ORLANDO, Fla. – Imagine walking into Costco, opening up the store’s mobile application, and finding the exact brand of t-shirt you’re looking for within minutes; without having to speak to a sales person. Or maybe you’re at Whole Foods where you regularly buy chocolates, only to have the store’s mobile application tell you there’s a chocolate tasting on aisle three. That’s what the mobile wallet is all about.On today’s panel, Dan Lowden, VP of marketing for Digby Mobile joined host Sylvie Barak to talk about the mobile wallet and what it means for retailers large and small.
Digby specializes in creating rich mobile applications for retailers to help stores interact with their customers in new and exciting ways.
Working on behalf of over 45 major retails ranging from Costco, to Cabellas, to Under Armour, Digby creates rich mobile applications to channel a brand’s mobile presence. Digby works with retailers develop PayPal applications, mobile shopping experiences, virtual gift cards etc.
Lowden explained, “The rich mobile application is the future loyalty card, to create brand loyalty and keep customers coming back.”
He describes that the majority of mobile shopping experiences are designed for those who are ready to buy. “The idea is to enable a purchase within 60 seconds,” said Lowden. He added the mobile shopping experience does not need to stop at quickfire shopping, noting  the opportunities are practically endless for retailers.
Lowden said the next step in mobile shopping is taking the experience directly into the store. With the mobile app in hand, users can search for products, scan bar codes to watch videos on the product, or even take pictures and share them with friends on social networks.
When asked why someone would want to share a picture of a product with friends, Lowden answered, “If you’re in a store shopping for a dress, you can snap a picture and send it to your friends directly from the store.”
“Mobile gives retailers lots of opportunity to interact with consumers in new and exciting ways,” added Lowden. Some of these ways being scanable 3D bar codes, fast mobile payments, more information, videos, sharing, and alerts.
Whenever payment is made digitally, certain security risks come to mind. Lowden responded, “Sure there will be some mistakes along the way. From a Digby perspective, we take it as an enterprise great experience – we build a heavy infrastructure with technical support, monitoring, PCI certification so we know handing each transaction is very, very secure. Customers want to feel secure.”
When asked if NFC is going about the mobile wallet in the wrong way, Lowden answered, “Back end development with retailers needs to happen for these things to take place. So no, no one is doing it wrong, it will all just take time.”
Digby makes mobile applications across phones, but added “4 billion phones, several hundred million being smartphones; will smartphones be 50, 70, 90 % in two, three, five years? Could be. People are realizing the smartphones dont cost that much more. More and more folks are going to go to smartphones. We have mobile optimized platforms that works across all phones but more retailers will want to create mobile apps to create a richer experience for their customers.”
FInally, Lowden added that it is sometimes hard to convince old school e-commerce retailers that mobile is a viable platform, but added “When these people see five or more percent of their customers visiting the site on their mobile phones, they fast realize it’s important.”
