Old-School Multichannel Forensics - Mobile

When I founded MineThatData more than seven years ago, folks wanted to understand how channels fit together.

Today, folks want to understand how channels fit together ... so that they can prove that retail, or catalogs, or e-commerce fits well in a mobile world.

Last week, I read an article where the author said that 2/3 of e-commerce demand will come from mobile.

And yet, I have clients who are not even close to generating 2/3 of their business online.

The story, of course, isn't the macro-level data you read about.

The story is how your customers behave.

Click here to see an old-school analysis, called a "Migration Probability Table". This technique still helps us understand how customers are evolving, how they are changing.

There are two big stories being revealed in MPT tables in 2014.

1. The dynamic between e-commerce and mobile as transactional channels.
2. The dynamic between e-commerce/mobile and retail as transactional channels.

If you are a retailer, the latter is really important. We're seeing two interesting dynamics. New retail customers are, in some cases, being cut off by e-commerce ... this is a new dynamic. We're also seeing retail customers becoming more willing to shop via e-commerce, this, too, is a new phenomenon, and is easily measured via the MPT.

In e-commerce, there is a transactional shift from desktop/laptop to tablet (more than desktop/laptop to phone). Use the MPT to measure this shift.

This is important, folks. If your table tells you that when customers shift from e-commerce to mobile (as a transactional channel), and then do not shift back, then your e-commerce business is about to be fundamentally transformed.

Give the MPT some love - it may just tell you when your business is about to be transformed.