What is Tag Management?

A user comes to your website from a search result link, browse some products, saves an item in her shopping basket, and checks-out after making the payment. Here, the basic details such as IP address, User Id, the date and time, and other browser related information are easily captured.

If you want to capture more data such as Traffic source and Demographics, you may install Google Analytics code on your website.

If you want more advanced analytics on your visitors, you may install Omniture (now part of adobe) code on your website.

If you want to compare your offerings vis-à-vis the competitors, you may install Compete code on your website.

So, as you go on enriching your data set with the purpose of deriving customer, competitor, and product insights, the website code keeps getting messier. This can have negative impact on performance and code manageability. Also, even small changes would need support from IT team delaying the process.

What is the solution to manage these ever increasing snippets of code (called as Tags)?

You have Tag management solutions from companies such as Tealium and Ensighten. Using them you can easily manage these Tags. Let’s see how do they work.

Source: ensighten website

These solutions implement an additional layer called the Data Layer between your website and the analytics providers (Google, Adobe, Compete etc.).  This Data Layer contains all your tags and executes them to capture a variety of visitor related data. The data collected is then passed on to the Analytics provider for processing. Additionally, the layer can further enrich the data to derive rich insights.

So you end up with all these providers talking to the Data Layer. This way, if you need a new analytics provider tomorrow, you can integrate it with the Data Layer without affecting the website. Also, the change can be done without any support from the technical team, speeding up the deployment.

Tag management system are becoming important as the consumer journey is becoming increasingly complex, spanning multiple devices across physical and online realms.

Retailers Need a Mobile Centric Strategy

According to a report from comScore, mobile devices have overtaken desktops and laptops in getting a majority of buyer’s time during online mobile shopping. Interesting thing to know is that mobile devices are not primarily used for making purchase, but for the most common pre-shopping activities such as:

1. Finding directions to the store

2. Finding opening hours

3. Making price comparisons

4. Checking product reviews.

If you want to know how shoppers are using their mobile devices for shopping activities, have a look at the info-graph below from Google's Retail Advertising Blog: 

Source: Google Retail Advertising Blog

It makes it imperative for retailers to have a comprehensive mobile business strategy, addressing all the above activities, which ultimately lead to the purchase. Though it can be challenging for retailers to adopt a consumer centric multi-channel approach, because a typical purchase journey can span multiple devices, as given in the example below:  

Desktop: The buyer searches for a TV online, and saves a couple of items in her shopping cart.

Tablet: Next day, while sitting in a local café, she goes through the items in her basket, and decides she wants the 42” screen TV from Samsung. She compares the price at different stores and finds that it is cheapest at the M&S store. She clicks on the link and taken to the retailer’s website. She scans the QR code displayed next to the product and buys it. She gets the e-receipt on her phone.

Smartphone: She heads out to collect her TV from the store. She looks for direction to the M&S store on her phone. Inside the store, she scans the e-receipt at the self-checkout kiosk, collects the TV, and steps out without waiting in the queue.

There are key elements to laying out a mobile centric strategy:

1.     A mobile optimized site, which would offer an optimum user experience, considering the limited real estate.

2.     A mechanism to track the consumer and her state across multiple devices, to provide a consistent and seamless experience.

3.     A quick online checkout process. Minimum time from Browsing to Buying. This means no registration, and a 1-click payment process.

4.     A mobile loyalty program, to reward the consumer at the point of purchase.

5.     And finally, a mobile centric marketing strategy.

These may look obvious in terms of benefit to a retailer, yet 50% of UK retailers don’t even have a mobile site.

As more and more people migrate to their iPhone and iPad, it will become mandatory for retailers to have a well-defined mobile strategy, to compete effectively in this mobile dominated world.

Banks as we know are endangered!

Last week, it was in headlines that:

“BofA cut 10% of branches as mobile banking strategy pays off, a pullback from the two-decade expansion that took the bank from coast to coast – the move is primarily due to consumers preference to online and mobile banking”

Sooner than later, other banks will be forced to follow BofA, as more and more customers move to mobile banking, and the number of footfalls in branches are too few to make economical sense. Mobile has disrupted many businesses, and it is going to reshape the banking industry too. The question is not if, but when.

Pure mobile banking banks such as Moven, Simple and GoBank are getting traction, especially with the young generation. Pure mobile banks don’t have the high fixed cost associated with traditional banks, which it makes it easier for them to buck the trend, and leaves these banks with resources to innovate. For example, Moven’s Personal Financial Management tool MoneyPulse tracks spending, and provide visual cues to let customers know how they are doing compared to the targets they have set for themselves. It has analytics features that are not found in the banking websites of traditional banks.  

There is a commonly accepted notion that consumers are yet not ready to embrace 100% mobile banks. Also that the majority of people in developing countries are not connected to the “Network”, and many don’t have smartphones, leaving them out of the loop. To them, I give example of M-PESA, which is transforming lives in Africa. Eventually, everyone would be connected, because technology is constantly reducing the cost of access.

So, what does the future looks like for Barclays and Citibank of today.  Is it a dark alley for them?

This is a classic example of the Innovators Dilemma. The  banks would have to innovate, and re-invent themselves, else they would be replaced by these mobile only disruptive banks, who may be niche now, but would gradually become mainstream. Some of these banks have already taken a step in the direction by creating a mobile only version backed by the traditional bank guarantees like FDIC. I agree that traditional banks won’t disappear, but 10 years from now they would definitely be a lot different than what exists today. The digital channel would eventually be as significant as the physical channel, if not more, and not just an add-on to the traditional banking.