Report: Maximum mobile ROI requires planning

Boston -- Retailers need to carefully plan ahead in a number of areas to ensure they receive maximum ROI on investments in mobile technology, according to a new report from the Universal Commerce Innovation Exchange and Aite Group.



The areas, detailed in the “Strategies for Mobile Investments,” report, include:

• Customer-centricity. To achieve the true customer-centricity needed to launch a successful mobile strategy that delivers maximum ROI on technology investments, retailers need to first identify who their customers are. They then must use mobile technology to profile their shopping habits over time to discover what customers buy, how much they spend and when they spend it. Armed with this mobile data, retailers can develop engagement and relationship strategies around the specific needs of their customers.

• Trade-offs. Retailers must identify what trade offs they and they customers will make in the course of mobile engagements. For example, will a retailer need to offer some type of special incentive to persuade customers to allow location-based tracking?

• Technology and platform. Retailers need to determine what specific mobile solution(s) best meet their needs and their customers’ needs, and also evaluate important decisions like whether to use native, downloadable apps, whether to develop a mobile-specific website or use responsive design to optimize a single website for multiple devices and screen sizes, and whether certain third-party hosted services are advantageous to use.