Page 20
— Retail Properties Quarterly — February 2016
Management
F
or 20 years we have seen the
rise of digital media in the
world of shopping. In the late
1990s, pundits predicted the
decline of brick-and-mortar
retail at the hands of e-commerce. No
one would ever go to a store again.
When that didn’t happen, along came
showrooming, where shoppers go
touch and feel the product in a local
store, but order it online at a lower
price.That was replaced by “webroom-
ing,” where shoppers get information
to make buying decisions in real time.
And while those things and more have
happened, none spelled the apocalypse
for brick-and-mortar retail. Not even
close.
Just over 7 percent of all retail sales
are done via e-commerce – that’s 7
percent of the entire $4 trillion U.S.
retail market, according to the National
Retail Federation. It’s held steady for
a number of years and while the dol-
lars coming through e-commerce have
consistently risen, so have the dollars
coming through brick-and-mortar
stores. And while the impact of digital
media on any legacy business cannot
be taken casually, in many ways, digital
media is helping improve the in-store
experience.
Let’s be clear, the mobile device is the
real game changer.The mobile device
buys time, and shoppers have taken
to it in hordes.They check store hours,
prices, inventory, product informa-
tion and reviews. And yes, they do buy
things with their phones and they do
showroom. But it’s all good, because
the multichannel shopper – the one
who buys online and in stores – is your
best shopper. Shoppers and retailers
now are actively interacting over digi-
tal media in and around the physical
store.
We work with over
750 shopping cen-
ters providing a digi-
tal presence in many
forms acrossWeb,
mobile and social
media.We see over
10 million shop-
pers each month
across our network
of shopping cen-
ters and almost 70
percent of this traf-
fic is frommobile
devices. Almost half
of the users are on the go or already at
the shopping center and are looking
at store and product information. For
example, what’s on sale? Is there a Gap
here?What time is the event?
Shoppers are using an ever-increas-
ing array of online tools to assist them
as they shop.There are mobile apps
like Retail-Me-Not, Shopular and Shop-
topia that connect shoppers to deals at
local stores. Many retailers have their
own apps.There are grocery and pre-
pared food apps integrated with deliv-
ery services.There are beacons and
geo-fences.
In addition, there is the mobileWeb,
which is easy to navigate, full of great
shopping information and still has lots
of traffic. Also, there is social media
where shoppers find access to curated
deals, products and information from
networks of bloggers and self-appoint-
ed pundits. And there are emerging
apps and services that may be the next
big thing. Consumer media consump-
tion will continue to fragment while, at
the same time, become more influen-
tial on the shopper’s decision-making.
So how are shopping centers suc-
cessfully engaging their shoppers in
the digital realm? It starts with mobile.
Everything must be optimized for
mobile devices because that’s how
most shoppers are engaging – even
when they are at home.
Next, you’ll need to have the right
content.What kind of content?Well,
let’s start with the basics – hours, direc-
tions, directory and, of course, deals
– shoppers want to see what’s on sale.
We like to add in new products, sea-
sonal offerings and the fashion trend
updates gathered from across theWeb.
The website serves as the core of the
center’s digital world. Done correctly,
it becomes an information source for
the broader Internet. Every night,Web-
based companies like Google send out
an army of software bots that scour
theWeb for new information. By struc-
turing the website and all of its content
properly, we are able to make Google’s
data collection easier so that Google
itself can tell someone searching for
the Shops at Northfield what time the
mall closes tonight.
See the example of the content
Google for the Northfield website
– address, hours and phone.What
makes this possible is structuring the
behind-the-scenes data in a way that
Google can easily read and trust its
accuracy. Google puts lots of faith into
sites that it trusts, and it’s important
that all content on the site be struc-
tured in a Google-friendly way. And just
because you are the owner of property
doesn’t mean you will be Google’s
trusted source for that property.
This structured content and data
approach has the center distributing
the same content across multiple digi-
tal channels –Web, mobile and social –
over a variety of shopper applications.
Consumers have a growing number
of media and service options, includ-
ing Apple, Android, Facebook,Twitter,
Snapchat, and on and on. No one is on
all of them, so finding your customers
is key. Making your content accessible
across the right services is important.
Shopping centers are not standing
by as e-commerce retailers serve their
consumers conquest ads. Many shop-
ping centers are purchasing online
John Dee
President,
PlaceWise Media,
Denver
By structuring a shopping center’s website
and all of its content properly, you create a
website that Google reads and trusts, which
then becomes the information source for the
broader Internet.
