Question: In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the chicken and the pig?
Answer: The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed!
This sums up the different attitudes towards the digital marketing of top-flight retailers and retail property landlords, in particular in the context of shopping centres.
While the best retailers are investing significant sums and re-architecting (that’s redesigning if you’re not tech-savvy) their business processes to support omni channel commerce, only a few (two?) big retail landlords are showing that they understand just how dramatically new technologies are disrupting and will continue to disrupt their industries.
Take the example of mobile devices. Phones, phablets (big phones that operate much like a tablet but are really still just smartphones – think new iPhone 6 Plus) and tablets are now in the hands of 75% of the UK population, and their presence is changing people’s behaviour. We used to have to sit at our desk to surf the web, now we have the web in our pocket, it goes everywhere with us, and we use it to reference just about everything. It is only during working hours that the PC now leads in terms of internet access. Outside office hours, mobile rules.
And that is when people go shopping. Out of office hours. Online and offline.
So why are most shopping centre websites so hideous and painful to view on a smartphone? You don’t think they are? Well, compare them with johnlewis.com, or Net-a-Porter or Asos or Amazon. Now do you agree?
Admittedly, compared with a year ago many of these sites are at least mobile friendly. However, the same lack of attention to detail – in the navigation, in the imagery, in the copy – remains. Seldom do I come across a page that does not have text that is unreadable, or images that have not simply been lifted from the desktop site so are squashed or stretched. Navigation is mostly incoherent and ill thought-out.
Perhaps worse is the dullness of content. A list of shops, restaurants, events and a few, usually extremely weak, offers. Almost never do you come across a site that you will want to return to, let alone visit frequently. What is the point of these sites?
The industry is missing a trick, in fact a huge open goal. A shopping centre encapsulates modern retailing, with the best containing most of the sought-after retailers. All the world’s goodies are inside. But instead of being a passive receptacle, these facilities should take the role of ringmaster and guide visitors to the new, the exciting, the unique, the beguiling. It is for the centre to attract me, the customer, to visit by showing me the wonders within. It is for the centre to invest in great content to attract the crowds that their retailers thrive on.
Shopping centres are not in the property business anymore, they are in the tech and content business. Most are chickens. We need more pigs.
Do you agree with Slumbers? Are shopping centre websites hideous? Tweet him at @antonyslumbers
iBeacons: essential tech for property people
Perhaps it is in the field of iBeacons that the great content opportunity for shopping centre owners can be explained best.
iBeacons are those small devices you can place anywhere that, when you approach them with a smartphone, will “ping” you with any information the service provider wishes – most probably, and much to the excitement of salesmen, offers in the shop you are standing outside. Without a great deal of thought these are being deployed all over the place as they are the technology du jour.
There is just one catch. Do this wrong and your customers are likely to be electronically assaulted every five minutes as their phone pings outside each and every “me too” store. The user experience will be horrible.
Who, though, could make it a great experience? The centre itself, of course.
I would like to install one great app that asks me my preferences, and then learns from my actions. When I enter a centre I want this one app to offer me a discounted coffee and while drinking this, chat through and share with my friends the beautifully designed, highly curated presentation of new and wonderful things for me to see and buy. And I want meaningful offers, private views and personalised concierge services.
This is the luxury shopping experience people will come to expect. And it is within the scope of the shopping centre landlord to own that relationship. The best centres will stand apart and shoppers and retailers will benefit.
But only the best, most digitally aware landlords will be able to pull it off.
