Statistics from Debenhams provide further evidence of the value of mobile commerce to retailers, with its iPhone app bringing in £1m in sales in five months.
Following the early success of the iPhone app, Debenhams is now releasing apps for Android and Nokia devices.
The Debenhams iPhone app, released in October last year, is a well designed app which plays a useful role in the retailer's multichannel strategy.
By following up with Android and Nokia apps, Debenhams has expanded its reach to other mobile users, and also internationally - the iPhone app has been used as far away as Australia and New Zealand.
Several surveys, including this recent one from iModerate, show the growing use of smartphones in offline retail. More than half of smartphone owners use their mobiles in stores, mainly for price comparison and product research.
The Debenhams apps are in part designed to take advantage of such trends, and the barcode scanner is something that makes this kind of product research much easier for users.
Though the Nokia version doesn't have the barcode scanning function, the Android version does, making Debenhams the first high street retailer to offer this. On the iPhone app, the barcode scanner has proved to be a popular feature, having been used over 90,000 times.
The iPhone app has been downloaded 360,000 times, and 110,000 people have used the app five times or more since its launch.
Reader comments (7)
5:30PM on 22nd March 2011
Debenhams are ahead of the curve with their mobile app in the retail sector, its a great addition to the multichannel approach their agency are following. The app itself is easy to use and actually useful.
When it launched they had a giveaway that you could only access by downloading the app, a nice idea.
Richard
Mobile Apps
http://www.digistraction.net
9:40AM on 23rd March 2011
Does anyone have any data for what percentage of Debenhams' online sales this accounts for?
4:57PM on 29th March 2011
Roughly 1% based on Debs' web sales y/e Feb 2010 being £103.8m
4:59PM on 29th March 2011
Although the £1m is an unqualified figure, for all we know it could be gross sales (inc. VAT, exc. discounts), it is a remarkably round number
5:01PM on 29th March 2011
Previous comment disappeared, maybe we are only allowed one? To consolidate the 2 replies:
About 1% based on web sales y/e Feb 10 being £103.8m
Although the £1m is an unqualified figure, for all we know it could be gross sales (inc. VAT, exc. discounts), it is a remarkably round number
5:09PM on 29th March 2011
OK well I tried to help but econsultancy keep deleting the comment for some misguided reason.
Debenhams is a plc, the sales figures I was quoting come from the annual report posted on their website...!
So much for UGC best practice ;-)
Editor at Econsultancy
10:52AM on 18th April 2011
@Anon - we have an auto spam filter from Akismet which sometimes filters out non-spam comments. In your case, this could be because you chose to remain anonymous. We'd prefer people to provide names, or even better, comment when logged in.
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