Zmags study examines m-commerce and tablet commerce readiness of top 100 American retailers

Zmags has published the results of its study that assessed the cross-channel marketing readiness of the top 100 U.S. online retailers in terms of their use of mobile, tablet, and social media, and they discovered that very few of them are working to achieve the full commerce potential of mobile devices.

The study was conducted in November 2011 and examined the smartphone and tablet offerings of the leading 100 retailers (according to the 2011 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide). Android smartphones, iPhone, and iPad offerings were scrutinized by the researchers.

They determined that among the top 100, only Disney, Gilt Groupe, and Urban Outfitters received a good score for strong offerings on for the devices being considered within the study. They also found that the implementation saw a significant variability among the different devices. For example, a far greater number of companies optimized for smartphones than for other types of mobile devices. In fact, over half of the retailers studied had offerings optimized only for smartphones.

According to this study, the tablet has yet to see any widespread optimization. In fact, Nike was the only retailer that was found to use the unique interface capabilities for tablet in their entirety. Equally, the researchers were not shocked by this data as the tablet platform is still quite new.

What they decided was that it seems that the majority of retailers are attempting to manage “only one or two pieces of the bigger puzzle,” which includes multiplatform branding, technical optimization, commerce, and creating an engaging experience for consumers.