The Mobile Money Network™ Blog

2012 has seen some major turning points in the publishing industry’s use of digital, and we at MMN have been extremely busy playing our part in that over the past couple of weeks, enabling readers of the Metro Life&Style Christmas Gift Guide to buy instantly from their daily paper.

We have already seen the success that publishers have enjoyed when embracing the use of mobile for editorial content consumption, as shown through the ever-growing number of newspaper-based apps, alongside the increasing use of mobile browsers to access content. An outstanding example of this is Associated Newspapers use of MailOnline, who have turned print news into something much more easily consumable on the move, carving a real niche in the breaking news market and gaining 110m pairs of eyes globally and 30m in the UK alone. Coupled with the focus that various magazines are now placing on the tablet market, readers now have a fourth avenue through which to access content, after print, online and mobile.

The difficulty that publishers now face is in finding ways to monetise these new digital channels. At present, either they don’t charge for online use or for their app and subsequently find themselves running loss-leading platforms, or they adopt paywalls, which have met with mixed receptions. The Times, for example, was an early adopter of the paywall over here in the UK but its success has been limited because the content is not sufficiently exclusive enough to merit paying for it. In contrast, the mix of a slicker user experience and more esoteric content from the likes of The Financial Times and The Economist has led to better conversion rates. Other methods tried by retailers include click-throughs from online content to maximise their affiliate margin, or even taking a more direct route by becoming retailers, or near-retailers, themselves; MailShop is a great example of this, whereby they use space in the paper to sell products to their readers directly. Products are recommended by the editorial team, and are therefore clearly differentiated from more commercially-driven initiatives.

Taking this a step further, there are various innovative ways in which publishers have augmented their content by digital means, enabled by the likes of Aurasma and Blippar; this works well in the DVD market for instance, where a trailer can be activated and played and offer a more compelling reason to click through to a purchase, but so far there has been little evidence of significant adoption or buy-in from consumers themselves. Similarly, one edition of this week’s Times enabled direct click-throughs from luxury shoes, but this promoted the perception that the editorial team were recommending certain products.

In essence, what we are seeing is a narrowing of ‘church and state’; ‘church’ here being the editorial content and the principal reason people go to that publication; ‘state’ being the more directly commercial opportunities. Every publisher that we at MMN have spoken to is increasingly concerned about this overlap, and the ensuing perceived compromise of editorial principles for commercial ends. One of the potential solutions that has been missing from this equation in the past has been the ability to buy simply and conveniently, directly from the page.

2012 has seen some great innovations in this area, including those driven by our own campaigns with MailShop and the Metro Life & Style supplement, which will extend to other publications throughout 2013. Similarly, while profits driven from iPad based offerings remain underwhelming  at this stage, the expansion into this area demonstrates a clear understanding from that community of the need to innovate, and these are great examples of that innovation.

2013 will see many of these media businesses helping retailers sell directly from the page. All the things we’ve identified – the multichannel experience of print, online, tablet and mobile – can be turned into retail opportunities, and there are a lot of organisations that either directly or indirectly want to sell things to consumers as a way of monetising these channels, either as a marketplace or directly as a retailer.

MMN will help progress this by identifying who the consumers are and tailoring the content and experience through search, merchandising and checkout. Right now there is (in the main) a patchwork of disparate services and the wrong products in front of a random audience: 2013 will mark a conversion of that patchwork into a new quilt, with a joined up experience, targeted marketing to each consumer with a sophisticated range of products, with the added benefits of a better conduit for advertising revenues and the build-up of a valuable database.

Our next blog post will be in early January. Until then, we’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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In April, IMRG and CapGemini predicted that one in five retail purchases would be made through a mobile device by Christmas. This has proved to be spot on according to Retail Week’s figures published last week, anticipating that a whopping 20% (£920m) of this year’s expected Christmas spend of £1bn would be via mobile. What wasn’t foreseen was a significant rise in the number of purchasing journeys that began with browsing on a mobile device, which we now know is upwards of 60%. The hugely influential US publication Women’s Wear Daily has this week analysed the evidence and broken it down in line with what we have previously said about consumers’ browsing habits – it quotes a report from Deloitte Digital reckoning on 47% of shoppers browsing on their phone at home 24 hours before they buy, 51% en route to the shops and 61% actually in the store. This reaffirms what we have said about the difference between the use of mobile and the PC.

So, browsing has a vital role to play, even once a customer is standing in a store. This has contributed to a growing suspicion among some retailers that mobile is the enemy of the store, and this tension is neatly explained by Ian Cheshire in his comment on the retail technology arms race. The choice on offer to consumers is intimidating: just this week the App Store passed one million apps registered since inception and this article showcases just a handful of indispensable shopping companions, with eBay, Amazon and Groupon leading a list otherwise populated with price-comparison sites. Media Post reports that “showrooming”, or price-comparison of a product while looking at it in-store, is a habit of over 50% of shoppers. Significantly, almost as many use the mobile to look up product reviews and purchase affirmation is the main aim (only 11% were dissuaded from ultimately making a purchase).

There is a massive opportunity for retailers to improve the in-store mobile shopping experience – already WalMart and HomeDepot are introducing features that focus on the branch nearest a consumer’s mobile. Home Depot’s customers can give voice commands that direct them to the relevant shelf while Walmart will push notifications of offers in nearby branches linked to local billboard advertising to devices using the app. It’s safe to say that big US retailers are starting to grasp the power of mobile, but this may not be the only way that they are taking the lead over UK retailers and to assume that this is down to their relative scale only tells half the story.

US retailers are also collaborating on data – the creation of MCX, or Merchant Customer Exchange, proves how seriously the market-leading brands are taking the idea of targeting. Participation is vital, whether or not they succeed in all respects, and right now ultimate control is very much up for grabs: the race to be what Google is to the internet cannot be won alone, even by retail giants such as WalMart, Target, Home Depot and Best Buy. Collaboration is key; it is very much not about selling out and all about being as strong as we are united.

Mobile Money Network has the solution for retailer collaboration in the UK and we are not alone in backing this as the way forward – Simon Andrews called this out on his Addictive blog a little while ago. 2013 is all about following the lead of our colleagues across the pond: we in the UK need to enhance the consumer experience with the addition of location-based features and personalise the service.

In the meantime, UK retailers have a golden opportunity to get involved with innovation in mobile in a low-risk, low-input way, by being part of our collaboration with Britain’s huge daily paper Metro on their Christmas gift guides. If you are a retailer interested in being a part of this there is still time; we have a few slots open in what is shaping up to be a very successful campaign – please do get in touch!

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Innovation in Payment Widgets

The BBC has covered iZettle this week in an article that made us think more about payment widgets. 2012 has launched a number of widgets that enable mobiles to make credit and debit card payments from the likes of Global Payments, e-Wise, Powa and, of course, Square in the US. Operators range from sole traders taking payments for window cleaning, milk and newspapers through to shop assistants in large stores. What they have in common is a low-friction way of processing transactions with inexpensive hardware, straightforward contracts and the simplest of commercial models, opening up a new horizon for mobile money. The concept is seemingly win-win: consumers have a greater choice of payment methods, retailers can take payments wherever they are, and the banks and payment companies cement their role in the value chain.

Mobile network operators are starting to position themselves as distributors (o2 with Global Payments, Everything Everywhere with iZettle), having recognised the potential for extended mobile phone capability. However, we think that  businesses are more likely to be comfortable with a bank relationship or payments company relationship for collecting money from customers in the long run. Just as the banks and acquiring networks have adapted their business models to serve an increasing diversity of retailers, so will they adapt to this new area of the market, as we have seen from Barclaycard (the rebranded “Barclays Merchant Services” and distinct from the credit card business!) and Worldpay’s Cardsave. In fact, just this week Bank of America announced its own rival to Square with the December launch of Mobile Pay on Demand, powered with a headphone dongle and companion app for Android and iOS.

So what’s next? Inevitably, consolidation will come and we expect that the large merchant acquiring networks will expand, hoovering up the market leaders as they go. There seems to have been reluctance to fully embrace the business models espoused by the likes of Square so far, for reasons including protecting their existing fee structures and contractual terms. However, as is often the case, trying to hold back the tide is futile and it would in fact be better for the banks to get their heads around erosion of margin to mine a potentially much larger customer base if they take steps to open the floodgates. In this context, Dan Wagner’s partnership with South Africa’s First National Bank looks like a shrewd move.

The market leaders are also already starting to think beyond these use cases towards the in-store checkout experience (as we’ve seen with Square and mentioned before), personalising it by linking consumers’ mobiles and the till, improving the experience and therefore loyalty to those outlets. Starbucks are evidently right on board with these arguments and it’s great that they have made good on the deal announced in August.

TV Commerce

It seems as though the TV is back on people’s minds. We found a bit of food for thought in this article on Television Commerce and agree that the TV has a key role to play as innovative retailers continue to push the boundaries on making sales outside of their traditional channels. Obviously, customers are already marketed to by TV ads and shopping channels; we will soon start to see the ability to buy more directly from the TV – recently Shazam has trialled the ability to access additional content during breaks in the US Superbowl coverage and X-Factor; and there are plenty of other mechanisms including audio signature watermarks that can be added to television programs to enable mobile and tablet interaction. Right now a lot of solutions lack the actual ability to pay (although MMN has a solution for that!). It seems that the ability to engage viewers with interactive content beyond text voting by playing along with game show competitors in real time is just around the corner and we think the addition of new, low-friction methods of retail purchasing can’t be far away.

There’s been a huge increase in the availability of on demand content and the TV is rapidly becoming one of the home’s main sources of access to the internet. The opportunities to purchase through direct click-throughs are vast – YouGov estimates that over half of Britons have connected their TV to the internet and upwards of 20% of content viewed by category ABC1 viewers is on demand. As the technology evolves and enhances the interactive viewing experience, the integration of video and social media content (such as Zeebox) will follow and we’ll be able to watch a program while looking at product placement slots, maps, menus and so on. For now, it’s one for the future and where we think Apple TV is heading, aiming for an altogether much more integrated viewing experience.

The natural next stage of web-enabled TV is the development of specific apps, as we are already seeing from Samsung SmartHubs and LG Smart TV. This is a huge new avenue for businesses that currently produce apps for phones and tablets and offers a really easy way to search the particular content we access most frequently.

Tesco CIO backs personalisation as the next priority for Retail

Harking back to previous entries, Mike McNamara has a valuable take on the conversation about technology in retail.

 

 

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Google Rumours

This week we’ve heard rumours of developments at Google: leaked screenshots from Android Police suggest the launch of a Google card and Google Commerce released technology to single-click online payments with Google Wallet. We think both steps are of real interest and are worth further exploration.

To understand the context, we thought about the original aims of Google Wallet. Google chose to waive transaction fees in favour of gathering information from transactions, improving its data set and knowledge of consumers. Armed with better knowledge of their purchasing habits, Google would market to consumers via their mobile devices with bespoke, targeted advertising relevant to each person’s preference for certain shopping centres and high streets, stores and products. Google needs to prove a direct link between ads and transactions to its advertisers. It’s made a good go of this online: we know that 90% of high street retail transactions are made on the high street and not online, so there’s a real opportunity for Google to prove that it understands the customer journey and the value of targeted advertising by showing the connection between a consumer seeing something and purchasing it.

So how does this apply to the news? A Google card would avoid the difficulty Google has had gaining traction with NFC, having faced resistance from retailers, consumers, banks, MNO’s and handset manufacturers – it’s partly the length and complexity of this value chain that has hindered mass adoption. Using one plastic card for all credit and debit cards registered with the Wallet would bypass the issue and help achieve the three aims above, and so makes a lot of sense to Google’s strategy. We think there are two potential challenges: will retailers want it and will consumers want it? As several trials of NFC have shown, adoption by both parties is vital to gain momentum.

It’s hard to see how it might not involve extra work for retailers in the shape of technical development and the education of in-store staff. There may be reluctance to give Google information from transactions and inevitably retailers will have to pay Google more for adverts, meaning they pay to part with valuable information. Customers will still have to choose a card from the Wallet to use for each purchase – and it’s not the biggest challenge to carry a couple of cards day-to-day instead of a single one, especially not until the technology is universally accepted. NFC technology is at least cool, which is not quite the case for a new card! It’s obvious that the card would fit with Google’s strategy, but whether or not it will work remains to be seen.

The online solution outlined by Google Commerce will cut out the “three hand process”: one hand to hold a card, another to hold the phone and a third to enter numbers. This also addresses the Wallet’s three strategic goals (valuable transaction data, targeted mobile marketing and a proven link between adverts and purchases), but it’s not clear how it differs from the old Google Checkout. Anecdotally, Google Checkout was unsuccessful because it put Google head-to-head with its two biggest advertisers: Amazon and Ebay. The former provides the One-Click Checkout, a unique selling point that disappears if Google can do the same thing, and Ebay own PayPal, used by a huge number of retailers to speed up the transaction. In spite of the quiet withdrawal of Google Checkout, it could be argued that the new package does present a holistic and compelling consumer proposition and it’ll be interesting to see how it performs compared to the previous model.

Drapers Report: “Innovation in Fashion”, in association with Mobile Money Network 

MMN has contributed to Drapers “Innovation in Fashion” Report (see above image), with Marketing Director Nick White commenting that “the ability to innovate is more important than ever in order to defend, as well as grow, a business”. The survey’s results strongly indicate that innovation that embraces the mobile device is critical and that, as technology continues to develop at pace, it would be wise to act soon.

Mobile Money Revolution’s Interview with m-Powa

We’ve covered our take on Google’s news above, and Dan Wagner of mPowa gives another perspective in his interview with Mobile Money Revolution.

Tesco Launches “Commuter Zone”

Tesco have announced the launch of “Commuter Zone” for shoppers on the way to and from work. It’s more evidence that big businesses are thinking about targeting merchandising around specific circumstances with an integrated app offering a great customer experience, and well worth having a look at.

 

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Phil Vickery Checks Out on Mobile

MMN’s MD John Milliken featured heavily in last week’s Retail Week article ‘Smartphones Ring the Changes in Retail’. Discussing in-store mobile payments, John says, “The technology is available and relatively easy to implement; the innovation exists in being able to link systems together.” Our collaboration with Thomas Pink is an example of MMN’s innovation in this area: this week Thomas Pink unveiled the range of official merchandise for the British and Irish Lions’ Tour at The Golden Lion in Mayfair – renamed The Pink Lion for the duration of the week-long campaign. Lions’ coach Warren Gatland pulled pints while customers purchased Thomas Pink Lions’ apparel from pictures on the walls using MMN’s Thomas Pink mobile checkout app (demonstrated by Phil Vickery above). Martin Bayfield, Lewis Moody and Andy Irvine joined in the fun with rugby lessons on the turf outside.

Retail Week e-Commerce Summit

MMN Marketing Director Nick White gave the keynote speech at the Retail Week e-Commerce Summit on Wednesday, in which he explained both how mobile payments provide consumers with a simpler, faster way to pay, and how to improve distribution, reach and revenue by enabling mobile payments across all channels. The Summit saw a strong turnout from forward-thinking retailers and featured inspiring talks from Ishan Patel of Aurora Fashions and Sarah Baillie of Debenhams. On Tuesday, Nick’s panel ‘How Will e-Commerce Change the Future of Retail?’ provoked passionate discussion amongst panelists from Waitrose and Morrisons. A key theme from the event was the importance of data to both customers and retailers.

What is Mobile Commerce?

Nick White used this slide (above) to illustrate the mobile purchase process in four key quadrants: marketing, search, merchandising and checkout. The concept is expanded in our slide below, detailing the purchase in three domains – home (where PC and tablet are dominant), out and about and in-store (where, for both, mobile is dominant). As a channel, what makes mobile unique is its application to every quadrant and therefore its ability to draw together the purchase experience. For example, mobile can be used for search at home with the Tesco app, which enables customers to compile their shopping list by scanning the barcodes of products they are throwing in the bin. Equally, mobile is used at an in-store checkout with Pay by Square, which links the mobile device with the till. m-Commerce is a broad term and, as it develops, we will have to analyse its various components in greater detail to better explain it. The key is to understand that the mobile device, uniquely, knows everything about its owner and can influence and personalise their experience in each quadrant, enabling a targeted, bespoke service that perpetuates the ‘demographic of one’ experience. Mobile will never completely take over from e-Commerce, but it will become equally as dominant.

4G is here, but is it any good?

Everything Everywhere has launched 4G in 11 cities across the UK, offering a massive opportunity for the network if it can get it right. In the UK, we pay a lot for data and generally the experience falls short: at the moment, the quality of the service is holding the industry back. Faster broadband is expensive and, if it proves to be unreliable or offer poor coverage, customers won’t be happy. The predictions seem lukewarm: Guy Laurence, CEO of Vodafone, says that its own 4G service to be launched next year has a longer wavelength and will focus on providing a good service indoors, casting doubt on the reach of EE’s offering.

Battle of the mobile wallets

Vodafone made the news again this week when Gemalto announced the launch of its mobile wallet in partnership with the operator, as Project Oscar (the UK network operators’ JV, which includes Vodafone) announced its rebranding as Weve. On Twitter, the community questioned what this meant for Oscar/Weve: Vodafone is a global company with presence in 30 territories, and it is not surprising that it is exploring solo projects alongside the JV. All the member operators of Weve have their own wallets and NFC initiatives. Tweeters are missing the point: in the near term, Weve is positioning itself as a marketing platform while Vodafone launches the wallet in Germany and Spain. The question is how Vodafone will add differentiation to NFC that benefits consumers and retailers. If it’s only concerned with in-store checkout, it’ll miss out on a lot of what m-Commerce offers. Ultimately, to benefit the consumer and retailers, it needs to add value across the purchasing journey.

 

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It’s been a busy week for fans of mobile computing. Microsoft has launched both Windows 8 and its Surface tablet, but was predictably trumped on Tuesday evening by Apple’s launch of not only the iPad Mini but an extra revamped mainstream iPad (presumably the ‘new(er) iPad’). Apple’s remarkable impact on the mobile and technology industry to date has justifiably led to legendary levels of customer loyalty, but this most recent launch has led to rumblings of discontent from even those most loyal fans, who are dismayed at the increasingly shortened life-span of their beloved products.

Perhaps one of the most notable elements of the week is the very fact that the iPad mini even exists, due to the divergence from a famous claim by Steve Jobs at the 2010 launch of the original iPad, at which he described how “the seven-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad… 7-inch tablets are dead on arrival”. While it was obviously beyond even the capabilities of the late and lamented genius to predict what the market would look like over a year after his own sad death, this change of direction does beg the question of whether Apple has been provoked into responding to the market rather than leading it; are they beginning to play catch-up?

It’s a tempting view. The creation of the iPad mini implies that either Apple believes it has something truly unique to offer to that end of the tablet market, or simply that it’s starting to look at and respond to the latest attempts from its rivals at eating into the iPad’s dominance.

The most recent example of this is the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, which recently saw its UK launch, and is notably now being sold in Waterstones. Similarly, Barnes and Noble is expected to come to the UK with its Nook offering in the not too distant future, and of course Samsung’s Galaxy 3 has done very nicely as an oversized phone. The threat of these tablets and others like them seems to have provoked Apple into making their own entrance to this particular market, while still maintaining their unrivalled reputation as a provider of premium products, and with premium prices to match.

Indeed, it is unquestioned that the iPad mini and their other recent high-profile launch, the iPhone 5, remain products that are not only beautiful but functionally advanced. The problem for Apple is simply that it is arguably becoming a victim of its own success. The fan following that it boasts places unique pressure on them to deliver stunning innovations with every launch, far more so than the very different fan base that first Nokia and then RIM have had to try to satisfy in similar situations in the past.

Disappointingly for those fans, the enhancements to the mainstream iPad – as well as those seen in the iPhone 5 and iOS6 – all seem to be examples of incremental changes; evolution rather than the revolutionary game-changers that we have come to expect. Rivals, Samsung in particular, are taking advantage of this to make up lost ground in what very recently looked an unassailable lead. In that particular case, there is even an argument that in a bid to maintain its superiority Apple is now being forced to fight just as crucial a battle in the courts as in its boardrooms and factories.

In short, the argument is that Apple is, at last, starting to behave like an ordinary technology company. It accepts it has to fit into the real world. It’s still a premium brand but it’s part of, not separate from, the market. However, there seems an equally compelling counter-argument. Apple revolutionized the mobile phone in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone, and arguably invented the tablet in 2010 with the iPad. By that reckoning, we should be due another revolutionary advance in 2013-14. Anybody want to bet against that being Apple iTV?

Back here in 2012, this glut of new devices is great news for any company with an interest in mobile business. If growth continues at its current rate, we should be in for a bumper season.

John Milliken, MD

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What the mobile landscape means for business in 2013

This week our Marketing Director, Nick White, was on the panel for QuBit’s Breakfast masterclass that considered what the mobile landscape means for business in 2013. Nick urged people to think about how mobile can influence every part of the purchase. Some interesting facts came out of the discussion, including:

• 1 in every £10 spent in the UK is on a mobile device

• 47% of people will shop elsewhere if their mobile experience isn’t up to scratch

• 80% of brands don’t have a mobile website

We look forward to participating in more of QuBit’s masterclasses in the future.

PM backs mobile payments 

The profile of the mobile payments industry got a boost this week when David Cameron held up Alastair Lukies and Monitise (one of MMN’s major shareholders) as a major British success story in his closing speech at the Conservative Party Conference. It is great that, in Monitise, the UK has a true global leader in this exciting industry.

4 pointers for mobile success

Amazon is leading the way in terms of mobile commerce innovation and we enjoyed this article, (which attempted to explain their success with 12 reasons), because of their applicability to all retailers. However, we think it could be boiled down to four:

1. Product range – people go to Amazon invariably because they know they can get what they want there for a reasonable (not necessarily the cheapest) price.

2. Designed for mobile – Amazon’s merchandising and design are specific to mobile (it isn’t a lift and shift of their e-commerce proposition).

3. Easy to buy – Amazon offers one-click purchase. Last week in our blog we saw that the dropout from mobile sites is 75% more than from e-commerce sites. One-click purchase will massively reduce that dropout. (Of course, MMN are able to provide this capability to every retailer who isn’t Amazon!).

4. Barcode scanner – this is a brilliant example of how an online retailer can use mobile technology to successfully disrupt the High Street. Amazon are encouraging people to go into someone else’s retail store, barcode the product and see how much they could buy it for online. They’re using the store as a showcase for their products by offering the consumer a more convenient one-click experience.

Will Collect leave Facebook wanting?

Facebook are trialing a Want button and a Collect button. The Want button is an opportunity for Facebook to connect retailers with consumers, while the Collect button could be a way of putting a Pinterest-style collection together for the Facebook user, which would be a sensible defensive play against the upcoming social network. They have two challenges: the beauty of Facebook is the simplicity of the experience. If you add ‘Collect’ and ‘Want’ to ‘Like’, it undermines that simplicity and may confuse people, turning them turn off. Secondly, ‘Want’ seems to involve directing people away from Facebook to the vendor’s website. It would make sense for Facebook to offer a way to purchase within their environment but it’s contrary to their philosophy to hold data like addresses and bank details. Facebook hasn’t resolved their commerce solution yet, but these are baby steps in the right direction.

 

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MMN in the news

Drapers published a great feature this week which is an important validation of our strategy. In the piece, Nigel Grant, brand director of menswear label Pretty Green is interviewed about our relationship: ‘If someone is doing everything they can to come up with cool ways to engage with you and your customers, why not use that? Simply Tap is an early adopter of what I believe will end up being the norm.’

Thomas Pink British & Irish Lions Campaign

This week a number of publications reported our new collaboration with retailer Thomas Pink. The exciting project will see the launch of the Thomas Pink mobile checkout app – powered by Simply Tap – ahead of the British and Irish Lions Australian tour. The exclusive Lions collection will debut at the Golden Lion pub in St James, London which will be renamed The Pink Lion from Tuesday 30 October to Sunday 4 November. Drop in for a pint if you’re in the area.

Key messages from IR2012 

Carphone Warehouse CEO Andrew Harrison used his keynote speech at Internet Retailing 2012 to stress how chief execs need to embrace multichannel commerce. ‘Simpler, faster, cheaper,’ was his slogan as he weighed up the experience/speed/price comparison in purchasing a set of tennis balls from Amazon and a well-known online sports retailer (see slide above). Fellow speakers, Shop Direct’s Jonathan Wall and Morrisons/Kiddicare.com’s Alison Lancaster, emphasized the importance of data in multichannel.

Some interesting stats from the event, compiled by Simon Lilly, here.

Mobile commerce sites v apps

There are some illuminating stats in this Econsultancy report, which illustrates how shoppers use their mobiles. Figure 14 shows that most people prefer mobile commerce sites to apps. The good news for Google is that this is because people are searching in the same way on mobiles as PC’s – however this is likely to change with the advent of image and other recognition technologies. A more immediate problem is that over 60% of the UK’s top 100 retailers still don’t have a mobile optimised website – let alone one where merchandising is tailored to mobile.

Merchandising for mobile

In a guest blog for Forbes, Bill Ready, CEO of Braintree Payment Solutions offers some insightful guidance about how to provide a better mobile experience: provide a better mobile shopping experience, merchandise for mobile, make mobile purchases seamless, make mobile devices work for you.

His blog also has some interesting stats about mobile web sales conversion, which he says are 75% less than on a PC. We know from MMN QuBit Improving Checkout Conversion  that 90% of people who hit an e-commerce homepage don’t buy anything. If it’s 75% less for mobile then that’s very little conversion in comparison to number of visits. In last week’s blog we mentioned that one of the reasons that people don’t convert is that the site isn’t optimised or merchandised for mobile. MMN can help with sales conversion on mobile. We can help prevent dropout by providing the appropriate mobile interface and making it easier for people to pay in one-click.

The value of context 

Simon Andrews has been discussing how valuable context is to mobile advertising in his esteemed weekly blog Mobile Fix. ‘Reaching a New York Times reader when he is reading the NYT is more valuable that reaching the same person when they are checking their email or in a third party app.’ We couldn’t agree more and took the opportunity to discuss context in mobile commerce with him last week, at a roundtable event organised by fund manager Beringea where our MD John Milliken was guest speaker.

Coffee, croissants and smartphones

Next week, our Marketing Director Nick White is on the panel at QuBit’s Breakfast masterclass which considers what the mobile landscape means for business in 2013. Join him for a coffee.

For more news and opinion about mobile payments, follow @theMMN on Twitter.

If you’d like to get in touch, please call us on 020 7079 3930.

Follow the MMN company page on Linked In.

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How big are Facebook Gifts?

This week everyone’s been talking about the imminent launch of Facebook Gifts which provoked a much-needed rise in their share price. Facebook’s biggest challenge is that people will stop using the network if they over-commercialise it. Gifting is a great solution because it’s a social activity and makes Facebook appear as a benevolent helper, rather than a money-making giant. The ultimate success will be based on the range and value of products as well as the customer experience. However, the importance of Gifts as a commerce solution is being overemphasised. The proportion of people’s income which goes on gifts in comparison with their total spend is tiny, and there’s only a small subset of retailers who will be interested – you aren’t going to get heavyweights like B&Q signing up in the UK. Gifts are more of a test and learn experiment which has been brought about by necessity rather than a commercial solution for the future.

Amazon reach out to the High Street 

According to Techcrunch, Amazon are to launch a m-payments reader to rival Square, Groupon, iZettle and the rest. Amazon are looking at mobile in a similar way to PayPal and using to bridge the online and offline, reaching out to the High Street and a broader spectrum of retailers. And because of the power Amazon already have in the payments industry, they’ll be able to drive down transactions. Increasingly Amazon are offering a full range of business support services for merchants like wholesale warehousing, web development, hosting and support. They recently announced that they’re building seven new distribution centres in the UK. Soon it will be the case that if you’re not buying from Amazon then you’re buying from someone who uses their support infrastructure.

Do we want dongle-free m-payments?

Talking of m-payments initiatives, Emu launched a dongle-less service this week in the UK. It’s a crowded marketplace and to survive you need to offer something unique. Dongles only cost $20-30 and, in the UK, their real significance is that the liability for a fraudulent transaction lies with the card issuer. If you don’t have a dongle, it lies with the retailer. You don’t need many transactions to go awry for that $20 dongle to seem cheap, and as that market becomes commoditised people are going to give away free dongles. Ultimately their USP has a significant downside if you’re a merchant.

The difference between search and surf

Google have published research on the use of smartphones in a multi-device world and found that 90% of their participants used multiple devices sequentially, and 81% simultaneously. It’s not a surprising statistic because your mobile is always with you and it’s always connected. Mobile is the most convenient way to find specific information but it’s a different search to the mooching around surfing that people do on PCs. TV search is different again. We’re finding that internet usage becomes specific to certain environments. For us the interesting thing is to look at different purchasing behaviour in these environments – mobile is more immediate, spontaneous and targeted while PC is more relaxed, less frenetic, absorbing type of experience. Retailers who take advantage of this behaviour could reap great benefits.

Drapers Innovation in Fashion Roundtable

On Tuesday we attended Draper’s Innovation in Fashion Roundtable event with representatives from Karen Millen, Jaegar, Monsoon, Reiss, Thomas Pink, A Suit That Fits and Surfdome. The hot topics we discussed included: ROI and the value of social, the challenges of online and offline international expansion, using devices to connect in-store and digital worlds, and better use of data to create personal shopping experiences. The main learning that we drew from the event is that mobile can be used to encourage store visits via smart promotions and schemes like Click and Collect. We’re looking forward to more industry discussions in the near future.

For more news and opinion about mobile payments, follow @theMMN on Twitter.

If you’d like to get in touch, please call us on 020 7079 3930.

Follow the MMN company page on Linked In.

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MMN in the Retail Hall of Fame

Congratulations to our chairman Sir Stuart Rose who was inaugurated into the World Retail Hall of Fame at the World Retail Congress this week. He said: ‘I have thoroughly enjoyed and continue to enjoy in my roles with the businesses I am now involved with.’

And at the Retail Bulletin Mobile Summit 2012

This week our Chief Operations Officer and IT Director Jeremy Barden appeared on the mobile payments panel of the Retail Bulletin Mobile Summit 2012 alongside representative from Waitrose, ASDA, Carphone Warehouse and the Javelin Group. Lively discussion ensued around the subject of customer engagement and cost-effective mobile retail strategies. More information can be found here.

Making payment personal

Starbucks have announced that they’ll sign to Passbook by the end of September. Since they’ve got a store card already, it’s a no-brainer and will give them broader scale distribution. After investing $25m into Square, Starbucks are in a mode of experimenting with m-commerce. Now Square have raised $200 mil, they’re valued at $3.25 bn and have predicted that they’ll process $8bn of payments this year. However Visa inc will process $6.3 trillion payments this year and have a market value of $90 billion. Square evidently have a long way to go and Jack Dorsey needs to get mass adoption from big retailers if he’s going to maintain $3.25bn valuation.

In March, Square appointed ex PayPal VP Alyssa Cutright as their VP of International. The UK is an obvious target and we’d love to work with them. We’re thinking along similar lines by using data to recreate the intimacy of a corner shop. Similarly, Square creates the same feel by pulling up a photo of the customer and their regular purchase on-screen when they arrive at the counter.

The future of multichannel retail 

CBRE are the biggest property in advisor in the world, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve reported that multichannel will complement rather than compete with bricks and mortar retail. The Guardian reports that online retail sales increased to 17% of the retail market or £50bn last year. It’s dangerous to downplay the growth in online commerce, because it gives retailers justification for not acting.

Monetizing mobile experiences

We had the pleasure to meet Jess Butcher from Blippar last week. Blippar have a great vision about the way people are going to search and access content in future. Rather than describing themselves as an augmented reality provider, they’re a company which patch content into where you are, what you see and what you do. Like us Blippar want to expand the way mobile can be used as a bridge between online and offline with an experience which is compelling to the consumer.

The arrival of 4G in the UK will obviously benefit the consistency of experience that Blippar and augmented reality specialists like Aurasma can offer. Last week one of our associates saw a demo of the EE 4G service – it worked first time and was faster than home broadband; evidently exciting stuff for the industry as a whole.

For more news and opinion about mobile payments, follow @theMMN on Twitter.

If you’d like to get in touch, please call us on 020 7079 3930.

Follow the MMN company page on Linked In.

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