Start taking the Tablets

It seems like I was a good boy last year. One of the things Santa popped into my stocking this Christmas was Boo Hoo: a dot.com story from concept to catastrophe by Ernst Malmsten. I’d thoroughly recommend it.

Malmsten was the cofounder of boo.com, a 1.0 ecommerce site which has become the stuff of internet legend. Beyond the first-class travel, the PR excess, the seemingly endless "vodka grapefruits" (Boo’s booze of choice), they had a brave--if desperately premature--vision.

As Malmsten describes the site: “With a click you could instantly change the colour of a shoe, or zoom in close enough to inspect the stitching. A ‘3D Click’ caused the shoe to spin right round. To try out the clothes on a mannequin, you just dragged your chosen item of clothing across. And the whole process was hosted by our virtual salesperson, the glamorous and flirtatious Miss Boo”. And all this in the year 2000.

Every time I use my iPad now, I’m reminded of boo.com. The iPad experience could be defined as "lounge and leisure" computing. It’s an incredibly approachable device. Using it just doesn’t feel like work.

This "lean back, feet up" feeling is why so many print content owners are so excited about tablets in general, and the iPad in particular. At least in theory, it means they can replicate the sleekness, the depth, the capacity to absorb of a quality magazine or newspaper--while adding the interactivity that both readers and advertisers now demand.

For very similar reasons, I think this new form of computing presents a fascinating opportunity for etailers. We often talk about how mobile is the only channel that allows people to be in the real world and online at the same time. What I find so interesting about the iPad, and tablets like it, is that they reverse this logic. Because they are easily the closest that digital has come to matching the tactile nature of the real world, they provide stimuli and sensory reward that online has previously lacked.

If you’ve spent any time at all using an iPad, I’ll bet what’s struck you most forcibly is the unique combination of screen size and fingertip control. The format is large enough to satisfy the eye; the interface more than sensitive enough to satisfy the sense of touch. Throw in the intrinsic benefits of interactivity, and you have something with the potential to take the online browsing and buying experience to a whole new level.

To explain what I mean, let me make a little confession. It could be my age, but I’ve yet to find a travel site that works for me as effectively as a good old-fashioned holiday brochure. What I’d love is a solution that lets me flip through destinations "page by page"; learn a little more about the ones that seem most interesting; compile a shortlist by dragging items into a "maybe" pile; investigate that shortlist in detail via audio and video; then buy. In short, something that combines the best of the old with the best of the new. The iPad is the perfect vehicle to deliver this kind of highly intuitive, highly user-friendly experience.

Equally, imagine a fashion site where you can work your way through a rack of clothes as you do in the real world, and pull out the items you’re interested in to compare colour and cut. Then think how that would add a sense of discovery and physical involvement that current offerings mostly lack.

To put it another way: this is about experience-selling, about creating an environment in which people are comfortable, interested and engaged. It's the same set of reasons bricks and mortar retailers invest so heavily in the in-store experience.

The iPad and retail
As with any new channel, launch won't necessarily be easy or cheap. But, as always, it comes down to ambition. There are already platforms out there like Zinio which can help you do the basics. What I’d suggest you need to guard against, however, is repeating the follies of early-stage internet and simply producing page-turning brochure-ware. Any successful app is therefore likely to need a meaningful investment in terms of designing the user experience and creating or repurposing content in a way that works compellingly on the iPad.

So who’s already doing that? It’s obviously early days in the UK, we must remember the iPad only launched here at the end of May last year.

But there are already 40,000 iPad apps on iTunes (against 300,000 iPhone apps) and they include some fascinating examples: Toys R Us, Gap and even Gucci.

Note, for instance, how Gap’s app turns a catalogue into a living, constantly curated source of inspiration. Or how Toys R Us uses the iPad’s "drag and drop" interactivity to modernise the traditional Christmas list.

Now compare the experience any of these offer to what you get from most iPhone apps when accessed via the iPad. It’s night and day, isn’t it?

The opportunities the iPad presents should excite any forward-thinking etailer. They begin to suggest how different the ecommerce experience could be in the very near future. And they indicate just how much scope remains to create competitive advantage by harnessing "new" technologies to deliver increased levels of consumer engagement, reward and loyalty.

And that’s the real point, I think. As always, what matters is not the technology itself but its impact upon consumer behaviour, how people use it in the real world and what it makes them start or stop doing. The challenge is to make sure your brand anticipates and leverages those changing behaviours more effectively than the competition.

If they were still around, I know that’s what Ernst and the boo.com boys would be trying to do.

Alex Meisl is chairman, at mobile marketing company Sponge.