Square Order > Seamless, Location Based Food/Drink Preparation

I had read about Square Order but hadn't given the app a try until this past weekend. I was impressed by the ease and will likely use as my go-to payment app for any coffee shop visits in the future. Having the ability to order ahead and have preparation automatically happen as I approach the store ensures the experience customers desire when seeking fast casual dining. Square Order should serve as an example of how retailers need to start to designing self sufficient experiences in stores fueled by beacons, bluetooth, wifi, etc.

Here are a few thumbnails showing the experience:

Bitcoin Explained

I tend to receive many questions on what bitcoin is, how bitcoin can be used and why bitcoin is so revolutionary. Came across this 10 minute video of the Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehsram answering each of those questions.

Mobile Interconnected Services Inflection Point

Seamless interconnection of services seem to have finally arrived. There has been talk of deep linking standards by companies like Facebook, releases of APIs from companies like Uber and test markets in NYC with companies like Opentable & Cover. 

Yesterday HomeAway announced the most ambitious deeplink/innterconnected app release yet. HomeAway is in the business of renting vacation homes with competition in the form of VRBO.com or more recently Airbnb. HomeAway's latest app release provides users the ability to book and/or utilize the following services within the walls of the HomeAway app:

  • Uber - Transportation to/from vacation rental. 
  • Instacart - Grocery shopping and delivery services to order and stock vacation rental.
  • Gogobot - Information offering providing reviews, to-do discovery lists based upon your vacation location.

This is just one example of how various services and apps will continue to become more interconnected to provide multiple services under one roof, so to speak. If done well, the experience can be deeply satisfying for a customer.

Update: Uber announced integration with Spotify. The ability to control the music played within your Uber car ride. Link

The Untapped Market of Instagram

Instagram is a fantastic way for retailers to share vivid imagery building brand and product awareness. It is not, however, a seamless way to sell product. Until Instagram releases a "buy now" button or direct link out to the retailer site, retailers will release workarounds.

Marc Jacobs is the latest to release a work around. @MarcJacobsIntl directs users to a page collecting the customer's email and handle. The customer is then instructed to like products and post #shopmj for items they are interested in purchasing. Marc Jacobs then sends the customer an email with the specific product link.

This workaround is a great way to collect email and link social handles to customers. However, this workaround suffers from the same issue of other workarounds already released. The process is still too laborious and will likely lead to only marginal improvements in conversion. Until the purchase process is made simple, social media will never become social commerce. 

Beacons Gaining Traction Outside of Retail

The Health Department used wireless gizmos situated around the office that transmit signals to employees' mobile devices as they pass by. An app running on their smartphones interprets the data and delivers advice based on where they are. Employees who get up from a conference-room table might get an alert telling them to take the long way back to their desks. Walking past a water fountain five times prompts a suggestion that it's time to stop for a drink during the next go-around.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/d...

Disparate Digital Wallet Ecosystem

The digital wallet ecosystem has become a dizzying array of offerings across channels (brick & mortar, desktop ecommerce and mobile) with varying use cases (person to person, small merchant and large merchant). Given the number of options and no clear leader at this point, placing bets on a few might just be the best option. 

I thought a graphic summarizing the offerings across channels and use cases would be best to illustrate the complex ecosystem:

Payment Ecosystem.png

Note: Platforms such as Stripe, Bitpay were omitted as each offering is not marketing a consumer facing platform.

Google Inbox = Lower Promotional Email Conversion

Google recently beta launched an offering called Inbox available via desktop, iOS and Android. Inbox is Google's attempt to re-engineer email. As email continues to drain hours of each day, I generally feel Inbox is a step in the right direction for those of us who seek prioritization in our inboxes. The general premise of Inbox is to provide a river of emails bundled by category (as shown in the pic below). Many retailers rely on email as the #1 driver of site traffic and purchases. With Google isolating and bundling all promotional emails into the promo tab, it's safe to say that email conversion will continue to decline. Bundled promotional emails are relegated to a spam like folder and with one touch can be eliminated. 

Google Inbox bundled categories

Google Inbox bundled categories

Apple Pay First Impressions

Setup - Simple

Comments: Was forced to add a card because the current card within my Apple iTunes account isn't supported by Apple Pay. 

Brick & Mortar Use - Simple

Comments: Phone lights up when in close proximity highlighting the card choice. Once ready, placing your finger on the fingerprint sensor leads to a completed transaction in less than 2 seconds. User is alerted of the successful transaction with a push notification. With that said, no simpler than swiping a credit card and whilst Apple launched with some of the US' largest retailers, many are missing.

App Use - Simple

Comments: User places finger on fingerprint sensor which auto populates the shipping address, billing information and proceeds to checkout. User is alerted of successful transaction with a push notification. The benefits of app usage are much higher than brick & mortar. Setting up new user profiles and/or credit cards via mobile shopping is the major reason why so many users never checkout. It is painful. Apple makes the process simple and will inevitably improve the conversion rates for the apps utilizing Apple Pay. 

Browser Use - Not yet available

Comments: One could argue that Apple is holding off on a launch for mobile browsers to incent developers for iOS only development but one should expect a version for mobile Safari at minimum. 

Bottom line: This launch has been the most ambitious to date, yet Apple pulled it off. Simple, seamless and an extensive launch list for both Brick & Mortar and Apps. The benefits within Apps greatly outweigh Brick & Mortar but Apple seems to be the catalyst to get the mobile payment game started. 

Apple Pay Launch Partners - Apps

In an earlier post, I outlined the brick & mortar retailers that will accept Apple Pay beginning on October 20. The list is far smaller and completely different for apps: 

airbnb, Apple, Cherish, Disney Store, Fancy, Groupon, Hotel Tonight, Houzz, Instacart, lyft, MLB.com, OpenTable, Panera, Spring, Staples, Target, Tickets.com, Uber.

Interestingly, the only retailer that will accept in-store and through app is Apple. 

Apple Pay Launch Partners - Brick & Mortar

Today's Apple news brought the expected hardware announcements but more importantly outlined the Apple Pay launch partners for October 20:

Aeropostale, Apple, Babies R Us, BJ's, Bloomingdales, Champs, Chevron, Duane Reade, Extra Mile, Foot Locker, FootAction, House of Hoops, Macys, McDonalds, Nice, Office Depot, Panera, Petco, RadioShack, Six:02, Sports Authority, Subway, Texaco, Toys R Us, Walgreens, Wegmans, Whole Foods.

An impressive and extensive list. I would assume that select locations for each retailer will launch October 20 with remaining locations soon to follow. Barring any major setbacks this is undoubtedly the most concerted, wide ranging effort for mobile payments yet. 

Beacons Go Well Beyond Coupons

That’s too bad, because while it is easy to think only of coupons, advertising and data collection when we think of beacons, the reality is that these little transmitters could also make the world around us richer, more useful and more interactive.
They could enrich museum experiences, deliver the right recipe in the grocery store aisle, take us on interactive tours of cities and towns, let us quickly and easily check in to hotels or even pay at the gas pump. And used properly, sure, they could also deliver the right coupon at the right time.

We are in the early stages of beacons but on demand self service experiences are already underway. Cover allows customers to pay restaurant bills without waiting for the bill from the server. NFL stadiums are using beacons for on demand food ordering. MLB stadiums are serving stats and news through beacons to complement your game experience. Retailers are providing recipes through apps like Epicurious. The number of use cases are endless and developers will continue to launch services well beyond coupons. 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technolo...

Alipay Eyes US Market

Alibaba will provide marketing support for these retailers to raise awareness of their brands in China, Alipay says, and an Alibaba-affiliated logistics company is expected to remove some hurdles that traditionally present themselves when shipping goods into China. Alipay will take a cut of sales in exchange for its services, though the company declined to provide details on how much.

Alibaba's pursuit of the US market continues. Alibaba has yet to formally announce the results of 11 Main but providing Western retailers the option to access Alibaba's Chinese network is invaluable. Payments are step 1 but fulfillment is a bit more difficult when shipping from the US. Companies like Borderfree specialize in cross country/border shipments but unavoidable processing and duties often lengthen the shipment times and overall cost.

Source: http://recode.net/2014/10/15/alipay-to-u-s...

Way Too Many Clouds

The number of cloud services I use has become endless. Prior to outlining a consolidation goal, I thought it would be worthwhile to outline each service:

  1. Personal photo store and sharing: Dropbox (Carousel) - Huge fan of the UI and simplicity. Downside is limited storage...unless you want to pay.
  2. Work files: Box - Much more accepted in corporate environment and have grown up with Box as free service for over 50 GB. 
  3. Work file sharing: Quip and Slack - Love both too much to figure out which to keep.
  4. Personal files: Google Drive - Use Google Docs on personal laptops and/or Chromebook, no Microsoft apps.
  5. Contacts: Google - For fear of leaving iOS, not wanting to export or Office contacts vanishing with job change.
  6. Music: Amazon Cloud - Lots of storage with a few MP3 purchases and the ability to import AAC, MP3, etc. 
  7. Books: Amazon Kindle - Simply for portability on various operating systems and devices.
  8. Notes/Reminders: iOS Notes - Left Evernote after the debacle a year or so ago. I should probably go back.
  9. Exercise: Nike Running - Only because it has my history. 
  10. Social Messaging: iMessages - Leaves out texts and can't be access on 2 of my machines, need to transition to Facebook Messenger for full continuity.

10 is just too many. Ambitiously trying for 7 by year end. Any ideas?