During its first month of operation, the mobile commerce site of Boots UK Ltd. received nearly 300,000 unique monthly visitors. These are heady numbers for any retailer in m-commerce today.
The British mass merchant credits the massive number of mobile visitors to the increasing number of consumers using the mobile web and the number of mobile customers who return to the site over the course of months.
“Over the last 12 months we have seen a significant increase in visitors to our main web site from mobile devices, and with the launch of the mobile-optimized site we have seen this grow even faster,” a Boots UK spokesperson says. “We are still in the early stages of the site; however, we are particularly encouraged by the level of returning customers and the increase in the number of pages being viewed. We haven’t promoted the mobile site heavily yet, but this is something we are looking into in the near future.”
The m-commerce site, built by mobile technology provider Usablenet Inc., offers most of the features and functions of its e-commerce counterpart. Shoppers can search the site and narrow search results by product, brand or service. They can read customer ratings and reviews and locate the nearest Boots UK store.
Customers also can log in to their Boots UK account, created on the e-commerce site. This enables them to check the status of orders, check the points balance on their loyalty cards, and speed through checkout by using stored shipping and billing information.
“Our new service is designed to allow everyone to benefit from customer ratings and reviews, easy payments, access to Boots Advantage Card points, our store locator and home delivery services, wherever they are,” says Ruth Spencer, director of insight, loyalty and multichannel at Boots UK.
Usablenet has told Internet Retailer that many of the 30 merchants and travel companies for which it is developing m-commerce sites have their headquarters in Europe. The vendor recently launched mobile sites for European merchants Marks & Spencer and Mothercare UK Ltd.
Boots UK is No. 75 in the Internet Retailer Europe 300 Guide. Marks & Spencer is No. 22. Mothercare is No. 124.