By Scott Todaro, Demandware Product Strategy

So you are an online retailer who wants to be on the cutting edge by being first to market with a mobile store. The big question is how do you get started?

First look at your customer base to determine if they are the right demographic to adopt smartphones, with average income level and education being two of the key determinates. If your customer base does not fit the bill, then until the market matures and costs come down, a mobile strategy might be a few years in your future.

Next look at how your mobile commerce strategy can be part of a larger multi-channel strategy. Consider your mobile commerce initiative as an extension of your website and brick and mortar experience instead of as a separate selling channel. Technologies such as bar code scanning with a mobile phone camera and GPS will enhance consumer facing functionality such as store locators, in-store pick-up, price checking, product reviews, search and store inventory availability for delivering a fully integrated multi-channel experience.

With 61% of consumers unwilling to make a purchase on a mobile phone, according to Gartner, it is quite likely that your customers will use their smartphone to improve the shopping experience at your other retail channels.

When building a plan there are three things to consider before taking the plunge:

1. Brand: Today brand is often lost in the translation from physical store to Website. A poor mobile experience will only exacerbate this trend. Take into consideration your Web experience and your offline branding elements when you build the mobile commerce experience.


2. Product Catalog & Navigation: The goal is to keep the mobile purchasing experience as consistent with the online shopping channel as possible. Search and navigation on such a small form factor can become very difficult if you offer hundreds of thousands of SKUs. Also, you must address your staffing needs for managing the catalog, especially if you need to change the resolution of the images to fit the mobile form factor or manage different product categories from what is offered on your Website.


3. Promotions & Marketing: If you have a comprehensive promotions strategy that has a multi-channel approach, you need to look at how to accept diverse promotion types and optimize the presentation of promotions on a mobile phone for marketing consistency. Many companies offer mobile commerce but they fail to market the mobile site. With text message marketing still a little invasive and costly, promoting the mobile site must be a true multichannel initiative.

All indications and research shows that mobile commerce is not going to hit critical mass until mid-2010. That said, it is prudent to start your homework now, but wait to see how the market shapes up. Watch closely which operating systems become dominant and build a strategy for the masses that focuses on getting better than 70% market share of smartphone users. Write a comprehensive business plan that includes all elements of marketing, merchandising, services, technology and globalization-and don't forget staffing. Then pray that mobile commerce continues to buck the current economic trends.