Retailer.com Mobile Optimized Web Site Review

Wow.  Since initially covering this topic back in December of 2008 when only Target and Walk-Mart had a mobile site live, and then a few weeks later Toys “R” Us joined the mobile web party, a lot has happened.  As of today, I was able to spot a total of twelve (12) live retail mobile web / mobile optimized sites live:

1. Staples
2. Office Depot
3. CVS / pharmacy
4. Walgreen’s (also a second, newer, more complete mobile version is available)
5. Sears
6. Kmart
7. Best Buy
8. Ritz Camera
9. Toys “R” Us
10. Wal-Mart
11. Target
12. Albertsons

Here are a few observations in aggregate of all these mobile versions of retail.com sites:

1. m.retailer.com VS. retailer.mobi There does seem to be a split on this front where some retailers are using a subdomain (m) and others are going out and buying a .mobi version of their typical dot com domain
2. There are some domain name squatters out there that are buying up retailer.mobi domain names.  Lowes.mobi is a great example
3. All but three retailers (Ritz Camera, Albertsons & Toys “R” Us) include a simple store finder within the mobile version of their site
4. A good chunk of these sites are bringing in online weekly ad / circular content.  Good examples would be the mobile sites for Target, Toys “R” Us, Sears and Kmart
5. The richness of content made available within these sites is greatly variable
6. One easy way to find out if there is a mobile version of any site is to run a quick search in Google on only the mobile web sites.  By using this somewhat hidden Google feature, one can quickly see what sort
7. Mobile transformation (MT) seems to be one of the main ways being used by retailers to quickly get their regular version of their dot com site “optimized” for mobile devices
8. Only really the big name players in retail have deployed special mobile ready versions of their main site at this point in time
9. Nearly all of these sites were built using a ‘liquid’ frameset that is very stretchy so as to easily adjust to  any mobile device screen size

Here is a visual archive of all of the home pages of these mobile friendly retail web sites:

Staples - has all the key content of hot deals, store locations and weekly ad deals

Office Depot - one of the simplest but most effective UI designs

CVS / pharmacy - got all of the basics and nothing else

Walgreens - rather lacking in functionality (older mobile version)

Here is the newer, more complete mobile version that does now include the weekly ad content

Sears - a very overwhelming amount of links and choices

Kmart - nice clone of Sears that has the same busyness issue

Best Buy - fairly robust site with good prioritization of search and store finder

Ritz Camera - like the deal of the day product which helps immediately drive home what this site is all about

Toys"R" Us - would like to see all of the content contained within separate child pages, rather than all dumped into one single page

Wal-Mart - lacking in content

Target - very rich content and great UI/UX. It's Target, so I expect nothing less

Albertsons - sort of a confusing site as it appears to be targeted to heavy users that buy online and pick up in-store