Decoupling: The iPad

Here's what I want you to try:

• Select every customer from your database who purchased via an iPad in the past year.
• Measure the percentage that purchase via an iPad on the very next purchase.

If the percentage is greater than 50%, your mobile business is in the process of decoupling from the e-commerce experience.  You've got excitement, and you've got challenges.  Both will make coming to work worthwhile.

If the percentage is less than 20%, your mobile business is not being embraced by your customers ... on a subsequent purchase, the customer migrates away from the iPad.

Or lump the iPad and iPhone and all Android devices and Blackberry devices and Windows Mobile together ... and run the same metrics above.

Increasingly, I am analyzing businesses where the customer is in the process of decoupling from e-commerce.  If this is your business, then you need to stay on top of it.  You need to be all over it!!

Decoupling is interesting - it works opposite of what the experts tell us.  The customer makes a decision, and changes behavior.  When this happens, we sub-optimize the customer experience by forcing the customer to tether herself to old-school channels.