Barnes & Noble’s smartphone friendly site does everything wrong but has managed to get it right.
Even though Barnes & Noble has done virtually everything wrong when it comes to the typically accepted guidelines for ensuring success in mobile commerce, the smartphone friendly site still seems to be bringing in a comfortably high success rate.
The m-commerce website has a heavy page weight, it loads slowly, and it contains far too many page elements.
The mobile commerce site for the number 41 company in the Internet Retailer Mobile 500 essentially breaks all of the rules when it comes to the recommendations that have been made by Keynote, a highly respected firm in this area. And yet, despite its failing to use the best practices for its overall page construction and for its performance, it is doing quite well. According to Keynote’s Matthew Agnoli, “The Barnes & Noble mobile home page is more than twice as slow as any of the other top five sites, as well as more than double the amount of content and is much larger in size.”
Still, the site still ranked as number 5 on the Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index.
This was for the week that ended on July 13. According to Agnoli, the one strong point of the m-commerce site that raised it above many others was that it held to a tremendous success rate, which was 99.35 percent. For that week, the average success rate for all of the sites on the index had been 97.96 percent, so clearly Barnes & Noble’s website performed notably better.
That said, success rate enough may not be adequate for the site to be able to hold its position among the top 5 on the list. If other sites manage to bring their own success rates higher, then Barnes & Noble could find its rank plummeting rather quickly. Agnoli pointed out that “A site needs to be both reliable and fast to ensure high customer satisfaction and to keep customers returning.”
Agnoli recommended that the Barnes & Noble mobile commerce site make a number of changes in order to improve the site’s performance and speed it up, to make it much more appealing to consumers.
Wallaby unveiled its third app for wearable devices.
The mobile and online credit card optimization solution is the first to launch a mobile wallet app for the Samsung Gear 2 smartwatch, which provides users with the ability to make financial decisions in real time.
Wallaby helps consumers select the best credit card for every transaction.
The company is known for assisting consumers in choosing the credit card that is the most idea for each of their transactions to help them earn the most rewards and to save the most money. The app gives users the ability to view their credit card utilization, balances and balance limit, as well as obtain suggestions on which card is the most practical for each shopping experience.
In addition to having offerings for Android and iOS, currently, Wallaby has an app for the wearables Google Glass and Pebble. One of its goals is to appeal to early adopters of wearable technology, so that it can improve its current wearable app formula and make it more successful and appealing for other major companies when they enter the wearables market.
In an interview with Mashable, Matthew Goldman, the CEO and founder of Wallaby said that “We’ve chosen to be involved in wearables because we think that we’re providing the kind of apps people want.” He added that “A lot of people focus on fitness and health but financial health is an important factor of everyone’s everyday life.”
Goldman stated that Wallaby’s has already learned more about what users want from the company’s existing wearable applications. Their apps have helped them understand what users want to see on the tiny screens of their devices.
The Samsung Gear 2 smartwatch is believed to be the perfect wearable platform for the Wallaby app.
Goldman said of the Samsung Gear that it is a “compelling device with an excellent interface” and that it is a platform well suited to providing users financial information that will help them avoid fees and save money.
According to the company’s press release, Consumers who use the Wallaby app on their smartwatch will receive unbiased recommendations that are based on the company’s industry leading database and algorithms of “credit card promotions and rewards intelligence.”
