The widespread ownership of mobile devices, as well as their growing popularity across nearly all generations, has made them an important tool for shoppers. Similarly, they should be a key consideration for most retailers' business strategies for the future. 

What decision-makers should possibly keep most prominently in mind, though, is that smartphones and tablets are deeply personal in a way that many other technologies are not. Unlike the family desktop of yesteryear, few people except the owner ever use a smartphone. Forbes recently suggested that retailers need to customize the shopping experience to the individual to appeal to device-carrying consumers. With retail software more advanced than ever before, businesses that aren't taking advantage of customer data and geolocation may be missing out on sales. The article also noted that, for mobile shoppers, personalization is an expectation. 

A friendly, easy-to-use and mobile-optimized retail website is also integral. According to an IBM study, 63 percent of respondents are unlikely to return to an online merchant if they have trouble using its mobile site. As mobile sales will only grow more frequent as more people purchase smartphones and tablets, a well-performing, mobile-optimized website should not be viewed as a nice customer perk, but instead as a standard business practice. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, September 4th, 2013 at 3:36 pm .