People may be spending most of their mobile time in apps, but don’t tell that to Chris Taylor of 1-800-Flowers.com. The retailer's digital marketing head on Monday pointed out that its mobile customers still mostly come through the Web. That’s partly because people tend to buy its main products — flowers and small gifts — infrequently, which doesn’t lend itself to regular app use.
“The value proposition for someone to have our app on their phone isn’t as strong, so we’ve been much more Web-focused,” said Taylor, speaking at an Advertising Week panel focusing on mobile commerce and marketing. But 1-800-Flowers is hardly alone among retailers. While online-only retail giants like Amazon and eBay see most of customers' mobile time spent in apps, mobile many traditional retailers still see activity skew toward the Web side.
According to comScore data released in July, time spent on mobile sites easily outpaces that in apps for stores like Walmart, Best Buy, Home Depot, Apple and Sears. Taylor noted that the mobile Web is better suited to browsing and shopping, though customers still tend to make purchases more on the desktop than mobile because of the long checkout process involved, including entering a recipient’s information.
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