As technology become ever more integrated into modern society, a new breed of fast-moving, tech-savvy and digitally-immersed shoppers has emerged- dubbed the ‘Always- On’ consumer. But how can brands keep pace with their world of touch screens and swiped decisions? In a new report Catch Me If You Can: The Race To Keep Pace With […]
As technology become ever more integrated into modern society, a new breed of fast-moving, tech-savvy and digitally-immersed shoppers has emerged- dubbed the ‘Always- On’ consumer. But how can brands keep pace with their world of touch screens and swiped decisions?
In a new report Catch Me If You Can: The Race To Keep Pace With Consumer Demands, Intel Services explores the extent to which retailers and brands are currently meeting the needs of today’s modern mobile shopper including their work for Argos.
As mobile becomes a key part of how these consumers connect and engage with brands – now tipped at influencing over £18billion retail purchases – there’s no doubt this platform will increasingly sit at the heart of a retailer’s communication toolbox.
While retailers have begun to integrate a multi-channel approach to reaching this audience, it seems issues with consistency, performance and security remain key stumbling blocks when it comes to cross-device engagement.
For an audience that never switches off and operates on multiple devices, a seamless experience is everything.
Disparate customer journeys, inconsistent messaging and varying brand experiences can trigger purchase abandonment or drive these customers to seek out competitors – who, after all, are only a click away.
Brands looking to gain a competitive advantage need to respond to the dizzying fast-paced demands of the ‘Always On Consumer’. By connecting information and intelligence across people and devices, business-changing opportunities can be created through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and their management systems.
One compelling example of a retailer using APIs to enhance a rapidly evolving mobile strategy is Argos. Argos is the UK’s leading digital retailer, offering more than 33,000 products through www.argos.co.uk.
After noticing an increase in mobile activity among its consumers, Argos launched its initial mobile app in 2011. The success of this app led to several updated versions being produced, with added capabilities; Argos’ first transactional mobile app, launched this year (2014), has already been downloaded almost 2 million times by iPhone and Android smartphone users.
APIs played a crucial role in the development of Argos’ mobile offering, enabling both internal and partner developers to create new content that could be quickly and seamlessly added to its apps, while API management has allowed the company to maintain each app within its developing digital portfolio.
The success of APIs in mobile has led Argos to incorporate them into other digital platforms, such as integrating regional inventory data into third party marketing campaigns so that consumers are only shown products available in their local store. APIs have also been leveraged to integrate product information with affiliate websites in a secure and consistent manner with Argos’ own sites.
Jeremy Gooch, Group Integration Architect at Argos parent company, Home Retail Group, said:
“Our APIs were initially solely focused on our mobile apps, but we soon identified unexpected opportunities for their use in other channels and by other parts of the business. Digital transactions account for 50% of our total business and APIs provided the data security, scalability and multi-platform innovation fitting for our brand as a top multi-channel retailer.
Gooch continued: “Our maturing knowledge of APIs has also given us the capability to disassemble business processes and connect more cohesively with our affiliates, so that we can sell to consumers in new places with our product information presented in different ways.”
Joel Reid, Sales Director for Northern Europe at Intel Services says: “A basis for composite applications, APIs allow retailers to expand their reach across developing channels, without compromising security, data or brand message, while at the same time delivering a consistent user experience across all digital platforms. APIs enable retailers to seamlessly enhance their digital strategy in response to consumer appetite, speeding up and simplifying innovation by eliminating technical debt traditionally involved with redeveloping apps or digital platforms from scratch.
“And by embracing external API management systems, retailers can turn their estates into a platform, to leverage and control more opportunities than they can in-house.”
Additional insight from the report:
Research firm Experian has identified the four most connected types of the Always-On Consumer:
Social butterfly: female, 18-34 years, uses technology for social networking, sharing and social shopping.
Working professional: usually male, 34-44 years, career focused. Four times more likely to read the news and three times more likely to send emails from their mobile than average.
Gamers: single male, 18-24, loves gaming via any enabled device but less likely than average to consume TV, radio or newspapers.
Everything tech: 18-34 years, likes to try new things first. 63% more likely than average to have used a tablet recently.
At this point in time, mobile is the most powerful retail communication tool – research by Deloitte* revealed that in 2013, mobile influenced £18billion in retail purchases in the UK alone, and consumers using a mobile phone as part of their shopping journey were 63% more likely to make a purchase.
*The Deloitte Consumer Review: reinventing the role of the High Street
The API timeline
The popularity of APIs has grown exponentially since the early 2000s – there are now more than 10,000 public-facing APIs being used by brands from Google and Tesco to eBay.
APIs are also being used internally to transform the ways major retailers do business. Amazon is a powerful example; in 2002 founder Jeff Bezos insisted the company build an internal service oriented architecture (SOA) to enable data sharing across groups. Every department had to define their resources and make them available through an API, facilitating and strengthening partnerships not only between departments, but with consumers.
‘Deploying internal APIs (is) a great exercise for preparing your company for the coming API economy, where you will have to have expose selfservice, partner and public APIs to stay competitive in your industry.’
– API Evangelist
