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MOBILE 5002015 EDITION

Ranking The World’s Largest Mobile Commerce Businesses

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Mobile 500 2015 EDITION

ANALYSIS

Overview

Juggling mobile tech priorities…………….6Mobile commerce sales will soar 80% in 2014, accounting

for 21% of total web sales. More than 60% of time spent with online retail now occurs on mobile devices. And these numbers will continue to grow. As a result, retailers are grappling with a number of technology trends, including a major shift to responsive design web sites, mobile apps playing a larger role, how to serve shoppers on tablets, and preparing for a future that includes wear-able mobile devices and the Internet of Things. The top digital and mobile executives at numerous leading Mobile 500 retailers, including Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, QVC and Peapod, share how they succeed at mobile commerce.

Feature

Making the most of mobile apps…………….26The 262 Mobile 500 retailers with at least one app will grow

their collective m-commerce sales 80.2% to $78.71 billion in 2014. That’s 15% faster than the 238 Mobile 500 merchants without apps that will grow their combined annual mobile sales 70.1% to $5.07 billion in 2014. Diverse merchants with stellar apps, including JackThreads.com, W.W. Grainger and overstockArt.com, discuss the best ways to design apps that drive more mobile sales, achieve better customer retention, and give consumers even greater flexibility when shopping on smartphones and tablets.

Case Study

Ingenious responsive design………………..38AeroLife turned to responsive design to serve shoppers on

any device. The new site, filled with colorful floating bubbles that easily shift position based on a device’s screen size, has met all management objectives.

The 2015

Mobile 500Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42

Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

EXPERT ADVICE

The need for speed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Performance—page load times and site

availability—is arguably the most important

consideration when selling on smartphones.

Don’t worry, be ‘appy’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Secrets to learning how to drive app downloads

and keep consumers coming back to apps for

more.

Missing the mark on mobile SEO . . . . . . . . . . 36

Many Mobile 500 merchants need to better

optimize for consumers searching on smart-

phones.

KEY DATA

Top 50 mobile merchants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Top 50 fastest growing (by percent) . . . . . . . . 18

Top 50 fastest growing (in dollars) . . . . . . . . . 19

Top 50 in app sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Top 5 by merchandise category . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Top 25 by merchant type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

SPONSORED THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Skava . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

INDEXES

Executive directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Parent company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .371

URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

Contents • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

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“To some extent we were wrong about multi-device usage. The largest growth area in shopping and on the web is mobile-only consumers.”

I love that quote.That’s what Scot Wingo, who is CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which facilitates re-

tailer sales through Amazon.com and other web marketplaces, and an astute web retail-ing industry observer, told me recently. I was interviewing him for the overview story in this guide, the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500, which ranks the 500 leading retailers in mobile commerce across the globe by projected 2014 principal market sales on smart-phones and tablets.

Web and mobile measurement firm comScore Inc., a data partner for the 2015 Mobile 500 (it provided mobile traffic figures), finds that 29% of Amazon.com (No. 1) shoppers ONLY shop the e-retailer on mobile devices. More examples of mobile-only shoppers as a percentage of total online shoppers: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (No. 6) 33%, Target Corp. (No. 37) 43%, Best Buy Co. Inc. (No. 23) 37%, QVC (No. 5) 38% and Macy’s Inc. (No. 13) 31%.

Even when you factor in consumers who use multiple devices to shop online and consumers who only shop online via desktops, more than 60% of time spent with online retail occurs on mobile devices, comScore finds.

“There is absolutely no question smartphones and tablets will be central to web retail-ing moving forward.” That’s what Vishal Agarwal, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Nomorerack.com Inc. (No. 77), told me in our chat for the overview story. All of the executives I spoke with echo that sentiment.

Fortunately for retailers who embrace mobile shoppers, the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 provides a treasure trove of research that can help them map their plans. Internet Retailer and five data partners (comScore, Keynote, Pure Oxygen Labs, TheFind and Mobidia) collected or measured 53 data points on each of the 500 retailers in this guide. My 10-page overview story (see page 6) digs deep into the trends revealed by the Mobile 500 data, including responsive design, mobile apps and tablets. Vice president of research Mark Brohan offers a feature story on what retailers can learn from the best mobile shopping apps (see page 26).

Further, we have three articles written by top experts at our data partners analyzing mobile performance (page 30), mobile apps (page 34) and mobile search engine optimiza-tion (page 36). Plus, there is a section profiling more than 330 mobile commerce technology providers (page 294 ). And of course there are charts galore that highlight key insights from the Mobile 500 data (page 17). Not to mention the 500 retailer listings (pages 42-292).

Mobile sales will soar 80% in 2014, accounting for 21% of total web sales, the Mobile 500 finds. With this huge growth comes ever-changing mobile technologies and strate-gies. The 2015 Mobile 500 is your key to unlocking the mobile commerce industry and your guide to the best ways to serve the constantly increasing number of shoppers on smartphones and tablets.

Publisher: Jack Love [email protected]/President: Molly Love Rogers [email protected] President, Sales & Product Development: Tom Duggan, [email protected] 312-572-6250Executive Editor: Kurt T. Peters [email protected] in Chief: Don Davis [email protected]: Allison Enright [email protected] Editor: Zak Stambor [email protected] Editor, Mobile Commerce: Bill Siwicki [email protected] Editor, B2B E-Commerce: Paul Demery [email protected] Editors: Thad Rueter, [email protected], Frank Tong (China), [email protected] Associate Editor: Abby Callard [email protected] Director: Mark Brohan [email protected] Director, Research: Stefany Zaroban [email protected] Editor, Production and Special Projects, Research: Bill Briggs [email protected] Editor, International Research: Katie Evans [email protected] Editor, Research: Jonathan Love [email protected] Analyst: Sylvia De Oliveira [email protected] Director, Conferences: Mary Wagner [email protected] Director: Thomas Chambers [email protected] 312-362-9531Midwest Region Sales Manager: Cindy Wilkins, [email protected] 312-572-6247 (phone) 866-979-4510 (fax)Northeast Advertising Manager: Nancy Bernardini, [email protected] 312-572-6276 (phone) 866-979-4389 (fax)Southeast Region Advertising Manager: Judy Dellert, [email protected] 312-572-6279 (phone) 866-979-4394 (fax)West Region Advertising Manager: Dave Cappelli, [email protected] 312-362-0063 (phone) 866-979-4392 (fax)Classified Sales Manager: Oliver Love, [email protected] 312-572-6251 (phone) 866-979-4504 (fax)Advertising Manager, Research: Elizabeth Riley-Green [email protected] of Marketing: Erin Dowd [email protected] Web Production Editor: Farnia Ghavami [email protected] Circulation Manager: Chaz McCrobie-Quinn [email protected]

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Your key to unlock m-commerceEditor’s Letter • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

Overview • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

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As mobile sales soar, retailers juggle

evolving prioritiesApps? Responsive design? Tablet shoppers? Wearables?

The 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 shows merchants are responding to 80% mobile sales growth by expanding or enhancing the ways consumers

can shop on mobile devices while preparing for much more change to come.

BY BILL SIWICKI

Internet Retailer • 2015 Mobile 500 • Overview

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Amazon.com Inc., the No. 1 mobile retailer in the world, changed its mobile commerce strategy last year. It still offers consumers a mobile-optimized site for smartphones, a desktop site enhanced

for optimal shopping on tablets, and a wide array of mobile apps. That will not change. What will change, though, is what a consumer can do and find on those sites and apps on smartphones and tablets.

“We want a customer to be able to have 100% of their relationship with Amazon on any device they choose,” says Paul Cousineau, director of mobile shopping at Amazon.com, which, with projected 2014 U.S. mobile sales of $16.8 billion, is No. 1 in the new 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500, a global research guide. “Mobile is a transformative technol-ogy. As our percentage of customers adopting mobile continues to grow, mobile can no longer be a limited subset of features or products. People do not put their phone down then go find a desktop to do something. They use their phone. And we think with clever use of functions and design, it is possible to give mobile customers 100%.”

Internet Retailer estimates 21% of Amazon.com’s total U.S. sales stem from smartphones and tablets. While Amazon would not confirm that estimate, the e-retailer says more than half of its traffic during the 2013 holiday season came from mobile devices. And web and mobile measurement firm comScore Inc. says 29% of Amazon.com shoppers only shop the e-retailer on mobile devices, never accessing the retailer on a desktop or laptop PC.

Amazon.com is not at 100% on every device yet; it’s an ongoing initiative, Cousineau says. Amazon.com has 20 years of innovations on the desktop web site that have driven its success in online retail, and it must tailor these innovations to mobile shoppers while at the same time creating features unique to mobile consumers, he explains.

“Nutritional information for a box of cereal, imagery for a dress, a spec chart for a TV, which actors are in a movie, a little video of a model offering a 360-degree view of an outfit—all these things have to be available whatever the device,” he says. “And then serve mobile customers in unique ways; for example, with our Flow search feature. Just point your mobile device camera at something and it recognizes the product.”

Amazon.com is smart to change its mobile commerce strategy to provide all of its desktop site features and functions on tablets and smart-phones, says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which facilitates retailer sales through Amazon.com and other web marketplaces.

“Frankly, all of us in e-retail have been surprised at how fast mobile has ascended,” says Wingo, who estimates about 25% of Amazon’s mobile sales are digital goods, including songs, apps, movies and e-books. Wingo monitors data on shopping by device from a variety of sources, including his own internal data and data from firms such as comScore. “Two years ago, we all envisioned a multi-device world where people would discover on the smartphone, browse on the tablet, and land back on the desktop to buy. Well, multi-device shoppers are there, but they are transitioning to much more mobile. To some extent we were wrong about multi-device usage. The largest growth area in shopping and on the web is mobile-only consumers.”

Multiple mobile prioritiesMobile technology clearly is changing the way people shop online and in-store. In June 2014, 16.8% of online retail shoppers only used mobile devices to shop online, 51.1% used a combination of PCs (desktop/laptop) and mobile (smartphone/tablet), and 32.1% only used a PC, comScore says. But as Wingo observed, that is changing, and fast. That same month, those same consumers spent 60.4% of their time with online retail on mobile devices—a number that has been rising steadily for years, comScore adds.

This huge consumer shift to mobile and rapidly evolving mobile technologies are creating multiple priorities for retailers trying to best serve their customers, wherever they may be:


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Web sites. An increasing number of retailers are choosing responsive design over standalone optimized sites for smartphones and tablets as they see mobile traffic rising dramatically. The number of retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 with responsive design sites reached 103, up a whopping 164% from 39 last year. (The Mobile 500 listings break down sites by retailer and site type, including smartphone site, tablet site or responsive design site.)

Mobile apps. As consumers begin spending more of their mobile retail time shopping in apps as opposed to web sites, more retailers are building apps or enhancing the ones they have. In the 2015 Mobile 500, the number of commerce-enabled smartphone apps is up more than 12% to 439 among 262 retailers. Add commerce-enabled tablet apps and universal apps (single apps that provide two different experiences, one for smart-phone and one for tablet) and it brings the total number of apps to 602 among 262 retailers. (The Mobile 500 listings break down apps by retailer, app type and mobile operating system.)

Tablets. In 2014, 147.2 million U.S. con-sumers use tablets, according to research firm eMarketer Inc. This year, 59% of mobile sales among the top 500 retailers in mobile commerce will stem from tablets, the Mobile 500 projects. Retailers are still learning the best ways to serve the growing number of consumers shopping on iPads and other tablets. However, a consumer shift to bigger smartphones could tilt the mobile sales scales toward smartphones.

Further, merchants also are keeping their eyes on what is yet to come in mobile commerce. Wearables, like smartwatches and smartglasses, and the generally stationary Internet of Things, which experts believe will impact mobile strategies, are percolating. Their future is difficult to predict.

Consistent and convenientBut the challenge for retailers today is clear: Make it as convenient as possible to shop on smart-phones and tablets. Retailers are responding by building better mobile and responsive web sites and slicker mobile apps that enable consumers to shop in a seamless and consistent manner, says Gibu Thomas, senior vice president of mobile and digital strategy at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., No. 6 in the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500. Wal-Mart U.S. m-commerce sales will reach $1.43 billion in 2014, according to the Mobile 500, which tallies principal market online sales on smartphones and tablets for retailers across the globe.

“Innovation on the technology side is making mobile shopping work well,” Thomas says. He says it already is relatively easy to find something you are looking for on a mobile device. “But on the mobile customer experience side, retailers need to figure out how best to take advantage of these form factors to create a new paradigm that helps mobile custom-ers discover products, whether online or in-store.”

The advances in mobile technology and design show up in the rapid growth of mobile commerce. Mobile sales by retailers in the 2015 edition of the Mobile 500 should reach $83.78 billion in 2014,

Top 10 Retailers in Mobile Commerce2014 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales

2014 growth rate

Mobile as % of total web sales

2014 mobile monthly vistits

2014 conversion rate

2014 2014 rank average ticket

2014 app sales %

% of mobile sales from smartphones

% of mobile sales from tablets Category Merchant type

1 Amazon.com Inc. $16,800,000,000 $8,000,000,000 110.0% 21% 245,098,039 7.0% 1 Amazon.com Inc. $82 35% 40% 60% Mass Merchant Web Only

2 Apple Inc. $14,000,000,000 $10,000,000,000 40.0% 57% 324,074,074 12.0% 2 Apple Inc. $30 80% 70% 30% Computers/Electronics Manufacturer

3 Jingdong Mall $5,800,000,000 $2,900,000,000 100.0% 25% 165,000,000 2.6% 3 Jingdong Mall $110 25% 70% 30% Mass Merchant Web Only

4 Google Play $4,400,000,000 $2,000,000,000 120.0% 80% 333,333,333 11.0% 4 Google Play $10 80% 90% 10% Books/Music/Video Web Only

5 QVC $1,860,000,000 $1,200,000,000 55.0% 38% 31,000,000 4.0% 5 QVC $125 40% 50% 50% Mass Merchant Catalog/Call Center

6 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. $1,430,000,000 $760,000,000 88.2% 11% 59,480,931 2.1% 6 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. $96 35% 60% 40% Mass Merchant Retail Chain

7 Otto Group $1,350,000,000 $675,000,000 100.0% 15% 36,174,564 1.9% 7 Otto Group $160 35% 30% 70% Apparel/Accessories Catalog/Call Center

8 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. $1,350,000,000 $670,000,000 101.5% 22% 44,079,956 2.5% 8 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. $101 30% 70% 30% Mass Merchant Retail Chain

9 Sears Holdings Corp. $900,000,000 $450,000,000 100.0% 17% 36,168,981 1.8% 9 Sears Holdings Corp. $115 35% 35% 65% Mass Merchant Retail Chain

10 Xiaomi.com $900,000,000 NA NA 19% 13,888,889 3.0% 10 Xiaomi.com $180 20% 90% 10% Computers/Electronics Web Only

Source: Internet Retailer 2015 Mobile 500


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up 79.9% from $46.56 billion in 2013. Mobile sales growth in the 2014 edition of the Mobile 500 hit 100%. In 2014, $83.78 billion in mobile sales will account for 21.2% of an estimated $394.71 billion in total web sales by retailers in the Mobile 500, according to the guide. On average, 16% of a Mobile 500 retailer’s web sales stem from mobile devices.

The Mobile 500 does not include eBay Inc. because eBay does not sell products on its own behalf and instead facilitates sales for merchants and indi-viduals. But eBay does facilitate a massive amount of mobile commerce that must be factored into any estimate of mobile retail sales. The Internet giant reported $20 billion in m-commerce sales in 2013, and Internet Retailer projects 70% growth in 2014 to $34 billion. Add up the Mobile 500 and eBay and the leaders in mobile commerce will hit $117.78 billion in 2014, up 77.0% from $66.56 billion in 2013.

The 366 U.S. retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 will reach m-commerce sales of $58.74 billion in 2014, up 73.9% from $33.78 billion in 2013. 2014 mobile sales will account for 22.8% of total 2014 web sales of the U.S. retailers in the Mobile 500. The 134 overseas retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 will hit $25.04 billion in 2014 in m-commerce sales, up 95.9% from $12.78 billion in 2013. 2014 mobile sales will account for 18.3% of total 2014 web sales of the overseas retailers in the Mobile 500.

The big increase in mobile sales and traffic is leading many retailers to rethink how they build and maintain their web sites, and a big trend that emerges from this year’s Mobile 500 is the move to responsive design. In a year’s time the percentage of Mobile 500

retailers using the design technique surged from 8% to 21%. That’s a huge spike that could signal a sea change in the way retailers design their sites.

More than half of the retailers in the Mobile 500 will use responsive design in some form next year, predicts Tom Robertshaw, managing director at Meanbee Ltd., an e-commerce and m-commerce technology firm whose specialties include responsive design.

“The first time a merchant asked us about responsive design was about 18 months ago; today, the vast majority of retailers coming to us want a responsive design site,” Robertshaw says. “Most retailers have a three-year turnaround for site redesign, when they review their design and methodology. And the clear method of choice for design today when it comes to rebuilding a site is responsive design.”

A mobile giant goes responsiveAt No. 5 with an Internet Retailer-projected $1.86 billion in 2014 mobile sales, QVC Inc. is the biggest merchant in the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 to go responsive. It started transform-ing its site to responsive design last year with its shopping cart and then worked backward through the purchase funnel to the home page, completing the switch in March 2014. The TV and web retailer stresses its work is not complete, as it continues to optimize pages and refine the site.

QVC says results have been positive, espe-cially with new customers, but declines to reveal specifics. The merchant built the responsive

Top 10 Retailers in Mobile Commerce2014 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales

2014 growth rate


2014 mobile monthly vistits

2014 conversion rate

2014 2014 rank average ticket

2014 app sales %

% of mobile sales from smartphones

% of mobile sales from tablets Category Merchant type

1 Amazon.com Inc. $16,800,000,000 $8,000,000,000 110.0% 21% 245,098,039 7.0% 1 Amazon.com Inc. $82 35% 40% 60% Mass Merchant Web Only

2 Apple Inc. $14,000,000,000 $10,000,000,000 40.0% 57% 324,074,074 12.0% 2 Apple Inc. $30 80% 70% 30% Computers/Electronics Manufacturer

3 Jingdong Mall $5,800,000,000 $2,900,000,000 100.0% 25% 165,000,000 2.6% 3 Jingdong Mall $110 25% 70% 30% Mass Merchant Web Only

4 Google Play $4,400,000,000 $2,000,000,000 120.0% 80% 333,333,333 11.0% 4 Google Play $10 80% 90% 10% Books/Music/Video Web Only

5 QVC $1,860,000,000 $1,200,000,000 55.0% 38% 31,000,000 4.0% 5 QVC $125 40% 50% 50% Mass Merchant Catalog/Call Center

6 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. $1,430,000,000 $760,000,000 88.2% 11% 59,480,931 2.1% 6 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. $96 35% 60% 40% Mass Merchant Retail Chain

7 Otto Group $1,350,000,000 $675,000,000 100.0% 15% 36,174,564 1.9% 7 Otto Group $160 35% 30% 70% Apparel/Accessories Catalog/Call Center

8 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. $1,350,000,000 $670,000,000 101.5% 22% 44,079,956 2.5% 8 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. $101 30% 70% 30% Mass Merchant Retail Chain

9 Sears Holdings Corp. $900,000,000 $450,000,000 100.0% 17% 36,168,981 1.8% 9 Sears Holdings Corp. $115 35% 35% 65% Mass Merchant Retail Chain

10 Xiaomi.com $900,000,000 NA NA 19% 13,888,889 3.0% 10 Xiaomi.com $180 20% 90% 10% Computers/Electronics Web Only



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design site in-house and calls the necessary investment big. The driving force behind the change was to ensure a consistent customer expe-rience regardless of device, especially with 38% of sales stemming from mobile, says Alex Miller, senior vice president of digital commerce at QVC.

“The fragmentation of screen sizes continues to grow, and as a company that creates a lot of content around shopping, we needed a platform strategy that elevated that content, making content easy to access across all different screen sizes and devices,” Miller says. “Responsive doesn’t make that simple; for example, there still is upfront plan-ning when we design new features so we know how something will look on a 19-inch monitor and a 4-inch screen. But responsive does allow us to leverage our team and workflow in a more sustain-able way to support all the different screen sizes to come, whether they’re interactive TVs or watches.”

Like Miller, Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president at eBags Inc., No. 194 in the Mobile 500, cautions that while responsive design may seem like a magical solution to the conundrum of varying screen sizes, the design technique does require serious work to implement and fine-tune. In-house creative and I.T. staff design and code the pages, and send them to m-commerce technology vendor Moovweb Inc., which hosts and serves eBags.com’s hybrid responsive site. Countless in-house I.T. hours added up to a responsive design price tag that nears $1 million, Cobb says.

“We went responsive and now we need to fine-tune the design for different devices,” Cobb

says. He says he and his team already have made changes, such as moving “next step” buttons like Checkout and Buy from the bottom of smartphone pages to the top so shoppers would not have to scroll down to move forward. But there’s more work to do. “In addition to doing A/B testing, we are considering having 20 people come in, and have 10 shop us on smartphones and 10 shop us on tablets and taking a video of each of them as they shop so we can see if they are getting hung up anywhere.”

Speed upResponsive design’s biggest downside is slow page loads. According to analysis performed by mobile and web performance testing, monitoring and analytics firm Keynote for the Mobile 500, QVC’s responsive home page takes 14.46 seconds to load completely on a smartphone over a 3G/4G wireless network blend. Keynote recommends a maximum 4.5-second page load under these circumstances.

QVC says it monitors performance and is working on speeding smartphone page loads. But the retailer stresses that the Keynote measurement is a com-plete, end-to-end page load time, and that QVC pays close attention to what is known as “time to first paint,” the moment at which a customer can begin reading and interacting with a site while remaining content (a lot of it unseen) continues to load.

Responsive design has its detractors. After researching the technique, Vishal Agarwal, execu-tive vice president and chief marketing officer at web-only Nomorerack.com Inc., No. 78 in the 2015 Mobile 500, said no thanks.

Top 10 Retailers with Fastest Mobile Growth2014 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales 2014 growth rate


135 JustFab.com $68,000,000 $15,840,000 329.3% 27%

220 Diamond Candles $25,348,000 $6,300,000 302.3% 63%

459 Maxwells Attic $550,000 $185,000 197.3% 47%

71 One Kings Lane $190,000,000 $65,052,000 192.1% 35%

59 Wayfair LLC $228,250,000 $90,000,000 153.6% 25%

284 Wolverine World Wide Inc. $11,040,000 $4,400,000 150.9% 12%

134 Light in the Box Ltd. $69,000,000 $30,000,000 130.0% 18%

51 Etsy Inc. $280,000,000 $125,000,000 124.0% 17%

121 Lenovo $76,000,000 $34,000,000 123.5% 5%

432 Ziamond Inc. $1,400,000 $628,949 122.6% 10%



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“18-second page load times? Would you recommend Nomorerack.com switch to responsive design?” Agarwal says, referring to the results of a June 2014 Internet Retailer-exclusive study by Keynote on retail responsive sites. “Ultimately, responsive design cannot work as well as a site highly optimized specifically for a particular device. 80% of mobile traffic comes from 20% of devices, and optimizing for those devices solves the problem. If I have to make all kinds of effort to make responsive better, why not put that effort into making the best mobile-specific sites?”

But technology providers, developers and retailers are evolving the way responsive design is implemented into various hybrid methods that all take on the performance issue. So the performance issue may not remain an issue in the long term. (See the cover story in the June 2014 issue of Internet Retailer magazine for more. http://goo.gl/iBjtWk)

The best way to shop?At the same time that various players are working the kinks out of responsive design, the majority of retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 have developed apps, and many are working on ways to enhance shopping in those apps. 80% of time spent with mobile retail today occurs in an app, while 20% occurs on a site, comScore says. That number is surely skewed by the large number of loyal users of apps from big players such as Amazon.com and eBay and popular comparison shopping and bar code scanning apps like RedLaser. Nonetheless, it represents a complete reversal from as recently as two years ago, when mobile shoppers spent far more time on sites than apps.

“A responsive site is not a replacement for apps” says Miller of QVC, which offers the responsive site and iPhone, iPad and universal Android apps. “For our core customers who want the fastest speeds and shopping experiences best optimized for their particular devices, mobile apps are the perfect way to shop.”

42.4% of 2014 mobile sales by Mobile 500 retailers, or $35.52 billion, will stem from mobile apps. However, app sales numbers are skewed heavily by leading mobile retailers with lots of loyal app users. 80% of the mobile sales of Apple Inc., No. 2 in the Mobile 500, come through apps, for example, and those sales are largely digital goods such as apps and music. 70% of the mobile

sales of Groupon Goods, No. 11, come through apps. Among the 264 retailers in the Mobile 500 with apps, average sales through apps hits about 30%, though retailers and mobile commerce experts expect that percentage to grow in the years to come, most especially for larger retailers and retailers with very loyal customers.

The 2015 Mobile 500 measures how frequently customers use retailers’ apps, a metric known as “engagement.” Mobile app analytics vendor Mobidia Inc. performed the measurements for Internet Retailer using its panels of mobile app users, 250,000 consumers in the U.S. and 2 million worldwide. Engagement is expressed by the per-centage of monthly active users (users who shop an app at least once a month) who shop an app at least once a week.

Mobile 500 retail apps with the highest engagement levels include Neiman Marcus (64.3%), Kohl’s (63.6%), Victoria’s Secret (61.7%), H&M (56.6%) and Groupon (47.8%). Kohl’s, for example, does a great job of including features and offers in its app that keep customers coming back for more, says Chris Hill, vice president of marketing at Mobidia.

“Kohl’s highlights discounts, coupons and deals of the day; retailers with apps need to be doing these kinds of things to give people a reason to come back to the app,” Hill says. “A recognized chain name can help boost engagement, but only if the app is designed well and gives shoppers reason to return. An app is an opportunity for a brand to leverage its most loyal customers.”

That’s exactly what Wal-Mart is doing, and not just for customers who want to shop and purchase on mobile devices. For store shoppers, Wal-Mart’s app features Store Mode. When a shopper using the app enters a store, she can touch the Store Mode button. This completely reorients the app from online shopping to in-store personal assistant.

Using GPS technology, Store Mode detects the Wal-Mart store she has entered and displays that location’s weekly circular, mobile coupons, store map and more, along with a history of a custom-er’s store receipts. Store mode also features a bar code scanner she can use to quickly get informa-tion about a product on a store shelf.

“There’s limited screen real estate on a phone, and a lot of functionality we want to expose to a customer, so Store Mode is a way for us to be contextual and highly relevant for the customer all


12

in the same app,” says Thomas of Wal-Mart. “My expectation is this evolves to where we anticipate where the customer is and what they want and automatically surface the experience they want.”

Apps on the webApps are so important to mobility today that they are even beginning to influence the way retailers (and other companies) design their web sites. Take eBags, for example, which does not offer apps. The e-retailer held a contest, challenging its developers to come up with new ways to merchandise products to consum-ers on smartphones and tablets. The winning team, two developers and a product merchandiser, loved

the way the dating app Tinder works. Tinder displays pictures of potential dates, asking users to click a heart icon for hot or an X icon for not.

So the eBags staff members developed eBags Obsession, a tool, still in beta, that displays pic-tures of handbags with an X icon on the left and a heart icon on the right. Rather than sort their way through a long list of handbags in conventional vertical scrolling format, women can say hot or not to the handbags. The ones they like are added to a tray, where later they can examine them more closely. But most important, the tool learns along the way what women like and eventually begins showing women only handbags it determines the

Top 10 Non-Responsive versus Responsive Design SitesScore rates site performance on smartphones (see Site Performance Methodology, p. 42)

NoN-ReSpoNSive

2014 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales

2014 growth

rate

2014 conversion

rate

2014 average

ticket

% of mobile sales from

smartphones


tablets

Score (out of 1,000)

1 Amazon.com Inc. $16,800,000,000 $8,000,000,000 110.0% 7.0% $82 40% 60% 886

2 Apple Inc. $14,000,000,000 $10,000,000,000 40.0% 12.0% $30 70% 30% NA

3 Jingdong Mall $5,800,000,000 $2,900,000,000 100.0% 2.6% $110 70% 30% NA

4 Google Play $4,400,000,000 $2,000,000,000 120.0% 11.0% $10 90% 10% NA

6 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. $1,430,000,000 $760,000,000 88.2% 2.1% $96 60% 40% 940

7 Otto Group $1,350,000,000 $675,000,000 100.0% 1.9% $160 30% 70% 898

8 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. $1,350,000,000 $670,000,000 101.5% 2.5% $101 70% 30% 772

9 Sears Holdings Corp. $900,000,000 $450,000,000 100.0% 1.8% $115 35% 65% 983

11 Groupon Goods $843,642,000 $496,260,000 70.0% 3.0% $65 80% 20% NA

12 Staples Inc. $800,000,000 $425,000,000 88.2% 2.9% $165 30% 70% NA

ReSpoNSive DeSigN

2014 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales

2014 growth

rate

2014 conversion

rate

2014 average

ticket


smartphones


tablets

Score (out of 1,000)

5 QVC $1,860,000,000 $1,200,000,000 55.0% 4.0% $125 50% 50% 803

10 Xiaomi.com $900,000,000 NA NA 3.0% $180 90% 10% NA

18 HSN Inc. $548,000,000 $402,000,000 36.3% 3.1% $135 50% 50% 908

32 Dixons Stores Group $385,000,000 $195,000,000 97.4% 0.8% $250 30% 70% 882

33 Costco Wholesale Corp. $369,500,000 $215,000,000 71.9% 1.2% $312 31% 69% 832

46 Kohl's Corp. $295,000,000 $175,000,000 68.6% 1.7% $77 60% 40% 856

51 Etsy Inc. $280,000,000 $125,000,000 124.0% 2.1% $40 50% 50% 922

52 L Brands $260,000,000 $150,000,000 73.3% 1.8% $96 25% 75% 842

54 Gilt $250,000,000 $210,000,000 19.0% 4.5% $270 50% 50% 933

57 Privalia.com $240,000,000 $150,000,000 60.0% 3.0% $100 50% 50% 937



13

women most likely want to see. Women also can add filters to begin with, such as color or style.

“These mobile-only or mobile-first companies like Tinder and Uber and TripAdvisor really have the lead in mobile, and they really inspire,” says Cobb of eBags. “So we took a page from Tinder, and the more information you give us, the better our algorithm—which takes into account 100 factors—can fine-tune our assortment of 12,000 handbags just for you. It’s a bit of gamification to help find the perfect bag.”

The tablet shopperWhile Cobb says eBags Obsession is especially helpful for customers on smartphones, where verti-cally scrolling through long lists can become tedious, it also creates a fun shopping experience for consumers on tablets. And tablets is where the action is today in mobile commerce. 59% of 2014 mobile commerce sales will occur on tablets while 41% will stem from smartphones, the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 predicts.

Today there are 147.2 million tablet users in the U.S. representing 58.5% of Internet users, eMarketer finds. That number will increase to 171.3 million, 63.9% of Internet users, in 2018, the firm predicts. Shopping on a tablet is not the same as shopping on a smartphone. The tablet affords a bigger screen and more computing power, and many retailers simply serve their desktop PC e-commerce sites (with a few tweaks) to shoppers on tablets.

But smart retailers know a tablet is not the same thing as a desktop. Tablets, like smart-phones, are mobile devices. They feature tech-nologies such as GPS, touchscreens and accel-erometers, which sense how and when a mobile device is being moved, allowing developers to let consumers shake their devices, for instance, to initiate a feature. And tablets, like smartphones, allow for easy screen reorientation from portrait to

landscape simply by tilting the device. That makes tablets convenient to use in many settings, from the kitchen counter to work to poolside. So is a desktop PC site the ideal way to serve shoppers on tablets? Not according to leading mobile retailers.

Retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 offer 144 tablet apps and 19 universal apps. 103 retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 offer responsive design sites

and 24 offer tablet-specific sites; both types of sites are designed to provide optimal shopping for tablet users. Even Amazon.com, which does not offer a responsive design site per se, infuses its desktop site with responsive design techniques to alter the way information is presented to tablet users so those users can better shop the e-retailer.

“Mobile apps for tablets really take advantage of capabilities a tablet shop-per wants; for example, you tap on any product image and can zoom in tight on the stitching of jeans to an incredible level of detail,” says Cousineau of Amazon.com. “And tablets in general, on apps and sites, are great for scrolling through customer reviews, as tablets are reading devices.”

Flick itOne of Amazon.com’s many tablet shopping features offers a way for tablet shoppers to get through search results quickly and easily. On a desktop, a consumer clicks on an interesting search result, views that product page, then presses the web browser back button to go back to the list to check out more—and repeats this process over and over again. A consumer using one of Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire tablets can press on a result and flick it toward the bottom of the screen where it drops into a tray. A few scrolls and a bunch of flicks and the consumer has all the results of interest in one place, saving a lot of time, and doing so in a way that’s fun, Cousineau says.

35% of Amazon.com’s $16.8 billion in 2014 mobile commerce sales will come through its Apple iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and Windows Phone apps, according to the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500.


14

“It’s a simple feature but it serves an important purpose,” he explains. “Customers like that fea-ture, and we’ve been looking for more ways to do features like that, to design for a touch interface first and take advantage of gestures and strong visual presentation.”

Retailers report tablet shoppers make pur-chases more frequently than other shoppers and spend more time on site or in app; many merchants

also report the average order value for tablet shop-pers can exceed the average order value for desktop shoppers. For example, in July 2014, the conver-sion rates on the U.S. and U.K. affiliate networks of Affiliate Window were 3.00% for smartphone shoppers, 5.41% for desktop shoppers and 5.86% for tablet shoppers, Affiliate Window reports.

Shoppers who make purchases on tablets tend to be Apple iPad users, and consumers who drop $500 for an iPad tend to have more disposable income for shopping, not to mention strong intent to use that tablet for accessing the web and apps.

“With tablet shoppers, we see longer session times and higher conversion rates,” says David Katz, senior vice president and general manager of mobile at Fanatics Inc., No. 47 in the 2015 Mobile 500. Fanatics offers a universal Apple iOS app to serve iPad as well as iPhone shoppers. “We notice that smartphone users often initiate a transaction on a smartphone, often by search or by opening a promotional e-mail, browse a couple of things, then come back later and complete a purchase on a tablet or desktop. Whereas tablet users are much more likely to complete a purchase then and there on the tablet.”

But that may all change as smartphones get bigger. There are a growing number of smart-phones with screens larger than today’s typical

4-inch smartphone but smaller than the smallest tablets, which feature 7-inch screens. Some call these large smartphones phablets, a combination of the words phone and tablet. And Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPhone 6 is rumored to come in two sizes, 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, both bigger than previous iPhone incarnations. Where Apple goes in mobile, the industry follows.

“People with these large smartphones today use them more like tablets than phones,” says Nikki Baird, a managing partner at Retail Systems Research LLC who specializes in mobile and online commerce. “The added screen real estate seems to make people more comfortable with using their smartphones for shopping. Larger-screen smart-phones are going to make a big difference when it comes to making purchases on phones.”

Add to the larger screens the ability to log in to accounts and check out in one touch thanks to Apple making available its biometric finger-print scanner to developers, and the smartphone suddenly becomes a very easy device on which to shop, says Agarwal of Nomorerack.com.

The need to think mobile-first“With all these great technologies coming out, mobile devices really are competing with desktop PCs when it comes to the ideal place to shop,” he says. “With new technologies, we may see mobile conversion exceed desktop conversion, which is why every company today needs to be mobile-first. There is absolutely no question smartphones and tablets will be central to web retailing moving forward, and that these mobile devices will be at the core of driving overall growth.”

And there are more mobile devices to consider: wearables. Smartwatches and smartglasses are here, though many in the industry are waiting to see how sales go for Apple’s iWatch, which is expected in time for the 2014 holidays. EBay, though, already has an app for Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatches.

And then there is the generally rather station-ary Internet of Things, the ever-growing array of web-connected devices, from refrigerators and thermostats to home security systems and smart TVs. Today, many of these devices report to the smartphone, which acts as a sort of command cen-ter so consumers can be made aware of changes or needs as they happen.

The Top 5 Vendors to the Mobile 500Vendor Mobile 500 clients

Branding Brand 57

Usablenet 34

Moovweb 18

Unbound Commerce 15

Mad Mobile 10

Internet Retailer 2015 Mobile 500


16

Peapod LLC, No. 45 in the 2015 Mobile 500, is among the most progressive retailers when it comes to thinking about the future of mobile commerce, and commerce overall. 40% of its total sales come from mobile devices; 70% of its mobile sales from apps, according to the Mobile 500. Peapod is now in the process of rebuilding its web site from scratch, and mobile-first. It is designing first with the smartphone in mind, then working up to the larger-screened tablet and then to the desktop. It’s using the look and feel of Apple’s iOS 7 mobile operating system as a guide (90% of Peapod’s mobile shoppers use Apple devices, the retailer reports, a very common figure in mobile retail).

But here is the key: It is building the new version of its web site using its applica-tion programming interfaces as the foundation technology. The site will be responsive design, and built for speed, the retailer adds. The result will be a web site that can be accessed by just about any device imaginable, mobile or otherwise, explains Thomas Parkinson, co-founder, senior vice president and chief tech-nology officer at Peapod.

“I’m preparing Peapod for whatever device someone throws at us,” Parkinson says. “Any company or developer can grab one of our APIs, the founda-tion of the new site, and build an app that directly interacts with Peapod. All these young innovators are dreaming up unbelievable things. But smart-phones and tablets will be at the heart of every-thing, there is just something we all feel about the coziness of the mobile device.”

East meets WestWingo of ChannelAdvisor points to Facebook launching the ability for mobile users to make a pur-chase simply by pressing a button in Facebook and Apple opening up its biometric fingerprint scanner in iOS 8 to enable one-touch log-in and checkout as two examples of mobile evolution. Wingo has spent a lot of time in China in recent years; ChannelAdvisor

has a partnership with Alibaba, the biggest market-place in China. He says when it comes to how mobile technology is used, the U.S. is behind China.

“The mobile conversion problem we face here does not exist there because payments and m-commerce are well integrated into everything—no matter what a Chinese consumer is in on his mobile device, he can buy things without jumping out of that experience,” Wingo says. “For example, he can be chatting about school and backpacks with a friend in a text chat mobile app, mention

a brand, the brand’s name will light up, he can touch the brand’s name and a live chat rep from that brand will chime in, asking how she can help, offering cool back-to-school backpack options, and the consumer can buy a backpack right there, in the chat app. Why do you think Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion?”

The action in web retail-ing in the future will take place in all of the mobile activities where retailers will be able to sell, Wingo adds.

With all this innovation under way, retailers and mobile commerce experts do not expect this year’s 80% mobile sales growth rate to slow much next year. They do expect many more

retailers in next year’s Internet Retailer Mobile 500 to offer responsive design web sites and mobile apps. And tablets will vie with increasingly larger smartphones for dominance of m-commerce.

Mobile commerce remains a wild, untamed market and retailers are well advised to watch carefully how consumer behavior changes and to be as forward-looking and open-minded as pos-sible. But as they keep an eye on what’s changing, retailers have plenty of work to do today when it comes to learning the best ways to showcase their merchandise and convert shoppers into buyers on smartphones and tablets. l

[email protected]

@irmcommerce

At No. 5, QVC is the biggest merchant in the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 to switch to responsive design, seen here on a smartphone.

17

Comparing the 50 biggest Mobile 500 merchantsRetailer

2014 mobile sales

2013 mobile sales Growth

Mobile monthly visits

Conversion rate

Average ticket App sales

1 Amazon.com Inc. $16,800,000,0001 $8,000,000,0001 110.00% 245,098,0391 7.00%1 $821 35%1

2 Apple Inc. $14,000,000,0001 $10,000,000,0001 40.00% 324,074,0741 12.00%1 $301 80%1

3 Jingdong Mall $5,800,000,0001 $2,900,000,0001 100.00% 165,000,0001 2.60%1 $1101 25%1

4 Google Play $4,400,000,0001 $2,000,000,0001 120.00% 333,333,3331 11.00%1 $101 80%1

5 QVC $1,860,000,0001 $1,200,000,000 55.00% 31,000,0001 4.00%1 $1251 40%1

6 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. $1,430,000,0001 $760,000,0001 88.16% 59,480,9311 2.09%1 $961 35%1

7 Otto Group $1,350,000,0001 $675,000,0001 100.00% 36,174,5641 1.94%1 $1601 35%1

8 Suning Appliance Co. $1,350,000,0001 $670,000,0001 101.49% 44,079,9561 2.53%1 $1011 30%1

9 Sears Holdings Corp. $900,000,0001 $450,000,0001 100.00% 36,168,9811 1.80%1 $1151 35%1

10 Xiaomi.com $900,000,0001 NA NA 13,888,8891 3.00%1 $1801 20%1

11 Groupon Goods $843,642,0001 $496,260,0001 70.00% 36,053,0771 3.00%1 $651 70%1

12 Staples Inc. $800,000,0001 $425,000,0001 88.24% 13,932,4281 2.90%1 $1651 40%1

13 Macy's Inc. $790,000,0001 $450,000,0001 75.56% 19,949,4951 2.20%1 $1501 35%1

14 VIPShop Holdings $684,600,0001 $374,900,0001 82.61% 50,191,7931 1.60%1 $711 40%1

15 Vente-Privee.com $668,070,0001 $445,380,0001 50.00% 23,196,8751 2.00%1 $1201 35%1

16 Office Depot Inc. $650,000,0001 $400,000,0001 62.50% 7,164,9031 4.20%1 $1801 40%1

17 Shop Direct $617,600,0001 $386,000,0001 60.00% 32,349,2461 1.53%1 $1041 25%1

18 HSN Inc. $548,000,0001 $402,000,000 36.32% 10,911,9871 3.10%1 $1351 45%1

19 Jumei.com $518,000,0001 NA NA 33,723,9581 1.60%1 $801 25%1

20 The Home Depot Inc. $517,203,7501 $330,000,0001 56.73% 23,754,5811 1.40%1 $1301 35%1

21 Tesco Stores $510,000,0001 $330,000,0001 54.55% 11,805,5561 2.25%1 $1601 35%1

22 Zalando SE $504,000,0001 $250,000,0001 101.60% 40,000,0001 1.40%1 $751 30%1

23 Best Buy Co. Inc. $500,000,0001 $260,000,0001 92.31% 24,437,9281 1.55%1 $1101 35%1

24 Ocado $450,000,0001 $344,988,0001 30.44% 5,772,3751 4.60%1 $1411 65%1

25 Yi Xun E-Commerce $450,000,0001 $220,000,0001 104.55% 16,693,3761 1.30%1 $1731 90%1

26 B2W Inc. $448,000,0001 $225,000,0001 99.11% 17,086,1941 1.90%1 $1151 35%1

27 Gome Electrical Appliances Co. $446,000,0001 $247,000,0001 80.57% 32,533,8471 1.70%1 $671 35%1

28 Yihaodian $437,000,0001 NA NA 40,462,9631 1.50%1 $601 25%1

29 John Lewis Plc $420,000,0001 $270,000,0001 55.56% 8,838,3841 2.20%1 $1801 35%1

30 Overstock.com Inc. $387,180,0001 $286,880,0001 34.96% 11,950,0001 2.00%1 $1351 40%1

31 Nova Pontocom $387,000,0001 $200,000,0001 93.50% 15,098,0391 1.70%1 $1251 40%1

32 Dixons Stores Group $385,000,0001 $195,000,0001 97.44% 16,041,6671 0.80%1 $2501 0%1

33 Costco Wholesale Corp. $369,500,000. $215,000,000 71.86% 8,224,2701 1.20% $312 8%

34 Asda $360,000,0001 $220,000,0001 63.64% 11,718,7501 3.20%1 $801 35%1

35 Gap Inc. $360,000,0001 $200,000,0001 80.00% 9,600,0001 2.50%1 $1251 40%1

36 J Sainsburys Plc $353,000,0001 $177,000,0001 99.44% 3,095,9621 7.67%1 $1241 40%1

37 Target Corp. $350,000,0001 $175,000,0001 100.00% 34,000,0001 1.33%1 $651 35%1

38 Williams-Sonoma Inc. $350,000,0001 $200,000,0001 75.00% 8,101,8521 1.80%1 $2001 15%1

39 Dangdang $345,000,0001 $185,000,0001 86.49% 20,175,4391 1.90%1 $751 40%1

40 Next Plc $334,000,0001 $204,300,0001 63.49% 6,040,2201 3.00%1 $1541 30%1

41 MaiMaiBao $327,000,000 $163,000,000 100.61% 48,660,7141 1.60%1 $35 10%1

42 Argos.co.uk $325,000,0001 $190,000,0001 71.05% 12,538,5801 1.80%1 $1201 35%1

43 Newegg Inc. $325,000,0001 $180,000,0001 80.56% 6,016,9141 2.05%1 $2201 40%1

44 BarnesandNoble.com Inc. $300,000,0001 $200,000,0001 50.00% 16,970,7831 2.56%1 $581 40%1

45 Peapod LLC $300,000,0001 $160,000,0001 87.50% 2,425,0001 7.26%1 $1421 70%1

46 Kohl's Corp. $295,000,0001 $175,000,0001 68.57% 19,314,7421 1.66%1 $771 35%1

47 Fanatics Inc. $290,000,0001 $180,000,0001 61.11% 15,692,6411 2.20%1 $701 10%1

48 Nordstrom Inc. $290,000,0001 $160,000,0001 81.25% 5,594,1361 1.80%1 $2401 35%1

49 Groupe Auchan $288,000,0001 $170,000,0001 69.41% 18,140,6881 1.90%1 $701 25%1

50 Vancl.com $288,000,0001 $160,000,0001 80.00% 17,361,1111 1.60%1 $861 30%1

Total $66,600,795,750 $36,507,708,000 82.4% 2,043,919,241 2.83%2 $1212 36.86%2


1. 2014 mobile sales are Internet Retailer projections; 2013 mobile sales and 2014 mobile monthly visits, conversion, average ticket and app sales are Internet Retailer estimates 2. Average

Internet Retailer • 2015 Mobile 500 • Key Data

18

The fastest growing mobile commerce retailers

1. 2014 mobile sales are Internet Retailer projections; 2013 mobile sales and 2014 mobile monthly visits, conversion, average ticket and app sales are Internet Retailer estimates

Retailer Mobile 500 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales Growth

1 JustFab.com 135 $68,000,000 1 $15,840,000 1 329.29%

2 Diamond Candles 220 $25,348,000 $6,300,000 302.35%

3 Maxwells Attic 459 $550,000 1 $185,000 197.30%

4 One Kings Lane 71 $190,000,000 1 $65,052,000 1 192.07%

5 Wayfair LLC 59 $228,250,000 1 $90,000,000 1 153.61%

6 Wolverine World Wide Inc. 283 $11,040,000 1 $4,400,000 1 150.91%

7 Light in the Box Ltd. 134 $69,000,000 1 $30,000,000 1 130.00%

8 Etsy Inc. 51 $280,000,000 1 $125,000,000 1 124.00%

9 Lenovo 121 $76,000,000 1 $34,000,000 1 123.53%

10 Ziamond Inc. 434 $1,400,000 1 $628,949 1 122.59%

11 Google Play 4 $4,400,000,000 1 $2,000,000,000 1 120.00%

12 The Men's Wearhouse Inc. 291 $10,200,000 1 $4,750,000 1 114.74%

13 B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio 243 $18,000,000 1 $8,445,149 1 113.14%

14 FTD Group Inc. 167 $51,000,000 1 $24,000,000 1 112.50%

15 The Vitamin Shoppe 233 $21,250,000 1 $10,000,000 1 112.50%

16 PetMed Express Inc. 218 $26,250,000 1 $12,395,138 1 111.78%

17 Hayneedle Inc. 126 $74,000,000 1 $35,000,000 1 111.43%

18 Shop.com 254 $15,600,000 $7,380,000 111.38%

19 Coach Inc. 136 $67,500,000 1 $32,000,000 1 110.94%

20 eMAG 229 $22,500,000 1 $10,685,206 1 110.57%

21 SkyMall Inc. 246 $17,220,000 1 $8,190,000 1 110.26%

22 Netshoes 186 $40,423,000 $19,248,867 110.00%

23 Amazon.com Inc. 1 $16,800,000,000 1 $8,000,000,000 1 110.00%

24 Signet Jewelers Ltd. 253 $15,750,000 1 $7,500,000 1 110.00%

25 Woodcraft Supply LLC 448 $1,026,000 1 $488,571 1 110.00%

26 Home Box Office Inc. 422 $1,715,000 1 $820,000 1 109.15%

27 Guess Inc. 325 $6,000,000 1 $2,900,000 1 106.90%

28 Shoes.com Inc. 249 $16,440,000 1 $8,000,000 1 105.50%

29 Yi Xun E-Commerce 25 $450,000,000 1 $220,000,000 1 104.55%

30 HappiGo Ltd. 115 $81,650,000 1 $40,000,000 1 104.13%

31 FeelUnique.com 286 $11,000,000 1 $5,400,000 1 103.70%

32 Zalando SE 22 $504,000,000 1 $250,000,000 1 101.60%

33 Urban Outfitters Inc. 87 $131,000,000 1 $65,000,000 1 101.54%

34 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. 8 $1,350,000,000 1 $670,000,000 1 101.49%

35 MaiMaiBao 41 $327,000,000 $163,000,000 100.61%

36 Jingdong Mall 3 $5,800,000,000 1 $2,900,000,000 1 100.00%

37 Otto Group 7 $1,350,000,000 1 $675,000,000 1 100.00%

38 Sears Holdings Corp. 9 $900,000,000 1 $450,000,000 1 100.00%

39 Target Corp. 37 $350,000,000 1 $175,000,000 1 100.00%

40 HepsiBurada.com 103 $100,000,000 1 $50,000,000 1 100.00%

41 Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. 110 $86,000,000 1 $43,000,000 1 100.00%

42 Baur Versand 131 $70,000,000 1 $35,000,000 1 100.00%

43 Magazine Luiza SA 155 $56,000,000 1 $28,000,000 1 100.00%

44 CafePress.com 196 $34,000,000 1 $17,000,000 1 100.00%

45 Distrelec 284 $11,000,000 1 $5,500,000 1 100.00%

46 Lilly Pulitzer 406 $2,400,000 1 $1,200,000 1 100.00%

47 Total Hockey Inc. 425 $1,600,000 1 $800,000 1 100.00%

48 La-Z-Boy Inc. 464 $500,000 1 $250,000 1 100.00%

49 J Sainsburys Plc 36 $353,000,000 1 $177,000,000 1 99.44%

50 Petco Animal Supplies Inc. 270 $12,960,000 1 $6,500,000 1 99.38%

Total $34,536,572,000 $16,540,858,881 108.8%


Key Data • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

19

Retailer Mobile 500 rank 2014 mobile sales 2013 mobile sales Growth

1 Amazon.com Inc. 1 $16,800,000,000 1 $8,000,000,000 1 $8,800,000,000

2 Apple Inc. 2 $14,000,000,000 1 $10,000,000,000 1 $4,000,000,000

3 Jingdong Mall 3 $5,800,000,000 1 $2,900,000,000 1 $2,900,000,000

4 Google Play 4 $4,400,000,000 1 $2,000,000,000 1 $2,400,000,000

5 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. 8 $1,350,000,000 1 $670,000,000 1 $680,000,000

6 Otto Group 7 $1,350,000,000 1 $675,000,000 1 $675,000,000

7 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. 6 $1,430,000,000 1 $760,000,000 1 $670,000,000

8 QVC 5 $1,860,000,000 1 $1,200,000,000 $660,000,000

9 Sears Holdings Corp. 9 $900,000,000 1 $450,000,000 1 $450,000,000

10 Staples Inc. 12 $800,000,000 1 $425,000,000 1 $375,000,000

11 Groupon Goods 11 $843,642,000 1 $496,260,000 1 $347,382,000

12 Macy's Inc. 13 $790,000,000 1 $450,000,000 1 $340,000,000

13 VIPShop Holdings Ltd. 14 $684,600,000 1 $374,900,000 1 $309,700,000

14 Zalando SE 22 $504,000,000 1 $250,000,000 1 $254,000,000

15 Office Depot Inc. 16 $650,000,000 1 $400,000,000 1 $250,000,000

16 Best Buy Co. Inc. 23 $500,000,000 1 $260,000,000 1 $240,000,000

17 Shop Direct Ltd. 17 $617,600,000 1 $386,000,000 1 $231,600,000

18 Yi Xun E-Commerce 25 $450,000,000 1 $220,000,000 1 $230,000,000

19 B2W Inc. 26 $448,000,000 1 $225,000,000 1 $223,000,000

20 Vente-Privee.com 15 $668,070,000 1 $445,380,000 1 $222,690,000

21 Gome Electrical Appliances Co. Ltd. 27 $446,000,000 1 $247,000,000 1 $199,000,000

22 Dixons Stores Group 32 $385,000,000 1 $195,000,000 1 $190,000,000

23 The Home Depot Inc. 20 $517,203,750 1 $330,000,000 1 $187,203,750

24 Nova Pontocom 31 $387,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 $187,000,000

25 Tesco Stores 21 $510,000,000 1 $330,000,000 1 $180,000,000

26 J Sainsburys Plc 36 $353,000,000 1 $177,000,000 1 $176,000,000

27 Target Corp. 37 $350,000,000 1 $175,000,000 1 $175,000,000

28 MaiMaiBao 41 $327,000,000 $163,000,000 $164,000,000

29 Gap Inc. 35 $360,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 $160,000,000

30 Dangdang 39 $345,000,000 1 $185,000,000 1 $160,000,000

31 Etsy Inc. 51 $280,000,000 1 $125,000,000 1 $155,000,000

32 Costco Wholesale Corp. 33 $369,500,000 $215,000,000 $154,500,000

33 John Lewis Plc 29 $420,000,000 1 $270,000,000 1 $150,000,000

34 Williams-Sonoma Inc. 38 $350,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 $150,000,000

35 HSN Inc. 18 $548,000,000 1 $402,000,000 $146,000,000

36 Newegg Inc. 43 $325,000,000 1 $180,000,000 1 $145,000,000

37 Asda 34 $360,000,000 1 $220,000,000 1 $140,000,000

38 Peapod LLC 45 $300,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 $140,000,000

39 Wayfair LLC 59 $228,250,000 1 $90,000,000 1 $138,250,000

40 Argos.co.uk 42 $325,000,000 1 $190,000,000 1 $135,000,000

41 Nordstrom Inc. 48 $290,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 $130,000,000

42 Next Plc 40 $334,000,000 1 $204,300,000 1 $129,700,000

43 Vancl.com 50 $288,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 $128,000,000

44 One Kings Lane 71 $190,000,000 1 $65,052,000 1 $124,948,000

45 Kohl's Corp. 46 $295,000,000 1 $175,000,000 1 $120,000,000

46 Groupe Auchan 49 $288,000,000 1 $170,000,000 1 $118,000,000

47 Lowe's Cos. Inc. 53 $251,000,000 1 $135,000,000 1 $116,000,000

48 Fanatics Inc. 47 $290,000,000 1 $180,000,000 1 $110,000,000

49 L Brands 52 $260,000,000 1 $150,000,000 1 $110,000,000

50 Ocado Ltd. 24 $450,000,000 1 $344,988,000 1 $105,012,000

Total $65,267,865,750 $36,585,880,000 $28,681,985,750


M-commerce retailers with the biggest growth in dollars



20

Retailers with the most sales from mobile apps

1. 2014 mobile sales are Internet Retailer projections; 2013 mobile sales and 2014 monthly unique visitors, conversion, average ticket and app sales are Internet Retailer estimates 2. Average

RetailerMobile 500

rank2014 percent of sales from apps

2014 app sales

iPhone app

iPad app

Universal iOS

Android smartphone

Android tablet

Universal Android

1 Yi Xun E-Commerce 25 90% 1 $405,000,000 1 l l l l

2 JackThreads.com 175 89% $40,940,000 l l l

3 1 Sale A Day LLC 162 85% 1 $44,412,500 1 l l l

4 Apple Inc. 2 80% 1 $11,200,000,000 1 l

5 Google Play 4 80% 1 $3,520,000,000 1 l

6 Hallmark Cards Inc. 287 75% 1 $8,250,000 1 l l l

7 Groupon Goods 11 70% 1 $590,549,400 1 l l

8 Peapod LLC 45 70% 1 $210,000,000 1 l l l

9 FreshDirect LLC 76 70% 1 $115,500,000 1 l l

10 RueLaLa.com 55 70% 1 $175,000,000 1 l l l

11 GameStop 72 70% 1 $121,716,000 1 l l l

12 Ocado Ltd. 24 65% 1 $292,500,000 1 l l

13 Gilt 54 60% 1 $150,000,000 1 l l l

14 Inditex Group 142 55% 1 $35,475,000 1 l l

15 American Eagle Outfitters Inc. 74 50% 1 $84,500,000 1 l l l

16 HSN Inc. 18 45% 1 $246,600,000 1 l l l l

17 ShopHQ.com 94 45% 1 $51,750,000 1 l l l l

18 SkyMall Inc. 246 45% 1 $7,749,000 1 l l l

19 QVC 5 40% 1 $744,000,000 1 l l l

20 Staples Inc. 12 40% 1 $320,000,000 1 l l

21 VIPShop Holdings Ltd. 14 40% 1 $273,840,000 1 l l

22 Office Depot Inc. 16 40% 1 $260,000,000 1 l l l

23 Nova Pontocom 31 40% 1 $154,000,000 1 l l

24 J Sainsburys Plc 36 40% 1 $141,200,000 1 l l

25 Gap Inc. 35 40% 1 $144,000,000 1 l l

26 Dangdang 39 40% 1 $138,000,000 1 l l

27 Etsy Inc. 51 40% 1 $112,000,000 1 l l l l

28 Newegg Inc. 43 40% 1 $130,000,000 1 l l l l

29 One Kings Lane 71 40% 1 $67,600,000 1 l

30 Overstock.com Inc. 30 40% 1 $154,872,000 1 l l l l

31 BarnesandNoble.com Inc. 44 40% 1 $120,000,000 1 l l l l

32 YOOX Group 61 40% 1 $90,000,000 1 l l l

33 Showroomprive.com 70 40% 1 $77,600,000 1 l l

34 Privalia.com 57 40% 1 $96,000,000 1 l l

35 Toys R Us Inc. 62 40% 1 $86,000,000 1 l l l

36 Urban Outfitters Inc. 87 40% 1 $52,400,000 1 l l l

37 JustFab.com 135 40% 1 $27,200,000 1 l l

38 Abercrombie & Fitch Co. 56 40% 1 $96,000,000 1 l l

39 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. 116 40% 1 $32,400,000 1 l l

40 REI 147 40% 1 $24,400,000 1 l l l

41 The Net-a-Porter Group LLC 145 40% 1 $25,000,000 1 l l l

42 Disney Store USA LLC 138 40% 1 $26,400,000 1 l l

43 W.W. Grainger Inc. 150 40% $23,380,000 1 l l

44 Fab.com 157 40% 1 $22,000,000 1 l l l l

45 Spartoo 153 40% 1 $22,800,000 1 l l

46 LivingSocial Inc. 143 40% 1 $25,600,000 1 l l l l

47 General Nutrition Centers Inc. 158 40% 1 $22,000,000 1 l l

48 JD Sports Fashion Plc 282 40% 1 $4,416,000 1 l l l l

49 BrandAlley 277 40% 1 $4,900,000 1 l l

50 Carfax Inc. 305 40% 1 $3,150,000 1 l l

Total 49.88% 2 $20,821,099,900 44 25 5 43 12 4



22

Top 5 mobile retailers by merchandising category


RetailerMobile 500

rank2014 mobile

sales2013 mobile

sales GrowthShare of

category sales

Apparel/Accessories

Otto Group 7 $1,350,000,000 1 $675,000,000 1 100.00% 12.88%

VIPShop Holdings Ltd. 14 $684,600,000 1 $374,900,000 1 82.61% 6.53%

Vente-Privee.com 15 $668,070,000 1 $445,380,000 1 50.00% 6.37%

Zalando SE 22 $504,000,000 1 $250,000,000 1 101.60% 4.81%

Gap Inc. 35 $360,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 80.00% 3.43%

Automotive Parts/Accessories

AutoZone Inc. 166 $51,000,000 1 $28,500,000 1 78.95% 36.01%

Allopneus.com 214 $27,500,000 1 $15,500,000 1 77.42% 19.42%

Halfords Plc 219 $25,500,000 1 $14,000,000 1 82.14% 18.00%

O'Reilly Auto Parts 256 $15,000,000 1 $10,243,684 1 46.43% 10.59%

Carfax Inc. 305 $7,875,000 1 $4,375,000 1 80.00% 5.56%

Books/Music/Video

Google Play 4 $4,400,000,000 1 $2,000,000,000 1 120.00% 81.24%

BarnesandNoble.com Inc. 44 $300,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 50.00% 5.54%

Weltbild Publishing Group 91 $118,000,000 1 $75,000,000 1 57.33% 2.18%

Bol.com BV 93 $115,500,000 1 $75,000,000 1 54.00% 2.13%

CDON 95 $113,000,000 1 $70,400,000 1 60.51% 2.09%

Computers /Electronics

Apple Inc. 2 $14,000,000,000 1 $10,000,000,000 1 40.00% 76.72%

Xiaomi.com 10 $900,000,000 1 NA NA 4.93%

Best Buy Co. Inc. 23 $500,000,000 1 $260,000,000 1 92.31% 2.74%

Dixons Stores Group 32 $385,000,000 1 $195,000,000 1 97.44% 2.11%

Newegg Inc. 43 $325,000,000 1 $180,000,000 1 80.56% 1.78%

Flowers/Gifts

1-800-Flowers.com Inc. 116 $81,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 80.00% 37.43%

FTD Group Inc. 167 $51,000,000 1 $24,000,000 1 112.50% 23.56%

Diamond Candles 220 $25,348,000 $6,300,000 302.35% 11.71%

Interflora Ltd. 257 $14,720,000 1 $8,100,000 1 81.73% 6.80%

Hallmark Cards Inc. 287 $11,000,000 1 $6,000,000 1 83.33% 5.08%

Food/Drug

Ocado Ltd. 24 $450,000,000 1 $344,988,000 1 30.44% 24.59%

Asda 34 $360,000,000 1 $220,000,000 1 63.64% 19.67%

Peapod LLC 45 $300,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 87.50% 16.39%

Walgreen Co. 67 $200,000,000 1 $105,700,000 1 89.21% 10.93%

FreshDirect LLC 76 $165,000,000 1 $90,000,000 1 83.33% 9.02%

Hardware/Home Improvement

The Home Depot Inc. 20 $517,203,750 1 $330,000,000 1 56.73% 44.12%

Lowe's Cos. Inc. 53 $251,000,000 1 $135,000,000 1 85.93% 21.41%

Build.com Inc. 118 $80,000,000 1 $54,840,240 1 45.88% 6.82%

Kingfisher Plc 124 $74,250,000 1 $50,000,000 1 48.50% 6.33%

MSC Industrial Supply Co. Inc. 130 $72,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 60.00% 6.14%



RetailerMobile 500

rank2014 mobile

sales2013 mobile

sales GrowthShare of

category sales

Health/Beauty

Jumei.com 19 $518,000,000 1 NA NA 42.61%

Amway 83 $150,000,000 1 $85,000,000 1 76.47% 12.34%

1-800 Contacts 88 $128,331,000 $87,300,000 47.00% 10.56%

Estee Lauder Cos. Inc. 125 $74,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 64.44% 6.09%

Vitacost.com Inc. 149 $59,974,000 1 $38,200,000 57.00% 4.93%

Housewares/Home Furnishings

Williams-Sonoma Inc. 38 $350,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 75.00% 21.67%

Argos.co.uk 42 $325,000,000 1 $190,000,000 1 71.05% 20.13%

Wayfair LLC 59 $228,250,000 1 $90,000,000 1 153.61% 14.13%

One Kings Lane 71 $190,000,000 1 $65,052,000 1 192.07% 11.77%

Crate & Barrel 75 $165,000,000 1 $100,000,000 65.00% 10.22%

Jewelry

Jewelry Television 179 $44,000,000 $24,500,000 79.59% 22.21%

Blue Nile Inc. 183 $42,000,000 1 $22,000,000 1 90.91% 21.20%

Tiffany & Co. 208 $30,000,000 1 $17,600,000 1 70.45% 15.15%

Jomashop.com 245 $17,500,000 1 $10,000,000 1 75.00% 8.84%

Fossil Inc. 247 $17,000,000 1 $10,250,000 1 65.85% 8.58%

Mass Merchant

Amazon.com Inc. 1 $16,800,000,000 1 $8,000,000,000 1 110.00% 41.77%

Jingdong Mall 3 $5,800,000,000 1 $2,900,000,000 1 100.00% 14.42%

QVC 5 $1,860,000,000 1 $1,200,000,000 55.00% 4.62%

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. 6 $1,430,000,000 1 $760,000,000 1 88.16% 3.56%

Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. 8 $1,350,000,000 1 $670,000,000 1 101.49% 3.36%

Office Supplies

Staples Inc. 12 $800,000,000 1 $425,000,000 1 88.24% 54.18%

Office Depot Inc. 16 $650,000,000 1 $400,000,000 1 62.50% 44.02%

Shoplet 281 $11,742,501 1 $8,439,608 1 39.14% 0.80%

National Business Furniture 316 $6,840,000 1 $4,404,960 1 55.28% 0.46%

Paper Source 395 $2,700,000 1 $1,800,000 1 50.00% 0.18%

Specialty

Zooplus 107 $90,000,000 1 $55,000,000 1 63.64% 21.19%

Shutterfly Inc. 117 $81,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 80.00% 19.07%

Disney Store USA LLC 138 $66,000,000 1 $40,000,000 1 65.00% 15.54%

Oriental Trading Co. Inc. 160 $54,000,000 1 $32,000,000 1 68.75% 12.71%

Musician's Friend Inc. 195 $34,125,000 1 $17,500,000 95.00% 8.04%

Sporting Goods

Sports Direct International Plc 89 $127,000,000 1 $75,000,000 1 69.33% 21.56%

Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. 110 $86,000,000 1 $43,000,000 1 100.00% 14.60%

Cabela's Inc. 112 $85,500,000 1 $48,000,000 1 78.13% 14.52%

REI 147 $61,000,000 1 $32,000,000 1 90.63% 10.36%

Wiggle Ltd. 164 $52,000,000 1 $30,000,000 1 73.33% 8.83%

Toys/Hobbies

Toys ‘R’ Us Inc. 62 $215,000,000 1 $140,000,000 1 53.57% 40.37%

GameStop 72 $173,880,000 1 $108,000,000 1 61.00% 32.65%

Oxybul Eveil et Jeux 106 $95,000,000 1 $55,000,000 1 72.73% 17.84%

American Girl LLC 202 $31,500,000 1 $19,500,000 1 61.54% 5.91%

The Discovery Channel Store Inc. 307 $7,680,000 1 $5,353,091 1 43.47% 1.44%



24

Top 25 mobile commerce retailers ranked by merchant type



Retail chain

Retailer

Mobile 500 rank

2014 mobile

sales

2013 mobile

sales Growth

1 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. 6 $1,430,000,000 1 $760,000,000 1 88.16%

2 Suning Appliance Co. Ltd. 8 $1,350,000,000 1 $670,000,000 1 101.49%

3 Sears Holdings Corp. 9 $900,000,000 1 $450,000,000 1 100.00%

4 Staples Inc. 12 $800,000,000 1 $425,000,000 1 88.24%

5 Macy's Inc. 13 $790,000,000 1 $450,000,000 1 75.56%

6 Office Depot Inc. 16 $650,000,000 1 $400,000,000 1 62.50%

7 The Home Depot Inc. 20 $517,203,750 1 $330,000,000 1 56.73%

8 Tesco Stores 21 $510,000,000 1 $330,000,000 1 54.55%

9 Best Buy Co. Inc. 23 $500,000,000 1 $260,000,000 1 92.31%

10 Gome Electrical Appliances Co. 27 $446,000,000 1 $247,000,000 1 80.57%

11 John Lewis Plc 29 $420,000,000 1 $270,000,000 1 55.56%

12 Dixons Stores Group 32 $385,000,000 1 $195,000,000 1 97.44%

13 Costco Wholesale Corp. 33 $369,500,000 $215,000,000 71.86%

14 Asda 34 $360,000,000 1 $220,000,000 1 63.64%

15 Gap Inc. 35 $360,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 80.00%

16 J Sainsburys Plc 36 $353,000,000 1 $177,000,000 1 99.44%

17 Target Corp. 37 $350,000,000 1 $175,000,000 1 100.00%

18 Williams-Sonoma Inc. 38 $350,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 75.00%

19 Next Plc 40 $334,000,000 1 $204,300,000 1 63.49%

20 Argos.co.uk 42 $325,000,000 1 $190,000,000 1 71.05%

21 BarnesandNoble.com Inc. 44 $300,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 50.00%

22 Kohl's Corp. 46 $295,000,000 1 $175,000,000 1 68.57%

23 Fanatics Inc. 47 $290,000,000 1 $180,000,000 1 61.11%

24 Nordstrom Inc. 48 $290,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 81.25%

25 Groupe Auchan 49 $288,000,000 1 $170,000,000 1 69.41%

2014 Top 25 retail chain mobile sales $12,962,703,750

2013 Top 25 retail chain mobile sales $7,253,300,000

Growth 78.71%

Web only

Retailer

Mobile 500 rank

2014 mobile

sales

2013 mobile

sales Growth

1 Amazon.com Inc. 1 $16,800,000,000 1 $8,000,000,000 1 110.00%

2 Jingdong Mall 3 $5,800,000,000 1 $2,900,000,000 1 100.00%

3 Google Play 4 $4,400,000,000 1 $2,000,000,000 1 120.00%

4 Xiaomi.com 10 $900,000,000 1 NA NA

5 Groupon Goods 11 $843,642,000 1 $496,260,000 1 70.00%

6 VIPShop Holdings Ltd. 14 $684,600,000 1 $374,900,000 1 82.61%

7 Vente-Privee.com 15 $668,070,000 1 $445,380,000 1 50.00%

8 Jumei.com 19 $518,000,000 1 NA NA

9 Zalando SE 22 $504,000,000 1 $250,000,000 1 101.60%

10 Ocado Ltd. 24 $450,000,000 1 $344,988,000 1 30.44%

11 Yi Xun E-Commerce 25 $450,000,000 1 $220,000,000 1 104.55%

12 B2W Inc. 26 $448,000,000 1 $225,000,000 1 99.11%

13 Yihaodian 28 $437,000,000 1 NA NA

14 Overstock.com Inc. 30 $387,180,000 1 $286,880,000 1 34.96%

15 Nova Pontocom 31 $387,000,000 1 $200,000,000 1 93.50%

16 Dangdang 39 $345,000,000 1 $185,000,000 1 86.49%

17 MaiMaiBao 41 $327,000,000 $163,000,000 100.61%

18 Newegg Inc. 43 $325,000,000 1 $180,000,000 1 80.56%

19 Peapod LLC 45 $300,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 87.50%

20 Vancl.com 50 $288,000,000 1 $160,000,000 1 80.00%

21 Etsy Inc. 51 $280,000,000 1 $125,000,000 1 124.00%

22 Gilt 54 $250,000,000 1 $210,000,000 1 19.05%

23 RueLaLa.com 55 $250,000,000 1 $176,000,000 1 42.05%

24 Privalia.com 57 $240,000,000 1 $150,000,000 1 60.00%

25 Wayfair LLC 59 $228,250,000 1 $90,000,000 1 153.61%

2014 Top 25 web only mobile sales $36,510,742,000

2013 Top 25 web only mobile sales $17,342,408,000

Growth 110.53%

Catalog/Call center

Retailer

Mobile 500 rank

2014 mobile

sales

2013 mobile

sales Growth

1 QVC 5 $1,860,000,000 1 $1,200,000,000 55.00%

2 Otto Group 7 $1,350,000,000 1 $675,000,000 1 100.00%

3 Shop Direct Ltd. 17 $617,600,000 1 $386,000,000 1 60.00%

4 HSN Inc. 18 $548,000,000 1 $402,000,000 36.32%

5 Bluestem Brands Inc. 63 $214,200,000 1 $126,000,000 1 70.00%

6 L.L. Bean Inc. 69 $195,000,000 1 $110,000,000 1 77.27%

7 Systemax Inc. 79 $164,000,000 1 $100,000,000 1 64.00%

8 N Brown Group Plc 80 $162,000,000 1 $98,640,000 1 64.23%

9 MediaShopping.it 86 $150,000,000 1 $85,000,000 1 76.47%

10 1-800 Contacts 88 $128,331,000 $87,300,000 47.00%

11 ShopHQ.com 94 $115,000,000 1 $71,800,000 1 60.17%

12 Cabela's Inc. 112 $85,500,000 1 $48,000,000 1 78.13%

13 HappiGo Ltd. 115 $81,650,000 1 $40,000,000 1 104.13%

14 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. 116 $81,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 80.00%

15 Green Mountain Coffee Roasters 120 $76,000,000 1 $50,300,000 1 51.09%

16 MSC Industrial Supply Co. Inc. 130 $72,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 60.00%

17 Baur Versand 131 $70,000,000 1 $35,000,000 1 100.00%

18 Scholastic Inc. 148 $61,000,000 1 $46,670,110 1 30.70%

19 Oriental Trading Co. Inc. 160 $54,000,000 1 $32,000,000 1 68.75%

20 Jewelry Television 179 $44,000,000 $24,500,000 79.59%

21 TJX Cos. Inc. 180 $44,000,000 1 $24,000,000 1 83.33%

22 Harry and David Holdings Inc. 182 $43,000,000 1 $25,000,000 1 72.00%

23 Orchard Brands Corp. 185 $40,600,000 1 $24,417,335 1 66.28%

24 Musician's Friend Inc. 195 $34,125,000 1 $17,500,000 95.00%

25 Eddie Bauer LLC 200 $33,200,000 1 $18,000,000 1 84.44%

2014 Top 25 catalog/call center mobile sales $6,324,206,000

2013 Top 25 catalog/call center mobile sales $3,817,127,445

Growth 65.68%

Consumer brand manufacturer

Retailer

Mobile 500 rank

2014 mobile

sales

2013 mobile

sales Growth

1 Apple Inc. 2 $14,000,000,000 1 $10,000,000,000 1 40.00%

2 Dell Inc. 60 $227,000,000 1 $140,000,000 1 62.14%

3 Sony Electronics Inc. 66 $200,000,000 1 $110,000,000 1 81.82%

4 Nike Inc. 100 $102,000,000 1 $60,000,000 1 70.00%

5 Hewlett-Packard Co. 104 $100,000,000 1 $65,000,000 1 53.85%

6 Lenovo 121 $76,000,000 1 $34,000,000 1 123.53%

7 Tory Burch LLC 123 $75,000,000 $49,000,000 53.06%

8 Estee Lauder Cos. Inc. 125 $74,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 64.44%

9 Coach Inc. 136 $67,500,000 1 $32,000,000 1 110.94%

10 Ralph Lauren Media LLC 140 $66,000,000 1 $45,000,000 1 46.67%

11 PVH Corp. 144 $64,000,000 1 $40,000,000 1 60.00%

12 VF Corp. 146 $62,000,000 1 $33,000,000 1 87.88%

13 Nespresso.com 173 $46,800,000 1 $27,500,000 1 70.18%

14 Microsoft Corp. 177 $45,600,000 1 $24,729,600 1 84.39%

15 Under Armour Inc. 201 $33,000,000 1 $18,500,000 1 78.38%

16 NBTY Inc. 206 $30,500,000 1 $15,500,000 1 96.77%

17 Carter's Inc. 215 $27,500,000 1 $15,500,000 1 77.42%

18 Kate Spade 237 $19,000,000 1 $11,000,000 1 72.73%

19 Deckers Outdoor Corp. 240 $18,500,000 1 $9,500,000 1 94.74%

20 Fossil Inc. 247 $17,000,000 1 $10,250,000 1 65.85%

21 adidas America Inc. 255 $15,400,000 1 $8,000,000 1 92.50%

22 Vera Bradley Retail Stores LLC 272 $12,700,000 1 $6,500,000 1 95.38%

23 Wolverine World Wide Inc. 283 $11,040,000 1 $4,400,000 1 150.91%

24 e.l.f. Cosmetics 285 $11,000,000 1 $9,000,000 22.22%

25 Hallmark Cards Inc. 287 $11,000,000 1 $6,000,000 1 83.33%

2014 Top 25 consumer brand manufacturer mobile sales $15,412,540,000

2013 Top 25 consumer brand manufacturer mobile sales $10,819,379,600

Growth 42.45%


26

A t web-only men’s apparel merchant JackThreads.com, the retailer’s mobile apps have a single focus, and that’s making shopping faster

and easier for its core customers. JackThreads.com, No. 175 in the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500, has been enhancing apps since launching its first, for the iPhone, in 2011. But these days, JackThreads.com and a growing number of other Mobile 500 merchants are seeing their apps—used by consumers to search for products or in-store

coupons, comparison shop, manage account information, and make purchases—in a new light.

Four years ago when JackThreads.com first deployed a mobile app, the app’s primary purpose was to showcase certain types of apparel, promote daily deals and give core customers—urban young men in their late teens through early 30s—a shopping alternative to desktop e-commerce.

“Our first app really wasn’t that good because we didn’t know what we wanted it to do,” says JackThreads.com

director of product development Annie Trombatore. “We weren’t looking at app devel-opment through the eyes of our customers.”

Today, JackThreads.com focuses each new iteration of its smartphone and tablet apps on making shopping faster and easier. Rather than making wholesale changes once a year or every other year, JackThreads.com makes continual adjustments to its mobile apps. It offers univer-sal Apple iOS and universal Android apps; a universal app enables the same page templates and features to be used across multiple devices, thus a single app can offer two different experi-ences, one for smartphone and another for tablet. Recent app upgrades at JackThreads.com include easier product search, more robust product details and imagery, and a simpler checkout.

“What our shoppers want our app to do is eliminate as many barriers to shopping as possible,” Trombatore says. “The most success-ful aspects of our app design are utility and simplicity.”

JackThreads.com is clearly putting a heavy

Making the most of mobile apps

As consumers spend more time in apps, Mobile 500 merchants fashion more compelling apps that ease mobile shopping.

BY MARK BROHAN

The Mobile 500 merchants with the highest percentage of app sales

Mobile 500 rank Retailer

App sales percent of all m-commerce

2014 app sales

2014 mobile sales

25 Yi Xun E-Commerce 90% 1 $405,000,000 1 $450,000,000 1

175 JackThreads.com 89% $40,940,000 $46,000,000

162 1 Sale A Day LLC 85% 1 $44,412,500 1 $52,250,000 1

2 Apple Inc. 80% 1 $11,200,000,000 1 $14,000,000,000 1

4 Google Play 80% 1 $3,520,000,000 1 $4,400,000,000 1

Total/Average 80.3% $15,210,352,500 $18,948,250,000

The Mobile 500 merchants with the most app sales

Mobile 500 rank Retailer

2014 app sales

App sales percent of all m-commerce

2014 mobile sales

2 Apple Inc. $11,200,000,000 1 80% 1 $14,000,000,000 1

1 Amazon.com Inc. $5,880,000,000 1 30% 1 $16,800,000,000 1

4 Google Play $3,520,000,000 1 80% 1 $4,400,000,000 1

3 Jingdong Mall $1,450,000,000 1 15% 1 $5,800,000,000 1

5 QVC $744,000,000 1 30% 1 $1,860,000,000 1

Total/Average $22,794,000,000 53.2% $42,860,000,000

Source: Internet Retailer 2015 Mobile 500. 1. Internet Retailer estimate

Analysis • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

27

emphasis on developing and deploying mobile apps that get results—in 2014, mobile apps accounted for 89%, or $40.9 million, of the e-retailer’s mobile sales. And so are other Mobile 500 mer-chants. More mobile merchants are deploy-ing better and more focused apps that accomplish straightforward e-commerce business objectives including driving more mobile sales, achieving better customer retention, and giving consumers even greater flexibility to use their smartphones and tablets connected to the mobile web to shop how, when and where they want.

Merchants with a diversified and rich mobile app program also generate more sales. The sales of the 262 Mobile 500 retailers with at least one app grew their collective m-commerce sales 80.2% to $78.71 billion in 2014. That’s 15% faster than the 238 Mobile 500 merchants who only sell via the mobile web (including via m-commerce sites for smartphones, tablet sites and responsive design sites for multiple devices) that grew their combined annual mobile sales 70.1% to a combined $5.07 billion from $2.98 billion in 2013.

“Designing for the mobile user goes way beyond initial acquisition because in order to achieve true success with an e-commerce app, retailers need to keep asking them-selves, ‘How can I get the user to open my app every day?’” says Dan Healy, chief oper-ating officer of Prolific Interactive, a mobile commerce design and consulting firm. “The answer is focusing on user experience.”

At W.W. Grainger Inc. (No. 150), a Chicago-based business-to-business distributor of office and industrial supplies, mobile apps are big business. And that app business is growing and getting more sophisticated. Today, Grainger’s mobile apps account for about 40%—$23.4 million—of the company’s 2014 Internet Retailer-estimated mobile commerce sales of $58.5 million. But within two or three years, Grainger’s mobile app, first deployed in 2012, could account for up to 70% of all mobile sales, Grainger predicts. Grainger sells products ranging from paper notebooks to power tools and refrigeration

equipment that companies use for their own maintenance, repair and operations—a category often referred to as MRO.

Grainger is pushing more business toward mobile in general, and its app in particular, because it saves time for its clients’ personnel, who often place orders to replenish products while they’re on a job site away from desktop computers, says Geoffrey Robertson, vice president of product, innovation and business integration.

With the help of the mobile app, a mechanic or maintenance worker in the field can quickly find the exact MRO product he needs, such as the right type of

Grainger is pushing more business toward mobile in general, and its app in par-ticular, because it saves time for its clients’ personnel, who often place orders to replenish products while they’re on a job site away from desktop computers

Internet Retailer • 2015 Mobile 500 • Analysis

28

replacement light bulb. Many products in the app are pre-authorized for purchase, and, if necessary, the app enables personnel in the field to send more specific purchasing information to a manager with purchasing authority, before completing the transaction. Using Grainger’s order management system, customers can set up their own approval workflow that identifies who can approve an order request, and at what dollar amount. This can speed up the purchasing and autho-

rization process by as much as 40%, Robertson says.“Our Grainger consulting group performed studies with

our customers and found that the average procurement process is comprised of five people, six handoffs, 42 steps and three approvals,” Robertson says. “Our mobile capa-bilities, coupled with our order management workflow system, dramatically reduce this complexity and increase the speed of the approval process with 30% to 40% faster approval rates.”

At Grainger, the company continues to refine its app as a way to help personnel in the field and purchasing managers in the office make their overall workflow more efficient, Robertson says. In late 2013 Grainger rolled out

a new app for iPads. Grainger’s mobile app also comes in versions for the iPhone and smartphones running the Android operating system. The company also has a web site optimized for viewing on mobile phones.

The app, in both smartphone and tablet versions, displays four-by-four arrays of tiles with product images that a shopper can tap for more information. Using geo-location, the app can direct the customer to the nearest Grainger store with the product in stock. The app also

displays estimated shipping time if a customer wants to order it via mobile. Or, he can search by ZIP code to arrange for a future pickup or ship-ment to another location. Shoppers can also create and edit lists of commonly ordered products—perhaps spare parts for a particular facility—and share them with other members of their organization using the app.

Last fall, Grainger also updated its iPhone app with live chat technology designed to let a customer upload a photo of a product he needs to order, which helps the customer service rep locate the exact item and provide a web link to the product page on Grainger.com, where the customer can check avail-ability and place an order.

The live chat feature appears in the menu section of the app once a customer signs into a Grainger account. The live chat display and the customer service representative identify the user by first name once the user is signed in; Grainger says it is important to personalize the live chat process. Users can touch the icon to begin a live chat with a customer service representative, as well as attach one or more product photos taken with their iPhone. The app enables the customer to access her chat history, eliminating the need for the customer to take notes during the live chat.

“With apps we just keep working to speed up the pur-chasing and authorization process,” Robertson says. Since

While rising app sales are a big benefi t, the key reason overstockArt.com keeps refi ning its mobile app is to fi nd new ways to engage its best customers.

Analysis • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

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2012 about 500,000 MRO professionals have downloaded some version of a Grainger app, the company says.

More Mobile 500 merchants are getting serious about building and deploying better apps because 80% of time spent with mobile retail occurs in an app while 20% occurs on a web site, mobile and web mea-surement firm comScore Inc. finds. While the 80% may be skewed by time spent in the apps of larger players such as Amazon.com and eBay and popular comparison shopping and bar code scanning apps like RedLaser, the 80/20 split toward apps is a complete reversal of mobile behavior from as recently as two years ago, comScore says.

Today, 6%, or 15 of the 262 Mobile 500 merchants with at least one m-commerce app, derive more than 50% of all mobile sales from apps, compared with about 20%, or 51 retail-ers, that derive 40% or more of all m-commerce revenue from apps.

The apps of overstockArt.com (No. 441) generate 40%, or $480,000, of the e-retailer’s 2014 m-commerce sales of $1.2 million. But while rising app sales are a big benefit, the key reason overstockArt.com keeps refining its mobile app is to find new ways to engage its best customers. OverstockArt.com launched its mobile strategy more than three years ago, starting with the release of the first version of its overstockArt.com Oil Paintings app for iPhone in June 2011. But the latest version of the app for iPads lets shoppers use advanced features to virtually decorate their walls with art.

“We want to take full advantage of the screen size on the iPad to make users feel like they are in an actual

gallery,” says Amitai Sasson , overstockArt.com vice president of marketing. The latest app for iPads from overstockArt.com gives shoppers access to the company’s entire database of artwork, lets users sort art by topics such as artist, subject, style and size, and lets them display

selections on walls in their homes via augmented reality technology.

Sasson credits better app development as a key reason overstockArt.com grew its total m-commerce sales by 60% in 2014.

“With iPad traffic accounting for 46% of our mobile traffic coming to the site, we were driven to improve our customer’s experience and build an app that allows our audience to lean back and browse, decorate and shop with ease for our art,” Sasson says.

At JackThreads.com, deploying more sophisticated apps and con-stantly tweaking its apps features fits with the company’s overall emphasis on mobile commerce, says Trombatore. For customers shop-ping JackThreads.com on iPads, the conversion rate is three times higher and average ticket 40% greater than members using other mobile devices, the retailer says.

“We now do apps well because our mobile-minded customers tell us this is the way they want to shop,” she says. “Our customers want better apps and we will keep on giving them apps that make their shopping easier any-where and anytime they want to use their mobile device and shop.”

[email protected]

‘WHAT OUR SHOPPERS WANT OUR APP TO DO IS ELIMINATE AS MANY BARRIERS TO SHOPPING AS POSSIBLE. THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ASPECTS OF OUR APP DESIGN ARE UTILITY AND SIMPLICITY.’

ANNIE TROMBATORE, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, JACKTHREADS.COM

JackThreads.com focuses each new iteration of its smartphone and tablet apps on making shopping faster and easier.

Internet Retailer • 2015 Mobile 500 • Analysis

30

80.4%. That is the rate the 500 mobile retailers ranked in the 2015 Mobile 500 grew their mobile commerce sales in the past year.

Compare that with total e-commerce sales growth for the U.S. in 2013 of 16.9% according to the U.S. Department of Commerce and Europe where research group Ecommerce Europe estimates the online retail market grew by 20% last year. The mobile sales of the retailers ranked in the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 had total 2014 mobile sales of $83.90 billion compared with $46.50 billion in 2013.

Such mobile sales numbers illustrate huge potential for online retailers to capture more dollars from today’s consumer who is increasingly accessing the web and shopping from multiple devices. However, some retailers are dropping the ball, according to our analysis. We at Keynote are still seeing big discrepancies across mobile-

shopping sites’ performance including mobile site load time and availability. When it comes to performance not all mobile shopping sites are created equal.

Seconds count when it comes to who stays, who abandons and who comes back to a mobile site. If a mobile site takes more than a handful of seconds to load, most potential customers will move on, according to our research. If a mobile site isn’t easy to navigate, the customer will also leave, our analysis shows. A speedy, easy-to-navigate mobile site is essential for retailers looking to tap into the surging mobile sales growth. Some retailers are getting it right, we’ve found, while others still have work to do.

A recent Google survey finds 48% of consumers that access the mobile web are frustrated and annoyed with web sites not designed with mobile in mind. A new Keynote 2013 study revealed that mobile users expect mobile sites to download in four seconds or less. Yet a year later, half of the mobile commerce retail sites regu-larly tracked by Keynote take more than double that time to load. So while millions more dollars are being spent via the mobile channel, with people not only shopping but increasingly completing purchases from their mobile devices, those shoppers’ expectations for a fast, reliable and consistent experience often are not met.

Keynote once again undertook its annual, detailed analysis of the performance of Internet Retailer’s Mobile 500 to identify important trends amongst leading retail-ers. We found the top performers all implement design techniques to help make their sites fast and easy to navigate.

Optimizing for Mobile to Meet User Expectations

A major trend among the players with the best-performing mobile sites in terms of speed and navigation

The need for speedConsumers increasingly demand fast, easy-to-navigate mobile sites. The top retailers in the 2015 Mobile 500 are delivering just that, and

reaping the rewards of more mobile sales as a result.

BY ABELARDO GONZALEZ

The Fastest Mobile 500 sites

Rank RetailerLoad Time

(in seconds)

256 O’Reilly Auto Parts 1.50

438 Due Maternity 1.84

454 Beadaholique Inc. 1.96

327 pcRUSH.com 2.07

150 W.W. Grainger Inc. 2.11

9 Sears Holdings Corp. 2.27

283 Wolverine World Wide Inc. 2.46

393 eCommerce Outdoors 2.57

276 eCampus.com 2.69

465 Healthy Back Store 2.69Source: Keynote

Mobile 500: Expert Analysis • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

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is the use of light mobile sites with few objects and ele-ments per page—less than 20 elements per page for the top performing sites in terms of site speed. Fewer objects and elements leads to less “round trips” to download content from a server and typically produces better overall mobile performance. The top performers use opti-mization techniques to minimize the number of objects while still maintaining a compelling experience.

Let’s look at a few examples of retailers getting it right:

Sears Holdings Corp. (No. 9). The mobile home page for Sears.com is extremely light, with only two objects to download, including two other embedded images inside the base page. The total page size is less than 14 kilobytes and well below Keynote’s recommen-dation of 100 kilobytes.

American Girl (No. 203) delivers a lightweight site with only 11 objects. It also does not place third-party calls to the server that can impact performance. Third-party tags such as Google Analytics or a Facebook link are standard on many sites today, but need to be managed with care, especially on mobile sites, as they can quickly slow down performance. The site does have several small images that could be combined into what’s called an image sprite that combines multiple images into one file, speeding up the load time by eliminating calls to the server, but overall the site provides a great example of mobile optimization techniques.

W.W. Grainger (No. 150)is consistently one of the best performing sites in the Mobile 500, delivering an outstanding experience by hosting an extremely streamlined site that downloads less than 100 kilobytes of data and still provides a graphical experi-

ence for users. Grainger embeds images in a Data URI Scheme to quickly display the site with images before making additional network calls. Data URI is a scheme of encoding data within a web page that make up page elements such as images or Cascading Style Sheets, a mark-up language used to define pages and denote where elements appear on a page. With multiple ele-ments encoded within a page, no extra HTTP server request is needed to fetch the embedded elements as opposed to a request for each element.

Building and maintaining a quality mobile site akin to the ones above takes time, money and properly trained talent. Mobile design is different from desktop web design so programmers and designers need to be trained in mobile technology. Add to that the challenge of accounting for the growing number of mobile devices running on multiple operating systems, multiple carriers and network switching (from Wi-Fi to cellular

and back) and it’s clear that solid mobile performance and site design can be a challenge. Monitoring performance is also essential, especially with the wide variations in network quality. Some areas, for example, are covered by lightning-fast 4G and LTE networks, while others are still limping along on 3G and even 2G networks. A page that might load in five seconds or less on a wired network connec-tion might require 25 seconds or more over a 3G mobile network. It’s important that retailers employ testers and QA teams to monitor mobile sites.

As retailers increasingly understand the importance of a solid mobile site, many have turned to a web and mobile web design technique called responsive design. Responsive design aims to address many of the challenges

SEARS HOLDINGS CORP.’S HOME PAGE CONTAINS ONLY TWO OBJECTS AND WEIGHS LESS THAN 14 KILOBYTES. IT LOADS IN 1.53 SECONDS ON AVERAGE.

Sears Holdings Corp.’s home page contains only two objects and weighs less than 14 kilobytes. It loads in 1.53 seconds on average.

Internet Retailer • 2015 Mobile 500 • Mobile 500: Expert Analysis

32

described above, allowing a retailer to maintain a single site code for any device that auto detects a consumer’s device and alters site content on the fly to display the most appropriate version on the site depending on the device. Many retailers warm to the idea of not having to create separate sites for smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. But as Keynote’s analy-sis of performance data revealed, those retailers who have utilized responsive design have generally tended to trade performance for looks, and often the best look-ing site is not the most effective in driving mobile conversions. Performance matters.

Let’s look at a few examples: Brooks Brothers (No. 226).

The amount of JavaScript needed for the site to render properly is slowing page load times. Retailers using responsive design implemen-tation should pay attention to the number of elements that need to be downloaded for the site to load and the impact that has on perfor-mance. One way to mitigate this effect is to deploy a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to accelerate the experience. CDNs store web page content on servers located around the world, and thus can deliver content from servers geographi-cally close to the consumer, speed-ing up page load times. Brooks Brothers has deployed a CDN but the site is so hefty that load times still lag. Brooks Brothers didn’t pro-vide a response to what it thinks of this performance analysis.

Other sites that are suffer-ing from poor implementation of responsive design include:

Brookstone (No. 261).

Here, an excessive number of objects delay and block content for visitors . Additionally, the large amount of JavaScript (17 files) is also slowing page loads. Brookstone also includes a large number of third-party calls that further delay page load times. Brookstone didn’t provide a response to what it thinks of this performance analysis.

Lenovo (No. 121) suffers from slow performance due to the large amount of content and images (over 6 megabytes worth of images, and 11 JavaScript files) weighing down the site. The site attempts to download nearly 7 megabytes of data when a mobile user visits. Lenovo didn’t provide a response to what it thinks of this performance analysis.

Bonobos (No. 308) also loads slowly due to the large amount of content and third-party tags. Additionally, Bonobos attempts to send calls to the server for multiple site objects that, according to our analysis, do not exist, adding to the delay. Bonobos didn’t provide a response to what it thinks of this performance analysis.

With mobile sales soaring, retailers would be wise to dedicate resources to create and maintain fast, easy-to-navigate mobile com-merce sites. The techniques above can help retailers design such mobile sites. Retailers who employ these tips and follow the lead of the 2015 Mobile 500 top perform-ers will likely reap the benefits of happy mobile shoppers who will buy, and buy again.

Abelardo Gonzalez is director, product

management for monitoring, Keynote

W.W. Grainger keeps its home page light. Requir-ing less than 100 kilobytes to load the home page helps it achieve an average response time of 1.73 seconds.

American Girl delivers a lightweight site with only 11 objects. It loads in a speedy 2.45 seconds on average.


34

We now live in a world where more mobile phones are activated each day than there are babies born. And, overall, U.S. tablet penetra-

tion will rise from 46.2% of the population in 2014 to 52.1% in 2018, according to research firm eMarketer. Not surpris-ingly, our mobile obsession is fueling mobile commerce. U.S. m-commerce transactions reached $41 billion last year, up nearly 70% from the year before, according to eMarketer. The combined sales of all U.S. merchants ranked in the 2015 Mobile 500 will increase an estimated 74% in 2014 to almost $59 billion.

As more consumers purchase smartphones and tablets and keep their devices within reach all day, marketers have taken note. In the past few years they have flooded the landscape with mobile apps, hoping to stay connected with the growing mobile user base. As of July 2014, both Google Inc.’s Android mobile operating system and Apple Inc.’s iOS had more than 1.2 million apps each, available for download.

In Google’s app marketplace, Google Play, more than 23,000 apps are available to consumers in the shopping category, but only about 5% of these have more than 50,000 downloads. In this competitive landscape, how can retailers vie for consumer downloads and, more impor-tantly, engagement? Mobile use has become an ingrained habit in consumers’ daily lives, and consumers using their devices to shop today often turn to search. Mobile search still drives almost half of retail traffic, according to Nielsen and Google research. More than other types of app developers, retailers must place their mobile strategy bets to address both mobile web use and mobile apps. One way to do this is to invest in promoting an app via mobile paid search. Once downloaded, retailers should consider the customer payoff for using an app. For retailers, customer satisfaction and expectations in and around the shopping

journey are key.A recent IM Research study examined consumer satis-

faction with specific aspects of mobile shopping apps and identified features they value most:l Making it easy to find and apply valid coupons,

check prices, and find the best deals available and ease the checkout process.l Finding local availability of products and enabling

multichannel purchase functionality (for example, completing a purchase on a phone or tablet, then picking it up in a store).l Providing fresh content such as new products,

reviews, information and trends.Target Corp. and Crate & Barrel are two retailers fol-

lowing these steps above. For example, Target’s Cartwheel app offers in-store coupons and Crate & Barrel offers gift registry via an app.

Consumers use their smartphones and tablets in their day-to-day lives in very different ways. Therefore, as a retailer develops a mobile app, it’s important to under-stand how these devices can enable and enhance the shopping journey. Due to size, tablets are used primarily at home, school or work and less often while out and about. Smartphones, on the other hand, are only an arm’s length away from shoppers, so these devices are more convenient and are being used extensively to find, compare and pro-vide information like store hours and locations.

Session lengths tend to be longer on tablets versus smartphones. This is due partly to context. Tablet users are at situated in one spot for a while instead of on-the-go. Screen size also plays a role. With their larger screen sizes, tablets are ideal for more detailed exploration of content and products whereas smartphone usage tends to come more often, but with shorter durations. That means a tab-let might be more suited for rich imagery and multimedia

Don’t worry, be ‘appy’

How retailers can drive app downloads and keep consumers coming back.

BY RAMNEEK BHASIN


35

such as videos, look books and editorial content, while smartphone apps should be easy to navigate and quick to load.

To illustrate how retail brands use mobile apps differently, we looked at the iOS apps for Blue Nile Inc. and Tiffany & Co. Both apps focus on engagement rings but take very differ-ent approaches. The Blue Nile app is functional and contains all the necessary information to research, select and purchase a diamond engagement ring. Centering on BlueNile.com’s “Build Your Ring” func-tionality, this male-targeted app is a solid example of a commerce-focused app. Shoppers can select their specific diamond cut, setting and price to build a complete ring step-by-step and make a purchase right in the app.

Tiffany & Co.’s app is centered on exploration and browsing for such a consid-ered purchase. Targeting both men and women, the app balances functional information like product images and educational con-tent with brand experiences that inspire, like the “Try it on” feature that allows a user to share a picture of a Tiffany ring on her hand with friends and family. A user cannot purchase in-app, but they can make an appointment to speak with a Tiffany diamond expert.

The secret to finding, growing and maintaining a group of app users is to develop highly relevant,

sticky apps that give a reason for shoppers to come back. Understanding the needs of customers and how they use tablets and smart-phones differently is critical. To do this, a retailer should develop mobile app experi-ences that: Foster brand loyalty

through features, functionality and content. Are personalized right

from the start and can be easily tuned for users on an ongoing basis. For tablet apps,

provide rich browsing experiences large images, alternative views, videos and reviews, while leveraging touch interfaces. For mobile apps,

enable ease of sign-in and fast checkout.

App approaches will vary by retailers based on a range of factors such as business goals, techni-cal resources available to design, build and maintain mobile apps and capacity to invest in driving adoption and continued engagement. Regardless of whether a retailer is focused on sales, brand engagement, or both, apps should be easy to use and provide a reason for shoppers to not only keep them on their mobile devices but also to keep opening them.

Ramneek Bhasin is general

manager, mobile and vice president

product for TheFind Inc.

Targeting both men and women, the Tiffany app bal-ances functional information like product images and edu-cational content with brand experiences that inspire, like the ‘Try it on’ feature.

Centering on BlueNile.com’s ‘Build Your Ring’ functionality, this male-targeted app is a solid example of a commerce-focused app.


36

Internet retailers need to do a better job adjusting to the latest changes from Google if they want to maintain an effective—and robust—mobile search program.

Consider these findings from an analysis of data by Pure Oxygen Labs of the merchants ranked in Internet Retailer’s 2015 Mobile 500.l 38%, or 190 merchants, comply with some of

Google’s recommendations for effective mobile search engine optimization compared with only 6%, or 30 merchants, that are in very good or excellent compliance.l 56%, or 280 merchants, have mobile sites that fall

exceedingly short of new SEO standards and are at high risk of losing critical mobile search traffic and conversions.

More than 90% of mobile searches today are carried out on Google. Any change Google makes to its mobile search rules has a ripple effect across the Internet.

The most recent updates from Google have focused on how content is sorted, ranked and displayed for Google users on their smartphones. Google’s new recommenda-tions for optimal mobile search take into account factors like operating platforms such as Android versus Apple iOS, and if a particular destination page is dynamically generated content, a dedicated mobile site or responsive design.

The risks of not following Google’s suggested rules and recommendations for effective mobile SEO can be dire for retailers whose customers increasingly interact with them on smartphones. (Google lumps tablets in with desktop PCs for search purposes.) Falling out of mobile search results completely, dropping down in organic search rank or routing mobile consumers to error or irrelevant pages are a few examples of the challenges that many poorly optimized Mobile 500 merchants face.

But there are exceptions. Microsoft Corp. (No. 177), Under Armour Inc. (No. 201) and Amazon.com (No. 1) were among the best optimized mobile sites based on their adherence to requirements such as having a light page

weight and including signals that direct mobile users to appropriately formatted content.

Mobile sites that didn’t score as well, including JackThreads.com (No. 175), RueLaLa.com (No. 55), Camping World Inc. (No. 333) and Apple Inc. (No. 2) did so because of factors such as slow loads and heavy page weights or an improper mobile redirect. If history is any guide, the hall pass for these mobile missteps will soon expire. In order to address these mobile search concerns, there are a handful of best practices that retailers can implement.

With the majority of retailers relying on dedicated mobile sites to power their mobile web presence, it is important to make sure that desktop URLs that redirect smartphones are mapped to relevant mobile pages. Mobile merchants should be proactive about identifying and cor-recting irrelevant mobile redirects that may exist between desktop and mobile pages that ultimately route users to the mobile home page.

Google recently began penalizing organizations that redirect mobile users to error pages, as well as those that redirect all smartphone users to the mobile site home page regardless of the actual page the users were seeking.

Effective mobile SEO also requires canonical link markup in the desktop and mobile page HTML code. These easy-to-add meta tags help Google understand the relationship between a desktop page and its mobile version. Today only 9% of merchants with mobile sites take advantage of this feature and doing so helps search engines better find and display mobile page addresses. A benefit to adding these tags is that within a few days, mobile search results on Google will show an organiza-tion’s “m.” page addresses. The promise that comes with an “m.” web site address—less pinching and zooming on full desktop pages—may entice more searchers on smartphones to click a retailer’s listings over competing desktop addresses.

If a mobile site lacks this canonical markup, then avoid using JavaScript-based methods of redirecting smart-

Missing the mark on mobile search

Many Mobile 500 merchants need to better optimize for consumers searching on smartphones.

BY BRIAN KLAIS


37

phones. An analysis of Mobile 500 mobile search data shows that 21% of merchants use JavaScript to redirect smartphones. The issue here is that since Google’s mobile bot may not be able to execute or “see” where those scripts lead, it makes it harder to get mobile pages indexed and displayed for mobile searchers. Use server-side detection and redirect methods if possible.

If a merchant does use their server to redirect smart-phones to mobile pages, the retailer needs to make sure the server responds to these requests with the required Vary by User Agent header. This helps search engines avoid inadvertently associating a site with SEO mischief. Currently only 8% of Mobile 500 retailers with dedicated mobile sites include this header.

This same practice is even more important for sites that dynamically serve mobile-friendly content at their desktop URL. Without this important signal, these pages are also at risk of being inadvertently flagged for cloaking, or appear-ing to serve different content to bots than mobile users. Of all Mobile 500 merchants, just 19% of those using dynamic mobile content include this header.

Here are some other mobile SEO best practices: Strive to keep page weight to around 250

kilobytes. Google doesn’t have a specific page size requirement, but heavier pages do take longer to load. Merchants with mobile sites have an average page weight of 650 kilobytes while leaders like Target Corp. (No. 37), Walgreen Co. (No. 67) and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (No. 73) have home pages that all weigh in at under 250 kilobytes. Brands using responsive design, however, had an average home page weight of just over 2 megabytes. Minimize the file requests required to assemble a

page to 50 or fewer. That includes style sheets, images and JavaScript. While Google doesn’t have a specific requirement, this is a primary contributor to long page load times. The average retail mobile site makes on average 51 file requests to assemble the mobile home page, whereas the average responsive home page makes 120 file requests. Staples, Target and Walgreen’s are among a handful of brands that rendered their mobile home pages with less than 30 file requests. Properly configure content—including apps—to be

search-friendly in the eyes of Google. The SEO landscape is quickly evolving. There are a host of opportunities on the mobile horizon to prepare for, including driving app discovery, getting app content indexed by search engines, and “deep linking” customers from your mobile site into your commerce apps. Only 18% of Mobile 500 merchants with Apple iOS and Android apps have enabled their apps for deep linking across their mobile marketing channels.

The methodology used for this research was limited to each Mobile 500 merchant’s home page. It is advised that merchants analyze their high-traffic category and product pages to properly assess ranking risks before the 2014 holi-day season. A comprehensive mobile strategy is no longer a nice-to-have. Retailers must evaluate all aspects of their mobile presence and take immediate steps to comply with the one chief place where the vast majority of mobile traf-fic travels: Google.

Brian Klais is CEO of Pure Oxygen Labs LLC, a mobile marketing fi rm.

Under Armour is one of the best optimized mobile sites based on their adherence to requirements such as having a light page weight and including signals that direct mobile users to appropriately formatted content.


38

In August 2013, AeroLife was a brand in flux. AeroDesigns, a manufacturer and retailer of small tubes of powdered nutritional supplements meant to be

inhaled, launched the AeroLife brand in 2011 with Energy, a caffeine and Vitamin B supplement.

The company then quickly developed the product line to include Immunity, Sleep and Sport. At the same time, AeroDesigns was working to expand distribution channels and promote new ways that its delivery system for supple-ments could be applied by larger food, beverage and nutrition companies, says Eric Freedman, vice president of sales and marketing.

That was a large workload for a company with 20 employ-ees; it needed AeroLife.com to shoulder more of that load. “Our most significant welcome mat needed to match our rapid, agile pace of product development,” Freedman says.

AeroLife.com at the time was a stitched-together ver-sion of several development efforts. It had a two-column layout, lacked desired e-commerce capabilities—such as the ability to sign up for an ongoing e-mail subscription—and wasn’t optimized to render well on mobile devices.

AeroDesign decided the new web site needed to be about 50% educational and 50% transactional, Freedman says. Its products also are sold through drug and conve-nience stores and the company says 80% of its sales are direct to consumers online, and 20% to distributors.

The main objectives for the site were to build aware-ness, credibility and engagement; drive trial signups; familiarize consumers with the product and consumption method; and to encourage social sharing.

“We needed a site that could bring to life the spirit and vision of the AeroLife brand and demonstrate our products in a way that is intriguing, inviting, engaging and motivat-ing,” Freedman says.

TO REACH THOSE GOALS AeroDesigns hired Growth Spark, an e-commerce and m-commerce design firm, to redesign the site, and presented the designers with a concept inspired by the particle-based nutrition system. The idea: bubbles, or particles, of many colors containing

content float around the home page, directing visitors to various site elements.

Making sure the site rendered well on mobile devices was of paramount importance. At the time of the redesign, 28% of AeroLife.com’s visitors came from smartphones or tablets. To ensure AeroLife.com would serve mobile shop-pers well, the manufacturer wanted a site built on respon-sive design principles. Responsive design adapts the look of a web site to the device the consumer is using, all from one code base and one set of web content. A responsive site would allow AeroLife’s customer base of nomadic consumers to access the site no matter where they are and what device they’re using, Freedman says.

The target launch date for the new site was November 2013, just three months after beginning the development process. To drive the quick turnaround, AeroLife divvied up some responsibilities with Growth Spark. For example, AeroLife wrote all the web site copy and handled image development.

Freedman and Growth Spark founder Ross Beyeler declined to say what the redesign project cost, but Beyeler says a similar project done at an agency similar to Growth Spark on a similar timeline could cost between $50,000 and $100,000.

On desktops and tablets the redesigned site displays six categories of particles floating around the home page. On smartphones, the particles appear in single file so they are easy to see on a phone’s small screen. Each category is distinguished by a specific color: green represents educa-tional product information; orange, product benefits; teal, information about how the product works; light green, testimonials; and blue, press and social media mentions. The sixth category features all the AeroLife products. To encourage purchasing, “Try AeroLife for Free” and “Find a Store Near You” particles are present in all the categories.

“Growth Spark leveraged the particle concept to act as a content hierarchy system that enables us to use the particles as containers for different content,” Freedman says. “The content-filled particles tell the AeroLife story in an orderly fashion from top to bottom.”

Nutritional designAeroDesigns triples conversion rates following

a redesign that applies responsive design.

BY ABBY CALLARD

Case Study • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

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When a smartphone consumer taps Explore and selects a category from the left-hand menu that appears, the par-ticles of that category rise to the top and the others fall off. Consumers can either sort by category or choose to browse through all the particles at one time. “The design creates a different navigational experience for the user where they have a little bit more control,” Beyeler says.

Each category is designed to further one of AeroDesign’s objectives. For example, content in the Buzz category encourages consumers to follow the brand on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and to join its e-mail list. It also displays recent Facebook posts: In August 2014 it encouraged consumers flying through Denver International Airport to visit its new kiosk in ter-minal B. A “My AeroLife” category reveals cus-tomer testimonials, and a “How AeroLife works” category includes a video demonstration. Both areas are intended to make consumers comfortable with the idea of inhaling vitamins, Freedman says.

AeroDesigns also can adjust web content in time with its business objectives. Each particle category is tied to a category in the content management system, and adding or removing particles is as easy as adding or removing posts in the CMS, which Growth Spark built using the open-source Wordpress platform. The transactional part of the site was built from Shopify Inc.’s CMS.

AeroLife’s site uses pure responsive design, which means one data package contains everything needed to build the desktop, tablet and smartphone versions of the site. When a user visits the site, that entire package is down-loaded, regardless of the device being used. The device’s web browser extracts what it needs in order to display the web site in the manner the retailer has specified. For exam-ple, a big image that appears on a PC might be replaced with a smaller one on a smartphone, or omitted entirely.

One criticism of responsive design is that responsive sites can be slow to load on smartphones, but Freedman says that has not been a problem. He says Google Analytics shows AeroLife.com’s average page load speed is 3 seconds, though the analytics software does not break out performance by device.

The load time on smartphones can vary based on the consumer’s wireless network connection and speed, but an independent audit by mobile performance firm Keynote found that AeroLife.com’s home page was 3.5 megabytes in size, in part because of the large image files it contains, and that size is far above recommendations for good per-formance on smartphones, says Keynote web performance evangelist Joe Flake. Keynote generally recommends a

mobile page weight of no more than 20 objects and 200 kilobytes.

AeroLife’s mobile site uses “lazy load-ing,” where content is loaded as it’s needed as a consumers scrolls down the web page. As a result, mobile consum-ers can still interact with content even if every-thing on the page hasn’t rendered 100%, Beyeler says.

The new site launched as planned in November 2013. Since then, the aver-

age conversion rate across all devices, weighted by the percentage of consumers who use each device type, has jumped from approximately 1.7% to 3.0%, Beyeler says. The conversion rate averages 3.30% for desktop users, 1.29% for smartphones and 2.10% for tablets. AeroLife does not have conversion rate figures broken down by device for its prior site.

Desktop devices still drive most sales, accounting for 86.44% of web sales. Tablets account for 7.65% and smart-phones 5.91%. Freedman says 34% of site traffic, up from 28%, is now coming from mobile devices, with 26% of traf-fic coming from smartphones and 8% from tablets. More than 400 consumers have signed up for ongoing subscrip-tions, an option that wasn’t available on the previous site.

The freedom the new site offers to both consumers and the AeroDesigns team meshes with the AeroLife philoso-phy, Freedman says. The company’s customers are on the go, and can’t be held down by constraints. “For me, it’s a site that met all the objectives I had,” Freedman says.

The creative yet functional design concept shows there’s more than one way to sell a nutrition product, just as AeroLife’s air-based nutrition shows there’s more than one way to take your vitamins.

[email protected]

A responsive site enables shoppers to access AeroLife.com regardless of device. Desktop homepage is at left and mobile at right.

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Mobile devices are dramatically changing the way consumers shop. Untethered from desktop systems, smartphones and

tablets allow consumers to read reviews, compare prices, locate stores nearby, and make purchases anytime, anywhere. As mobile shopping rises in popularity, mobile commerce strategy has become a must-have for retailers to stay fully connected to consumers.

Developing the right mobile strategy begins with understanding there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the mobile shopping experience. Mobile shoppers have different needs and expecta-tions than other online shoppers. Retailers must ensure they are giving consumers the mobile shop-ping experiences consumers actually want.

“Retailers need to view mobile technology as a tool for delivering a great customer experience, not a hammer for pounding a square peg into a round hole,” says Arish Ali, CEO and co-founder of Skava, a provider of mobile, tablet, in-store, and interactive merchandising technologies. “The goal of any mobile strategy should be to capture mind-share so that consumers want to visit a retailer’s mobile site.”

Rather than simply adapting existing desktop experiences for mobile devices, mobile success starts with using consumer research and continu-ous testing to identify pages, features, naviga-tional elements, links, offers, and products that are popular with mobile shoppers. Once retailers have identified the content and navigational paths mobile shoppers prefer, they can then determine what site design their shoppers will respond to most favorably.

“Responsive design and mobile-first designs are outgrowths of the customer experience,” Ali says. “Retailers should have a customer-first mindset when it comes to mobile. Once retailers know the type of mobile experience their customers want, they can select a site design process that best meets customers’ expectations.”

Whether retailers opt for responsive design (using a mix of flexible grids, layouts, images and Cascading Style Sheets to automatically format

content to the screen regardless of the device type), or a mobile-first approach (the concept of starting web site design with layouts for mobile devices), Ali recommends retailers continually test and evolve the layout of their site to stay abreast of changing consumer preferences.

As one example, a client of Skava’s has opted to alter the layout of their home page for mobile from its desktop counterpart to account for differences in consumer behaviors on mobile. “In some cases, retailers may need to show mobile shoppers differ-ent offers or product categories,” Ali says.

The SkavaONE Mcommerce Suite enables retailers to build fully customized mobile sites and apps that, while integrated with the desktop web site and e-commerce platform, provide a distinct user experience that can be changed and evolved independently of changes to the desktop web site.

“The advantage of this approach is that retailers can continue to innovate on mobile in parallel with their desktop site. Their mobile innovation is not constrained by their desktop site roadmap which tends to take longer whereas the mobile industry is changing rapidly,” Ali says. “Furthermore, they do not have to put their mobile plans on hold if they are making major changes, like re-platforming, on their desktop site.”

Even if a retailer has limited resources or bud-get, they can still leverage the SkavaONE platform to make enhancements to their existing web site that improve the mobile shopping experience and lay the foundation for future enhancements.

“Sometimes making basic changes will deliver the best ROI in the short-term, but retailers should be thinking long-term when it comes to mobile because mobile sales are going to explode,” Ali says. “Retailers that create unique customer and merchandising experiences for mobile will be the ones that generate sales and customer loyalty.” n

Making mobile customer-centric

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Internet Retailer methodologyInternet Retailer researchers identified Mobile 500 companies through ongoing editorial coverage in Internet Retailer; from data partners including comScore Inc., Keynote, Pure Oxygen Labs LLC, TheFind Inc. and Mobidia Inc.; recommendations from industry analysts and technology vendors; and other sources. Research staff contacted hundreds of companies between April and August 2014.

MOBILE SALES. “Mobile” refers to smartphones and tablets. Whenever possible, mobile sales listed in the guide came from the company. If the company did not provide sales, Internet Retailer used the following formula to estimate sales: mobile monthly unique visits (site and app combined) x mobile con-version rate (a blend of smartphone and tablet) x mobile aver-age ticket = monthly mobile sales x 12 = annual mobile sales. Estimates for other metrics such as conversion rate, ticket and the percent of sales from apps were based on averages for a company’s merchant type and merchandising category and interviews with mobile commerce analysts. Companies that did not initially provide data were given the opportunity to respond to estimates.

MOBILE SEO SCORE. Mobile marketing firm Pure Oxygen Labs used its Mobile Site Analyzer technology to crawl the home pages of Mobile 500 retailers, emulating an iPhone user-agent without JavaScript. It identified sites that rely on user-agent server detection to redirect mobile users to mobile pages; sites that dynamically serve content based on user-agent; and those that use responsive design media queries. Some sites use JavaScript or other methods to detect and redi-rect mobile devices. In these cases, the crawler assessed the site’s JavaScript and other characteristics and flagged them for manual inspection and analysis. Using a 1-3 (low-medium-high) scale, each site received a score based on how it adhered to mobile search engine optimization best practices as shown by the presence of signals indicating whether the site con-figuration was appropriate for the site’s mobile method (e.g., HTTP vary header present for mobile sites). Sites received an “NA” without penalty when a best practice was deemed not relevant to their mobile method. These scores only reflect mobile signals detected on each site’s home page during the June 2014 analysis period and do not take into account deep pages, such as product or category pages.

MOBILE APPS AND MOBILE MARKETING. Mobile researchers at comparison shopping firm TheFind confirmed if Mobile 500 retailers offer commerce-enabled iPhone, iPad, universal iOS, Android smartphone, Android tablet and uni-versal Android apps. For retailers with apps, the firm manu-ally downloaded and examined each app, checking for seven

app features. If a retailer offers an app that is not commerce-enabled, it is not counted in the Mobile 500. TheFind mobile researchers also examined retailers in the Mobile 500 for nine mobile marketing features.

APP ENGAGEMENT. “Engagement” shows how frequently customers use retailers’ apps. Mobile app analytics vendor Mobidia measured the engagement of apps from Mobile 500 retailers using its panels of mobile app users, 250,000 consumers in the U.S. and 2 million worldwide. Engagement is expressed by the percentage of monthly active users (users who shop an app at least once a month) who shop an app at least once a week.

SITE PERFORMANCE. Mobile and web performance testing, monitoring and analytics firm Keynote tested the home pages of Mobile 500 retailers from June 11-25, 2014, using the iPhone 5 over a blend of 3G and 4G wireless network connections from AT&T and Sprint in Dallas, San Francisco and New York. It conducted measurements every 60 minutes per location and per carrier. Keynote captured the end-to-end complete page load time in seconds with each successful load; the aggregate of all successful measurements is captured in the “load time.” Unsuccessful measurement times are not included in the aver-age load time. “Site availability” is the percentage of time dur-ing the test period when a site could successfully be accessed. “Page weight” is the total weight in kilobytes of all elements that make up the home page as delivered to a smartphone. And “score” is a Keynote calculation, with 1,000 being the highest; Keynote equally weights and combines load time and site availability to achieve a score.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN (PURE OR HYBRID). Responsive design is a design technique that, generally, enables a retailer to build one site that serves desktops, tablets and smart-phones, with experiences optimized for each device. But the technique is evolving quickly. Some retailers build responsive design sites, for example, that only serve tablets and smart-phones; these retailers leave their conventional desktop sites as is. Pure responsive design refers to the original style, where one data package contains everything needed to build the desktop, tablet and smartphone versions of the site. When a user visits a pure responsive site, that entire package is down-loaded, regardless of the device being used. The device’s web browser extracts what it needs in order to display the web site in the manner the retailer has specified. Hybrid responsive design refers to the various evolving forms, where, generally, a retailer’s servers first detect the type of device requesting a page and then send only the content needed to build the version of the site for that device. Other terms associated with hybrid responsive design include adaptive design and server-side design. l

2015 Mobile 500 MethodologyMethodology • 2015 Mobile 500 • Internet Retailer

2015 internet retailer mobile 500

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