Special Current.com.au Feature by Patrick Avenell
How important are dedicated mobile sites to an online retailer’s overall proposition? After receiving a media release from 2nds World breathlessly announcing its new optimised mobile platform, we decided to survey the industry to find out which traditional retailers are providing the best mobile shopping experience for their on-the-move consumers.
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Executive Summary
The Best: 2nds World, Savvy Appliances, JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys, Harvey Norman.
The Middle: Dick Smith
The Worst: Appliances Online, Big Brown Box, Bing Lee, E&S Trading.
Not So 2nd Best
Considering 2nds World went to the effort of reaching out to media with its new platform, we’ll give managing director Peter Hammerman the first word:
“We believe in mobile shopping being a major part of the future of retailing,” he said in this media release. “Busy shoppers can now access our online store from any web-enabled device.
“Mobile shopping is not only about being cutting-edge. It’s about offering a more convenient shopping experience that matches today’s consumers’ needs.”
In addition to 2nds World’s online site, the company also operates the Savvy Appliances portal. Both sites are optimised for mobile browsing, with consumers able to search via categories on the home page such as TV, Audio & Accessories; Fridges & Freezers; Ovens, Cooktops & Rangehoods; and Dishwashers & Sinks. There are also Hot Deals and Clearance Centre links for direct access to what 2nds World does best.
When you click on one of the categories — Vacuum Cleaners & Floorcare in this instance — you are presented with a second menu with all the subcategories: Barrel, Upright, Rechargeable, Wet & Dry, and Robot; for example. Once you’ve chosen your preferred form factor, you then choose between Bagged and Bagless, before being presented with a range of products.
In this example, the amount of qualification might frustrate potential shoppers who would prefer to see products with fewer clicks in less time. Floorcare is an atypical category, however, as there as so many different styles and technologies, so on balance, 2nds World’s mobile site deserves its place in the ‘Doing Things Right’ column.
JB Does it Right Again
Also on top of the mobile game is JB Hi-Fi. Under modern parlance, JB’s site is best called a ‘web app’, and the first thing the site asks you to do is download a widget to your smartphone’s home screen. JB has conveniently fixed ‘Cart’, ‘Browse’ and ‘Stores’ to the bottom of its mobile site for quick access to the checkout, restarting your product search and finding your nearest bricks and mortar outlet.
The Store search particularly good — using an in-built GPS, the website can direct a user to nearest location — this is what ‘omnichannel' retailing is all about: using different platforms to complement each other.
When searching for products, TVs in this example, JB will automatically sort them by Display Type, Brand, Price and Screen Size. When we searched for Tablets, we were offered sorting by Brand, Features, Operating System and Storage size.
All in all, JB’s mobile site/web app is thoroughly professional and creates an enjoyable browsing experience.
Hardly Sub-Normal
Harvey Norman’s dedicated mobile site is one of the few to include a wide selection of products on its front page. Most of these ‘Featured Products’ come with a special bonus, which creates some confusion as the first words next to Toshiba Satellite Laptop image is “BONUS Sony PlayStation 3” and the first words next to a Samsung notebook PC are “BONUS Samsung 24” LED Monitor”.
Online browsing is all about quickly digesting information — some consumers might find it odd that the bonus offer is more prominent than the image’s true caption.
Also on Harveys’ front page is a list of all the categories available online. Harvey Norman is much more diversified than its competitors, so in addition to TVs, Appliances and Gaming, you can also click on Outdoor, Bathroom & Flooring, Fitness and Bedroom.
Within these sections is more qualifying. In the Bathroom & Flooring section, there’s Baths & Toilets, Vanities & Basins, Tapware, Tiles, Flooring and Renovations. All of these then have another level of qualification (Baths & Toilets opens up to Baths & Spas, Toilet Suites, Bathroom Accessories and Bathroom Towels & Mats). It takes a long time to actually see a product.
Persist through all this, however, and you do get quite a wide and diverse range. You’d be surprised how many different toilet brands are sold at Harvey Norman!
Dick Does Mobile
Like JB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith’s mobile site is also a self-branded ‘web app’. Unlike JB, however, Dick Smith’s does not present as well and it doesn’t offer the same native app-esque experience to users. For example, Dick Smith doesn’t affix permanent and handy links to the bottom of its site, meaning the whole ‘web app’ description is more about asking users to download a link to the operating system rather than actually improving navigation.
It is December so one can’t expect this to last into January, but being presented with four huge text declarations that DICK DOES CHRISTMAS is both off-putting and redundant.
What Dick does offer, unlike JB and Harveys, is a product search facility on its front page (2nds World also has this). I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly Dick Smith could load the 245 matching results for ‘iPhone’, which can then be sorted by Best Selling, Name (A-Z and Z-A), Price (high and low) and Rating.
As I was capturing the included screen shots in this story on my iPhone 4S, I decided to click on the ‘Review This Product’ icon for that particular handset. Dick Smith provides a very comprehensive survey for consumers to complete and then share with other users.
Ratings out of five are requested for Overall (five), Ease Of Use (five), Performance (five), Features (five) and Quality (five – you get it, I’m a fanboy). I’m then asked if I would recommend this product to a friend (I would) and if I’m prepared to write a “detailed review” (I’m not). Then I can Add Pros and Add Cons, choose a nickname, write in my location, provide my ‘gender’ (it means ‘sex’) and, finally, my age. That’s more comprehensive than some of the professional technology reviews I read on rival sites.
As with JB, Dick Smith has a prominent Store Finder service using the phone’s GPS, though when I tried to find my nearest store it wasn’t working.
Good Guy Mobile
Another retailer doing a good job is The Good Guys. The traditionally conservative retail group has put together a comprehensive online offering around its ‘buy online, pick up in store’ platform.
The Good Guys’ mobile website has options for browsing products; links directly to ‘Bonus Offers’ and ‘Bargain Buys’; and an online catalogue, which loads as a PDF on your smartphone.
One handy feature is ‘My Wishlist’. Once you’ve compiled a list of shiny new toys to fulfil your materialist dreams, you can then email the list to a friend in the hope they will buy it all for you.
Also on the The Good Guys site is ‘Jamie’s Ministry of Food’, a section all about Jamie Oliver’s global quest, based out of Geelong, to promote “food education”. When you click on this link, however, you are redirected to The Good Guys’ desktop site, which is not at all optimised for reading on a mobile phone.
Not Winning At Everything
But not all retailers are doing as good a job of catering to mobile browsers as those acclaimed above. Two that surprised me in their very poor mobile presentation were Appliances Online and Big Brown Box, both owned by the Winning Group.
Appliances Online and Big Brown Box have been trailblazers in the world of online electronics retailing, with the former regularly cited as the paragon of what can be achieved by a traditional retailer in the online space.
So shocked was I by the disappointing mobile browsing experience on these two sites that I went straight to the source to find out why there was no optimised mobile page or web app:
"Appliances Online and Big Brown Box will have mobile sites early next year,” was the response from Appliances Online GM Peter Harris.
There’s no doubt Appliances Online has many loyal customers, many of whom would be happy enough to use the desktop site on their smartphone, but I found it incredibly inconvenient. I look forward to updating this story with a positive review of the new mobile sites when they are launched.
Not Much Betta
Whilst also not optimised for mobile browsing, the Betta Home Living website is slightly better than the Appliances Online one simply because the page is narrow enough that it does not require horizontal swiping.
Betta’s site is very busy, with seven rotating banners at the top of the home page, which I found very distracting. The icons are so small on this page, and the links even smaller, that you need to zoom quite a bit to determine what you are looking at and then even more to make sure you’re hitting the right link (a lot of different links are spaced very close together).
I can’t imagine many mobile users would stay on the Betta site for very long.
Bing Still Searching
Sydney-centric retailer Bing Lee is yet to invest in a mobile site but at least its icons are large enough to not require zooming. Again, this site is very busy, with five banners rotating across the top, promoting an LG fridge, ‘Life Fitness’ products and a bonus popcorn maker with the purchase of selected TVs.
Bing Lee dedicates an enormous amount of space on its home page to banks of blank verse describing the company history and introducing readers to its online store. These essays are normally of value on an ‘About Us’ page but on the home page it comes across as a waste of virtual real estate.
E&S not so EaSy
Although Melbourne maestro E&S Trading has one of the best integrated social networking operations among its peers, its mobile browsing experience could definitely be improved.
While the site is mercifully static, it does appear that no effort has been made to optimise the experience for mobile users. What’s more, E&S has made the cardinal mistake of using Flash on its site, which means instead of whatever content was supposed to be displayed, all I saw was “Get Adobe Flash Player” on my iPhone.
On a positive note, E&S has a regularly updated blog, with links to stories on its front page, so if commuters want to read about enhancing their outdoor entertaining area, they can do so on a page that is well formatted for smartphone reading.
Feedback
Which mobile sites do you like? Which ones do you hate? Do they matter at all? Please leave any comments in the box below.