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1. Which platform?
The obvious choice is the iPhone! But before you dive straight into to developing for the iPhone just because your CEO has one, consider the other smartphone platforms and if they might make more sense for you:
Blackberry
Palm Pre
Windows Mobile
Symbian
Android
Apple is holding about an 18% share of the smartphone market and with an app store that eclipses the competition both in terms of catalog size and number of downloads.
2. One step at a time
Don’t run before you can walk. Build for one platform first, release it and measure its success. Just because the big companies have apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry doesn’t mean you need to have one.

3. Who will build it?
You’ll have to look either to your platform provider or a systems integrator with mobile app development experience to work with. If your mobile platform provider has a mobile app add-on then this is probably a good starting point as the integrations needed with your ecommerce platform will already be developed. If not then you’ll probably want to go through an RFP process with a few different vendors. The cost of building a single app can range from $20k to over $400k depending on the business model and functionality you want.

4. Don’t rush
Even if your competitors already have an iPhone app, don’t get pressured by your execs into rushing your app. Make sure you have developed the feature set that will excite your customers and make your app resident on the home page of their phone. If you mess up with the first release and deliver a poor experience or worse, a slow or buggy app, not only will you damage your reputation with your customer base, but they will remove the app as quickly as they added it and you will lose your chance to impress them with later releases.
5. Make the experience consistent with your web store
The users of your shiny new mobile app have been users of your web store for years. Make sure that their mobile experience is consistent with their web experience. Follow these simple guidelines to ensure a holistic cross channel experience:
Offer your full catalog on your mobile app
Ensure pricing, discounts and promotions are consistent between mobile app and web store
Surface all your product content in your app (images, descriptions, ratings and reviews, tech specs, product availability)
Provide merchandising (cross sells, up sells, etc)
Personalize the experience
Provide self service account management capabilities
Let them transact via your mobile app
6. Integrate with your existing ecommerce platform
Your existing ecommerce platform whether vendor supplied or developed in-house will play a huge role in your mobile app development. Many of the the services your mobile app will need are already provided by your ecommerce platform. Ratings and Reviews, shopping carts, cross sells, order history, shipping options, product catalog etc should all be integrated between your web and mobile channel. Your development teams will need to expose these existing services in a way in which your mobile app can consume them.

7. Develop a roadmap
You can’t release new incremental versions of an app every week like you do with your website, so make sure you create an app roadmap that clearly identifies and prioritizes future functionality. Plan to release new versions approximately every 3 months, but try to avoid doing releases more regularly than this as your users will get annoyed if they are always installing a new version of your app. If your app is a success, your execs will be pushing you to accelerate the roadmap!
8. Measure
Your executive sponsors will want to see results, so make sure you’re in a position to report back to them. Like your website, you need full analytics on your mobile app. Make sure you’re at a minimum tracking the following analytics:
Number of app downloads and installations
Number of app removals
Number of app starts
Average usage time
Order analytics by the mobile app (number of orders, avg order value, conversion rate etc)
Where the app is being used (GPS data)

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Contact FG for an online initiative.

Change is Good

Build Your List and Clean House
Now is the time to discard the addresses that your analytics have repeatedly shown as bounced or not opened. Check your stats on the last 3 e-mails sent and decide if they are worth the extra space on your list or if the are just not that into you. Someone better is probably right around the corner.

Test Your Options
Is 10-15% off enough to encourage your customers to take action? Try bumping it to 20% and/or re-wording it to see if are able to get better results. Incentive of give-aways are fine, but be sure they are well thought out and constructed. The pad offers are becoming a nuisance and we all know at the end of the day, nothing of real value is free.

Design
Is your e-mail visually appealing? Don’t forget the basic design rules when putting your e-mail together. Hiring a professional to conceptualize and ultimately produce your e-mail is money well-spent.

Basics
Summer is also a good time to test subject lines, key words and key phrases. If what you have used lately is not working, it’s time to embrace change and consider hiring a writer. Once again, a wise man (or woman) realizes he or she cannot do it all and learns quickly how to hand out tasks while freeing his or her time in order up to meet with “big player” clients.

Back to school is the time to bring your “A” game. Stay focused, keep learning and be persistent and soon you’ll be shaking some buyers out of the tree.

Best of luck,
Fletcher

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