The last five years have been called the “year of mobile” and time spent on mobile has exceeded desktop since 2013. While many predicted the shift to mobile, few grasped the velocity and many stalled behind the curve with outdated strategies designed for a desktop world. Here are seven brands with successful mobile-first strategies featured in L2’s 2016 Intelligence Report: Mobile.
Lululemon: With positive reviews and more than 367,000 downloads, Lululemon is a case study in successfully attributing sales to app development and new technologies (no small feat as ROI for most digital developments continue to be vague). The impact of a well-designed experience is evident in the apps’ high attrition rate: 76% of of people who downloaded the app activated it. Lululemon also captured interested, but not committed enough to download an app, with a mobile site experience nearly identical to the app. As of the end of 2015, approximately 8% of the company’s online sales were app-generated.
bareMinerals: BareMinerals’ design for mobile is evident in its simple checkout process. Instead of tapping through various pages, the site has an endless scroll that makes it more efficient. Free samples with purchase can be selected with a scrollable carousel, and items can be modified during the checkout process.
Cole Haan: Another brand that understands and works to eliminate the cumbersome mobile checkout process, Cole Haan is reducing clicks required to checkout from 15 to two. Cole Haan was an early adopter of Apple Pay and is now integrating Touch ID so that customers can check out with the tap of their fingerprint.
Everlane: The Australian-based clothing brand recently reviewed its mobile shopping experience and wisely deployed several newer, native iOS features such as click-and-hold (enables users to add a product to the cart directly from a gallery page). To encourage those who visit the mobile site to become app users, Everlane reserves deluxe features like free messenger delivery in New York City to in-app purchases.
Domino’s: With zero-click ordering (consumers just need to leave the app open for ten seconds to have a pizza charged to their card and delivered) this brand wins in eliminating mobile commerce friction.
Walmart: Demonstrating how even large players can be nimble, the brand rolled out an entire suite of functions – support for price comparisons, in-store shopping, list building, pick up, and an Apple Watch app – in less than a year. Proving the almost instant results, Walmart’s unique mobile visitors have surged by 402% year-over-year with 140 million mobile shoppers logging in per week in its USA stores and 240 million globally.
Although Walmart takes a mobile-first approach to rolling out features, the applications are connected to the store. Its popular Search My Store feature within the Walmart app is driven by geo-fencing in all 4,300 of its stores, and enables shoppers to locate items without a store associate.
HotelTonight: This newcomer to the accommodation space has taken a mobile-first approach a step further by completely eschewing traditional desktop marketing tactic. Traditional desktop display ads are favored by competitors with larger budgets – like hotels.com – who have all the advantages in the traditional medium. Hotel Tonight has directed display ad spending towards mobile channels with lower CPMs and bigger bang for buck. Furthermore, retargeting efforts are focused on in-app advertisements that are traditionally more effective than browser-based ads. Recognizing its place in the hyper-competitive category, the brand has strategically approached mobile marketing and is reaping the rewards.
