Its no surprise to hear that mobile is big business for shoe retailer Schuh – last week, 46 per cent of its online traffic came from smartphones, and 21 per cent from tablet – but speaking at the Internet Retailing Expo this week, Stuart McMillan, deputy head of eCommerce at Schuh, dove a little deeper into the companys mobile customer base.

“69 per cent of our smartphone customers are 34 years old or younger,” said McMillan. “But 66 per cent of our tablet visitors are 35 or older – so there are big, big differences between those devices.”

Even more importantly, McMillan claims that 88 per cent of people who made a purchase on Schuhs site from a mobile device had never shopped with Schuh before, on any channel. Or at least, they werent customers Schuh recognised – something which may actually be influenced by its recent decision to enable guest check-out.

“Like many retailers, we have kind of forced customers to use their account,” said McMillan. “But when we removed that restraint, it proved good for conversion. If you think about what is best for the consumer, its not that difficult to improve conversion rate in some way.”

Sales now, data later
This focus on making purchases simpler seems to be at the heart of Schuhs mobile strategy. Asked about how it collected on its customers, McMillan said: “Wed rather have your money than your data”. He explained that retailer prioritises immediate user experience, because “the data might lead to sales in the future – but a sale is a sale now.”

McMillan believes that it is possible to please both masters, however, pointing to the example of the e-receipts Schuh recently started offering to in-store customers. “Weve had tweets from customers saying, its brilliant, means you dont lose it, its a great way to save on paper, and things like that. So we actually add value to the customer while getting that data point.”

Out of left field
Elsewhere on mobile, Schuh has been dabbling with some more experimental approaches, notably in two projects with Google. The retailer is using Googles local inventory ads on the search site that display stock levels in nearby stores. Smart, though perhaps not particularly unusual – but the second project is, as McMillan admitted, “a little bit out of left field”.

The retailer has partnered with Google’s Niantic Labs to add its stores into Ingress, a GPS game based around Google Maps.

Ingress takes real-life locations and adds virtual portals which can only be seen when scanned with the app. The partnership has added 100 of these portals to Schuhs stores across the UK and Ireland, encouraging players to visit these locations in order to score – and possibly pick up a pair of trainers while theyre there.

“Its only been live for a couple of weeks, so its too early to tell how successful its been,” said McMillan. The game is at an arms length within Google, so theyre not able to supply us with data on a week-by-week – well only be able to tell after a number of months. So we dont know what effect its having, but we thought it was something interesting – and there have been some good SEO benefits.”

However, this doesnt mean the company is necessarily open to trying just anything. Asked it the company had ever considered an approach similiar to the Hijack campaign for Guatemalan shoe retailer Meat Pack, which won the Cannes Lion Silver for back in 2012, McMillan said: “Its something weve discussed, but ethically, were going to stay away from it. As much as wed love to steal some of Clarks customers from down the street, thats not for us.”