The concept behind Shopatron is interesting, if not a particularly easy one to get your head around. The company provides brands – and multichannel retailers – with the ability to take orders online, and then fulfil them through any partnered retailers or dealers local to the customer which have the item in stock. Which makes sense, but what makes that a better option than simply sending the item out directly, for both brands and customers, and what does that mean on mobile? Luckily, SVP of marketing Mark Grondin was on hand at this years Internet World exhibition to explain it all.
“We say its a case of leveraging your asset – the physical shop – in the online world,” says Grondin. “That applies to products like books and CDs okay, but one of our clients is Bosch, where the local retailer offers a huge amount of value. If youre buying from a store, you get a particular experience – theyll bring the dishwasher, take the packaging away, maybe install it for you. With Shopatron, you can have a local experience with an online purchase.”
As for the seller, Grondin gives the example of US sporting goods retailer Modells. The company has an eCommerce presence, but its main business is still its 150 bricks-and-mortar stores. By drawing customers in-store, the retailer can expect to see upsell of 25 per cent, as customers buy things on impulse in way they might not online.
Shopatron also provides a mobile entry point for brands and retailers. “In the middle of 2010, we released a template that instantly made all our sites mobile compatible. Just a very simplified mobile site with basic features – search, catalogue, etc – and give them the choice of customising it,” says Grondin. Within the space of a month, over 600 merchants were given a mobile presence. 
Accompanying this is the usual litany of stats – in the past month, its clients have seen a total 15 per cent of traffic coming from mobile, which is expected to grow to 20 per cent by the end of the year. iPads see similar conversion rates to desktop, but iPhone – at a 58 per cent transaction rate – is much lower, and Android lower still at 50 per cent. The average value of an order is lower on mobile – $113 on iPad, $93 on iPhone and $95 on Android – compared to $119 on desktop.
Mobile is holding its own, then, but its still not about to overtake desktop. So whats particularly useful about mCommerce for Shopatron and its client? According to Grondin, mCommerce is about knocking down boundaries, for both the consumer – “you can research purchases at night, when the kids are asleep, which is when I have time” – and brands and manufacturers.
“The interesting thing for them is the mobile has freed them,” says Grondin, “beyond the boundaries of what a particular shop happens to stock.” If a consumer is using their mobile to check prices – as Shopatrons survey of 20,000 retailers suggests, with 63 per cent seeing over 5 per cent of customers using mobile while shopping, and half of those for price comparison – then the physical retailer can be in danger of losing out on a sale. “But for brands, it provides direct access into the shopping experience, and to the consumer, which theyve never had. Amazon or whoever want customers to specifically buy it from them instead of the shop – for the brand, either way is a win.”
