For 58% of retailers, mobile is a key investment area during 2015, up from 53% in 2014, according to the Shop.org report, titled: The State Of Retailing Online.
To develop the report, Forrester Research surveyed 71 companies from numerous retail categories including apparel, footwear, general merchandise, home furnishings and personal care between November and December 2014.
Despite the growing prevalence of smartphones and tablets, digital marketing still is a minor priority for retailers. Approximately one third (32%) of retailers report spending less than $100,000 on smartphone development in 2014, while 68% report spending less than $1 million. Additionally, just 4% of retailers said they invested between $100,000 and $250,000 on tablet initiatives last year. That said, eight in 10 organizations plan to increase their mobile budgets by at least 20% in 2015.
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“Consumers are flocking to retailers’ mobile sites at a faster pace and with more interaction than ever before, so naturally they expect retailers to offer fast, well-designed mobile services that meet their needs,” said Vicki Cantrell, SVP of NRF and Executive Director at Shop.org. “With that in mind, and with several years of mobile commerce now under the industry’s belt, retailers feel confident in their mobile investments. For retailers — when it comes to mobile strategies, small but continuous incremental changes really do go a long way to keep their savvy customers happy.”
However, few retailers are investing in apps due to high costs associated with development. As many as 56% of retailers surveyed said apps are not a key component of their mobile marketing strategy, and an even greater percentage agree apps are not critical to their employee strategy.
“Apps are simply too expensive to build and maintain for most retailers, begging the question — what’s after apps?” said Sucharita Mulpuru, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. “We’ll see retailers focus spending on redesigning the core site, which benefits the site experience beyond mobile, and embracing responsive design — an approach that retailers favor over apps, with nearly half already applying it to their mobile site.”
Omnichannel efforts are considered the second-highest priority for retailers, according to the report. As many as 45% of the retail respondents said they hope to improve or invest in programs such as buy online-pick up in store, ship-from-store and inventory visibility in the year ahead. This is nearly twice as much (26%) as the number of retailers that cited omnichannel as a priority for 2014. Additionally, 38% of respondents ranked marketing optimization as their third-highest priority for 2015, which includes customer retention and acquisition initiatives.
