Since July, the leather-goods brand has delivered a mobile-optimized experience through NetSuite SuiteCommerce’s built-in responsive Web design capabilities that also decreased shopping cart abandonment and the single-page bounce rate among mobile users. The results illustrate how as more and more Web site traffic moves to mobile devices, it is critical that retailers deliver a positive experience for the customer that is engaging and easy.

“Customers expect a consistent, personalized engagement at each interaction,” said David Meidam, IT Systems Manager for Saddleback Leather.

“By leveraging NetSuite SuiteCommerce which is tied into all our back-end business systems like our financials, inventory management, order management, marketing, manufacturing and customer service, we are able to achieve a single, all-encompassing customer record that reflects purchasing history, interests, channel preference and more and can leverage that to deliver a personalized shopping experience.

“The launch of our new site on SuiteCommerce comes just in time to handle seasonal sales spikes and support the introduction of new products,” he said.

Online presence
The makeover focused on streamlining the path from purchase to checkout and improving time on site and conversion on mobile devices.

“We had a good online presence prior to our redesign, but where we were lacking was with its responsiveness for mobile technology,” Mr. Meidam said. “We were noticing that customers who visited the site dropped off quickly after coming to our site from a mobile device.

“With almost 50 percent of traffic coming to our site from mobile devices we needed to be responsive in order to provide a consistent shopping experience across multiple devices, including smartphone and tablet.”

In addition to boosting the brand’s ability to engage users with a mobile-optimized experience for smartphone and tablet users, the makeover simplified and streamlined the mobile checkout.

The redesign also increased the capabilities for image zoom, 360-degree rotating views and alternate images that are important for shoppers examining the quality and craftsmanship of leather goods.

Most marketers who invest in mobile, especially a redesigned mobile web site, see rapid results and strong return on investment.

The cart abandonment decrease that Saddleback Leather has seen since the new site went live is especially noteworthy. One challenge with mobile commerce sites is that shopping cart abandonment rates for mobile are alarmingly high, reaching 97 percent, according to SeeWhy.

Offering shoppers who bail on mobile shopping carts a mobile wallet to add to Passbook or Google Wallet can encourage customers to complete the transaction in-store.

“We all know shopping in-store needs to be a seamless experience for the customer,” said Mark Tack, vice president, marketing for Chicago-based Vibes. “If not, they’ll get frustrated and leave the store in a matter of minutes.

“On mobile devices, the shopping experience needs to be even more seamless or else customers will just close down the site altogether in a matter of seconds,” he said.

End to end
Another big change was bringing together ecommerce, customer service and order management onto a cloud commerce platform to create a consistent brand experience across every customer interaction.

No matter what device the customer uses to access the site, he or she now has a consistent experience.

“It’s all about the customer experience and making sure our customers have a great browsing/shopping experience when they engage with our brand,” Mr. Meidam said.

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York.