Rue La La, Other eTailers Approach Mobile From Solution Standpoint

By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA

Catering to multiscreen consumers key to boosting sales

For flash sale site Rue La La, mobile has played a key role in its growth as a retailer. At the recent eTail West conference, Gabriella Buerman, Rue La La’s mobile product marketing manager, agreed with a panel of other retail experts in saying that retailers should look at mobile as a solution to a problem. “Rue La La was started selling limited time inventory, bringing mobile into the picture filled a need,” Buerman said. For the online retailer, mobile now comprises roughly half of its traffic. Mobile accounts for over 40 percent of sales on a weekly basis and on any given day could account for over 50 percent of sales, CEO Steve Davis said in an interview last fall with the Boston Business Journal.

Indeed, Rue La La has been keeping its eyes on the shift in consumers’ preferences towards multichannel. As VP of marketing Gerry McGoldrick said at the eTail East conference last fall, “We see that a multiscreen user is six times more valuable than a single-screen user. Getting our Web users onto mobile … is one of our major initiatives for the year.” For Rue La La, its customers typically choose to access the site from the mobile Web. Behind that, consumers choose Rue La La’s smartphone app and tablet app. One of the biggest goals for the company has been trying to get Web users to transition onto the Rue La La mobile app because of the speed at which an offer can be turned into a sale. In the past, the app has played an important role in turning browsers into buyers. The company saw great success simply by altering a section of its app from “shop now” to “buy now.” Following this move, the site saw a 35 percent increase in buyers.

Mobile Devices, Mobile Apps: The Bookends Of BI

Of course, there is still a lot of room for mobile growth for the company. Execs believe that over the next year, mobile will begin to account for 60 percent of the company’s revenue. To reach this goal, the company has been hard at work on improving its email initiatives and fine-tuning its overall shopping experience in order to encourage more app downloads.

During the eTail West panel, Buerman says, “At some point, everyone will need to do mobile, and do mobile well.” For Rue La La and other retailers on the eTail West panel, mobile has served as an important way for a retailer to provide customers with opportunities that differ from a desktop experience. While the adage “don’t innovate for innovation’s sake” is key for most retailers, one expert says that risking innovation is still a necessary part of the mobile process. David Young for Travelocity says, “There’s merit in it. You will get visibility based on making a revision to your app or mobile site,” especially because of Apple’s review and promotion process. “You get that feature placement in the app store and you can increase downloads tenfold. There’s ROI there.”