Distributed, Branded Ads via Twitter

What makes Twitter unique is that Tweets can flow from Twitter to other mediums seamlessly, like TV, websites and mobile applications. In fact, in the third quarter of 2014 there were approximately 185 Billion Tweet impressions off of Twitter. For the thousands of brands already advertising on Twitter, these new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience. Twitter syndicated ads will be seen by users within Twitter content sections on third-party properties, as well as within third-party content areas.

No other platform is currently providing the ability to serve ads across multiple mediums and applications BRANDED by platform. Are users more likely to click on an ad served in Flipboard that has the Twitter logo (see image above)? I believe so. Why? Familiarity and instant credibility. I as a user know I will be brought to Twitter, the same environment I am familiar with, trust and have positive brand association for.

Will Twitter be successful and see volume with these types of campaigns? TBD, as distribution is key. Flipboard and Yahoo Japan won't be enough...but as the distribution builds, the access to tweets and broader audiences outside of Twitter also builds.

Source: https://blog.twitter.com/2015/promote-cont...

Stores as DCs

"The 83 Wal-Mart Supercenters that are shipping out online orders now handle more than a fifth of the goods bought on walmart.com."

Inventory productivity is up as inventory is brought online and becomes more decentralized. Implications are extensive with each retailer asking the following questions:

  1. Can our store associates match the productivity and efficiency of our distribution center employees?
  2. Is the cost of shipment from UPS/FedEx higher or lower with decentralized shipping although shipping may be closer to end customer demand when coming from stores?
  3. As stores allocate selling space and associate time to fulfillment, what are the implications on selling space and payroll?
  4. How do we ensure profitability on orders that require split shipments and thus 2x cost of shipment?
  5. Shrink (inventory loss) rates are much higher at store level. What are the minimums we need to set for products to ensure the fill rate is met?
Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-wal-mart-c...

Retail: "The New Normal"

With the close of 2014 upon us, I thought it would be worthwhile to outline "The New Normal" of Retail:

eCommerce

2013: Strong eCommerce growth with flat store sales

2014: eCommerce growth strong enough to offset negative year over year store sales

Mobile

2013: Mobile visitors account for 25% of traffic and 10% of sales

2014: Mobile visitors exceeding desktop visitors and contributing 30% of sales

Shipping

2013: "I'm not paying for shipping"

2014: "I want it now and I'm not paying for shipping"

Fulfillment

2013: Big box retailers shipping from stores.

2014: Big box retailers shifting selling space and payroll to fulfillment space and payroll. 

eTail

2013: "All commerce is shifting to eCommerce"

2014: "When is this lease space available?"

Beacons

2013: "Tracking is an invasion of privacy"

2014: "The bridge of offline and online retail"

Social

2013: Retailers sharing links on social media sites with off app/site transactions.

2014: Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Wanelo transactions happen in-app/site. 

Taco Bell Mobile Ordering Test Run

I wouldn't consider myself a Taco Bell customer, but given my interest in Square Order, I had to give the new mobile ordering functionality a test run. The app is extremely well designed and provides a thorough overview of locations, menu items and personalization features (see screenshots below).

Once the customer has chosen food items and clicked through to checkout, the customer is required to input their credit card for checkout. Apple Pay is currently not included as an option. Once complete, the customer is alerted of the closest location for pickup and sent an email detailing the order.

Once the customer is in close proximity to the store or ready to pickup the order, the customer alerts the app of in-store or drive-thru pickup. The customer is then provided with a pickup number. In the test I ran, the order was ready for pickup in just a few minutes. 

Overall, the experience was seamless and definitely a service I would consider using if purchasing from Taco Bell. With that said, I felt the Square Order experience that uses beacons/wifi to gauge the customer's proximity to the store provided an even better experience. Saving a few clicks is always appreciated. 

Given the news of Starbucks launching mobile ordering, fast casual is clearly ahead of retailers in providing seamless, on-demand, self-sufficient experiences that are becoming required in the ever connected mobile world. 

You Are Not the User

Not a frequent user of Google's latest Gmail app Inbox. However, I love to hear that internal design teams are being challenged to realize that design should be approached from the user or end customer's perspective:

In response, the head of the Gmail design team made a presentation entitled "You Are Not the User." If you were not lucky enough to witness the carnage in person you could view its archived version on the internal Google+.
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/16/why-did-g...

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.