to attract new customers. Mobile apps on the other hand, can be used to increase engagement with your already loyal customers while also offering the ability to attract new customers through targeted promotional campaigns.

At minimum, retailers should be aware of how many of their customers are accessing their online stores via mobile devices. Is it steadily increasing? Are your competitors initiating mobile marketing strategies? If so, it’s time to start thinking about your mobile strategy.