Marks & Spencer is a famous department store located in London. They have been very successful over the years, but had experienced trouble over the past decades. Hence, it lost its leadership over other stores. Also, Mark & Spencer has been for a long time struggling with its E commerce strategy.What is very interesting is that they have taken advantage of the new mobile commerce market to take the leadership over its competitors. Mobile commerce might be a niche, but it is called to strike within the next few years.
It is interesting to see how this company which failed in taking the Internet trend.
Marks & Spencer claims that to date the site has delivered results that outstripped its initial key performance indicators:
• 1.2 million unique visitors since launch
• More than 10 million page views
• More than 13,000 orders from the mobile site since launch
• £3,280 ($5,195 USD) for two sofas is the single largest value order
Step by stepConsultancy for the development of the mobile site between M&S and MIG, in conjunction with Usablenet, commenced in early April this year and took a phased approach.
Phase one was “Discovery and definition,” moving through to “Concept look and feel,” “Design refinement and approval” to “Making sure the site worked on multiple handsets.”
Throughout all phases, user experience, design and usability were core to the discussions.
Features on the site include a store finder to locate the nearest M&S outlet, the ability to search by product and then to refine these searches to a specific item.
The site features a full product range for categories such as Women’s, Men’s, Kids Clothing, Home and Furniture and Technology.
Ms. Veit said that for M&S the mobile commerce site is all about getting products quickly and easily to consumers via mobile and letting them pay for products on their mobile device.
M&S’s aim is to integrate mobile as a channel to stand alongside the PC Web, to increase basket size and drive sales.
The retailer has also incorporated a customer feedback facility to enable customer reviews, and it has given consumers their choice of delivery method.
The M&S mobile commerce site can be accessed via any Web-enabled phone, and the device will know to redirect the user to the mobile commerce site. Or users can manually type in http://m.marksandspencer.com/
To get the word out about the mobile site, M&S is using its online channels such as Facebook and Twitter, established M&S channels such as product catalogues and Your M&S magazine, its email and SMS databases and a mobile display ad campaign.
M&S customers are accustomed to shopping wherever they want, whenever they want.
“Even before we launched the mobile-optimized site, over 800,000 customers were already shopping with us on their mobile phones and we had over 600,000 customers opted-in to receive text-message updates and promotions from us,” Ms. Veit said.
“The average age of mobile phone customers on unlimited Web packages—no cost for surfing the Internet—is 33, which mirrors our core customer online and demand will only grow as smartphones become more commonplace,” she said. “And as traditional online retail matures, mobile is expected to become the growth area for Internet retailing.
“One in ten of all Internet pages viewed in the UK are viewed on a mobile device and the number of adults using the mobile Internet is expected to double in the next two years.”
You may visite the mobile website here.
