Dick Smith Launches Mobile Site

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With a sharp increase in customers using smart phones to visit Dick Smith Electronics online, this savvy retailer launches its mobile site just in time for Christmas.

With Christmas just around the corner, Australian electronics retailer, Dick Smith Electronics, is launching its mobile site this afternoon, in order to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of customers accessing the retail world via their smart phones – and to help its customers take out the pandemonium that comes with shopping during the festive season.

Dick Smith Mobile Site Landing Page

Daniel McMahon, Head of Multi-Channel Retail (E-Commerce) for Dick Smith explained to Power Retail why now is the ideal time for the retailer to launch its mobile-optimised site.

“Firstly, we sell quite a diverse range of smart phone handsets, and we have been keeping a close eye on the great growth we have had in that category over the past 12 months,” he said, “and it’s really at the stage now where customers are starting to turn those handset sales into active use of websites across the country.  Secondly, we’ve also looked at what percentage of our customers are using mobile to browse our main website – and that figure has grown at a substantial rate over the past few months.”

For Dick Smith, developing a mobile site rather than a smart phone application was an easy decision to make, based on the diversity of handsets sold by them and the fact the retailer wanted something that allowed all customers access to the main website, regardless of smart phone brand preference or choice.

Flexibility was also an extremely important driver in this decision. “By having a mobile site, the flexibility of advertising mediums of the mobile handset world, such as mobile price comparisons, mobile search and mobile display using a mobile-optimised website, is then very simple for Dick Smith to get involved in,” states McMahon.

Dick Smith Product Listing

In order to develop the site to best suit the needs of the store’s mobile shoppers, McMahon said he and his team initially examined what customers using mobile handsets were already attempting to do on their website, which areas were causing frustration, and where improvements could be made.  Then the team turned their attention to the type of persona that was using the mobile handset, and were able to identify that for most of these consumers, it was about being able to research on-the-go.

“We realised the mobile site would need to contain certain tools to provide a great research experience for these customers,” explained McMahon.  As a result, the mobile site focuses on excellent search navigation (consistent with the store’s desktop experience), primary store specials, the ability to check product stock in local stores, and, with Christmas chaos closing in, ‘Click and Collect’ designed especially to save customers’ time.

McMahon explains that over time, customers have said they want to save time and understand whether their local store is going to have the hottest gadget in stock, ready for them, and Dick Smith has listened, by implementing ‘Click and Collect’, as a result.  ”Last week, we had three times the amount of people checking store inventory online than we did at the same time last year,” explains McMahon.  While this feature has been a part of the Dick Smith online business for quite a while, it certainly differentiates its mobile site from other retailers selling in the same categories.

And contrary to past experiences provided by other retailers dipping their toes into mobile optimisation, Dick Smith’s entire product range can be accessed via the mobile site, as can the all-important content.  ”We are a very content driven brand, so it was significant for us to put as much on the mobile site as possible, to give our customers enough understanding that what they’re looking for is what they want to buy.”  Logging onto the mobile site, customers will have access to customer reviews, videos, product descriptions and specs, brand details, and large product shots.

Dick Smith Product Information

In building the mobile site, Dick Smith engaged its internal IT team to develop a custom set of application program interfaces (API) for the existing website.  The primary reasons for progressing this way  ”allowed us to deliver a roadmap over a number of years, and also allowed our business and customer service teams access to the same level of and consistent information, regardless of whether the customer had come from a mobile or desktop experience, in order to understand who you are as a customer” detailed McMahon.  Dick Smith also partnered with mobile development company Tiger Spike to take the APIs and turn them into a great mobile experience that McMahon says did a fantastic job end-to-end in terms of design requirements, information gathering and project management.

From navigating the mobile site, it’s easy to see the engagement Dick Smith has with its customers, from the way key features of the Dick Smith website have been incorporated into the mobile site, in order to deliver a uniform experience in the mobile space, and into store.

As a result, it becomes apparent Dick Smith is one retailer very aware of where and how its customers want to engage with the brand. In other words, this is one retailer actively listening to its customers.

Dick Smith Mobile Site

1. Compatible with: iPod Touch, iPhone, Android, Nokia, Blackberry and Windows Phones.
2. Features: excellent search navigation, primary store specials, the ability to check product stock in local stores, and the time-saving ‘Click and Collect’.
3. Coming soon to the mobile site: home delivery.

Article by Elisabeth Lambert

Elisabeth is an editor and content creator for The Media Pad, publishers of Power Retail. As a writer and blogger, she is rapt that she is able to channel her passion for online retailing into Power Retail. She also loves writing about rugby, pop culture, travel and anything baby related. Having spent most of the last decade in Japan, Elisabeth still immerses herself in as much Japanese crazy as possible, and when she has time, Elisabeth likes to cook, ski and train for triathlons.

2 Comments

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  • steve starks
  • 30th November

  looks like they forgot to test the mobile site prior to launch as none of the category refinements show products, must have been the rush to get it live pre-xmas. Sometimes it’s better to wait then to launch half a solution

  Reply
  • • 
    • Sorry....no
    • 2nd December

    disagree….get it live and make refinements. But probably don’t go public until you sort out the big bugs

    Reply