According to a new study from Zmags, a provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, the retail world isn’t quite ready for the mobile revolution.
Based on the findings presented in “Mobile & Tablet e-Commerce: Is anyone really ready?” fewer than one-third of retailers have optimized sites for tablet commerce.
“Most are simply relying on their standard websites to provide an “adequate enough” tablet shopping experience,” the report reads.
Also worth noting is that only about half of retailers have developed smartphone-specific offerings to provide key functionality for the smaller screen.
“While over two-thirds of the retailers have developed iPhone apps, only half of that group offers the ability to purchase via the app,” the research shows.
Further illustrating the lagging nature of social commerce, all 100 top retailers have Facebook brand pages, but only one (Coldwater Creek) lets consumers directly purchase from the Facebook page.
“What we discovered, unexpectedly, was that very few retailers-even among this elite group of marketers-are tapping into the full shopping potential of mobile and tablet devices. In fact, not even close to it,” says W. Sean Ford, COO and CMO of Zmags. “Only one quarter of retailers are ready to take a consumer through checkout over tablets, but 49 percent of today’s tablet owners said they plan to shop even more next year using their device. This reflects a serious disconnect between how consumers want to shop and the inconsistent experiences they are being offered. It’s a crucial issue that retailers need to address before their competitors do.”