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.

Convenience or Security?

Have a look at the chart below

Search comparison for Shopping and Security online

What inference can you draw from the chart?

Though the data set is not precise, it gives a very significant insight i.e.

"In general, people are not very much bothered with this Security thing when shopping online"

What a deep insight, you would say. But, companies who sell online would benefit if they remember this when designing the products. Customers should not have to remember multiple passwords, go through multiple screens, use hardware tokens, enter a validation code, or anything that comes between them and buying.

If I had to propose a design guideline to my product team, it would be:

"Make it frictionless, but ensure that the plumbing around customer data wherever it is (browser, pipe, or servers), can defeat the ingenuities of the best hackers out there"

Top 5 Challenges for Online Retailers

1. Reducing Cart Abandonment: £1.5 trillions worth of shopping baskets are abandoned online globally. Even a slight improvement would lead to a windfall for the retail industry. This can be attributed to the inefficient buying processes. For example, once the customer has decided to buy something, she has to register with the website, before making the purchase. But, this is not the end. During checkout, a lengthy payment process further exacerbates the users frustration. As a result, most of the customers (66%) end up abandoning their shopping basket.

2. Devising a Mobile Strategy: Accept it or Not, Mobile devices are changing the way people buy things. It makes it imperative for retailers to have a mobile strategy, which should encompass everything from advertisements to the order completion. Also, with limited real estate of mobile devices, the website should be intelligently designed to adapt to provide a consistent experience to the customers. 

3. Supporting Multiple Touch points: Consumers can engage with online retailers with different intents: to buy, to give feedback, or to complain. Retailers are expected to be there when customers want to talk to them. Today the shopping process can be complicated, with the buyer searching for an item on her desktop, booking it on her tablet sitting in Starbucks, and then proceeding to the nearest store to collect the item. The retailer should provide seamless experience to the buyer across multiple channels.

4. Creating Loyal Customers: It is getting increasingly difficult for retailers to keep customers coming for more. This is primarily due to fact that the customer wants the best bargain, and there are tools available for her to compare prices across multiple websites, and go for the one that best meet her need in terms of cost and delivery. Retailers need to implement loyalty and payment solutions that make it easy to reward customers. For e.g. location based personalized advertising, and intelligent retargeting can help in getting a larger share of customer’s wallet.

5. Leveraging Customer Data: The challenge is not the scarcity of data; it’s plenty to collect. The real challenge for retailers is to figure out how to mine that data intelligently, and use it to better serve their customers. With cost of storing data decreasing every year, there is no excuse for retailers. This data can be used for not only for segmenting customers, but also to predict the demand to keep an advantage over competitors. Clothing retailer Zara excelled at this by observing fashion trends on streets, and stocking inventory accordingly. It is time for retailers to step up their data game.

Certainly there are many other challenges before retailers, compounded by the fact that mobile revolution is shaking up the way people shop, and still no standards have emerged for retailers to cling on to. If they were on the wrong side, they would be left out; if they wait and watch, they would be left out!

Driving the Restaurant Business across the Chasm of Mobile Payment Adoption

Mobile Payment is making inroads in virtually every industry: from retail to e-commerce, and from roadside food joints to the sit-in trendy restaurants. With all the hype around mobile payments, the fear of restaurants before jumping the bandwagon is fully justified. Like any technology adoption, mobile payment adoption in Restaurant industry can be plotted on the adoption curve as:

Image Source: An article by Scott W. Ambler published on Dr.Dobb’s website

If the mobile payment adoption in restaurants has to cross The Chasm, it has to address the top concerns facing these businesses:

Seamless Experience for customers: Customers go to different restaurants i.e. Mexican, Chinese, Indian etc., and would not want to install separate apps for each of the different chains. Customers should be able to use the same app across multiple chains, which mean success for payment companies means forming alliances with key partners in restaurant industry.

Security: Restaurants have to be convinced that the application is secure i.e. their customers’ card details won’t be hacked. Brand name is a big asset for restaurants, and any dent would be difficult to eradicate. Any mobile company vying for restaurant business should get their app certified through an industry standard like PCI.

Existing Infrastructure: Most of the restaurants have already invested in some sort of POS terminals like VeriFone, or loyalty solutions such as Belly and Fivestar. Asking these restaurants to throw away the existing investment, and start from scratch would be a sure recipe to be shown the door.  Mobile payment app should integrate seamlessly with existing POS and loyalty systems. 

Customer Adoption: Once restaurants have embraced a particular payment technology, how should the customers be educated about it to drive the adoption? The restaurants and the mobile company both have stakes in making it successful, so it makes sense that it’s a joint marketing effort. Explainer videos and blog content can be used to explain the usage and the benefits.

Do you think there are other factors that should be tackled to help restaurants cross the Chasm?