Retailers are always looking for ways to improve the shopping experience for shoppers once they are through the doors. One powerful way is by leveraging online shopping style features in the store. Many retailers are now offering customers options such checking out via tablet or they carry tablet based systems to check inventory for customers.
There are many advantages to tablet based systems. Tablets cost much less than the PC based terminals and are easier to update software on. They also have fewer issues with viruses, are easier to train cashiers on, are more secure, and are battery powered. Tablet based systems also help remove barriers between the customers and the store employees and can speed up checkout, making it a more personal experience.
Tablets clearly offer retailers a great way to increase engagement with customers and improve shopping experiences. As e-commerce is becoming more and more of a staple of our culture, brick and mortar businesses must look for ways to improve the shopping experience to compete. Mobile based applications help retailers give customers a better experience with shorter lines or no waiting once they are through physical store doors.
Clever use of mobile based applications within the retail environment can give brick and mortar retailers a tremendous advantage over competition that does not follow suit.
While no company wants to be know for selling products that are functional and unattractive, we are seeing strong evidence that aesthetics don’t affect a mobile app or web site’s perceived usability. But conversely, poor usability will negatively affect the application’s perceived allure.
In a recent study conducted by Google, they stated:
“The results showed that the beauty of the interface did not affect how users perceived the usability of the shops: Participants (or Users) were capable of distinguishing if a product was usable or not, no matter how nice it looked. However, the experiment showed that the usability of the shops influenced how users rated the products’ beauty. Participants using shops with bad usability rated the shops as less beautiful after using the shops. We showed that poor usability lead to frustration, which put the users in a bad mood and made them rate the product as less beautiful than before interacting with the shop.”
Often we see businesses acting counter to this with by placing aesthetics far ahead of usability. As they design, they often do everything to stand apart from other applications and focus too much on the surface level design factors while ignoring real usability issues that would help increase user satisfaction and repeat usage.
To counter this, we suggest users pursue design paths for mobile and web applications using aesthetic attributes such as “clean”, “tight” and “organized”. Applications generally gain traction from the ground up and add more users as positive word of mouth spreads, which means reputation is everything. The study suggests poor usability will lead to less than favorable word-of-mouth will good usability while help you see the growth you desire for your applications.
Based on new data from Nielson, mobile platforms are starting to affect commerce more and more everyday. 79% of respondents in their recent survey said they had shopped with their smartphone or tablet. And when it comes time to make the purchase, 42% of tablet owners said they purchased items on their device, while 29% of smartphone owners went ahead and made the purchase on their phone.
Due to the differences in form factor, we are seeing differences in how each device is used relative to commerce. More portable, smartphones are being used for in-store research and handling tasks on the go. For things like finding a store we see a strong difference with 73% of smartphone owners using their devices for this versus 42% of tablet owners. Smartphones are also regularly used for shopping lists (42% versus 16% on tablets). We see similar differences when it comes to mobile coupons (32% v 11%).
Information like this is very helpful when designing mobile apps for your business as you can cater to the natural tendencies of users. You see some areas of usage that are strong on both devices, such as for price-checking where we see numbers like 62% for smartphones versus 52% on tablets. Both devices are regularly used for research before a purchase, with people preferring the tablet 66% over the smartphone at 57%. Tablet owners are also more likely to read product reviews by a small margin of 56% versus 45% for smartphones.
These results are not that surprising considering the growth of usage of these devices. In light of this savvy businesses are building mobile applications to meet these usage trends and propel their brands. Keep in mind that there are many shopping scenarios. Tablet applications are perfect for preshopping research while smartphone applications should be designed with features catering to shoppers that are on the go.