Ten things John Lewis have learned about mobile shopping

roger on 05/04/2017

John Lewis has been trading for 153 years, online for 15 years, and on mobile for 6 years. Here are Tom Rooney’s “Ten things we’ve learned about mobile shopping”:

1. Modern shopping journeys are increasingly complex

  • Customers go through the Research stage to the Purchase stage to the Fulfilment stage but the spaghetti of journey options means that there is no usual journey.

2.Customers love to tell us how they like to shop

  • Don’t need to envisage every journey.
  • Guerilla testing works great.

3. It’s all about the smart phone

  • Last Christmas mobile became the main way for customers to shop online.

4. Smartphones are not the same as tablets (yet)

  • Different sizes drives different behaviour.
  • But phones are getting bigger.
  • Phones early in the day, desktop in middle of the day, tablets in the evening.
  • Tablet use is declining, behaviour shifting to phone.

5. The product page is the new homepage

  • Journeys are less linear than before.
  • 30% of journeys start on product page.
  • Proposition and brand must come across well.
  • Home page is an important anchor that must still be available for customers.

6. Apps offer different opportunities to a website

  • Loyal customers love the app.
  • Features like barcode scanner and digital receipts offer something that the website can’t.
  • Apps are highest converting.
  • Apps used to enhance in store experience.
  • Apps need to have a purchase journey.
  • Journey needs to be slick.

7. Don’t forget your shop floor colleagues

  • It’s hard for shop colleagues to keep up with customers technology.
  • Solutions aren’t entirely digital. E.g. How devices are carried.
  • Encouraging discussion with customers goes along way.
  • Leveling the playing field between customers tech and staff tech is important.

8. Understand and respect your foundations

  • New tech makes new demands of old.
  • This has made building the future tricky.
  • The things we want to build always seem to be the most difficult.

9. Avoid solutions without problems and learn to say no

  • There’s lots of weird and wonderful technology out there.
  • Understand opportunities vs expectations.
  • Listen to your customers and work on what they want.

10. We’re not done yet

  • There’s a smart everything.
  • There will be new ways to shop.
  • The products themselves could directly contribute to the shopping ecosystems.