According to a study issued by internet consultancy and technology company Auros, overall the retailers outperform public sector service organisations with 83 percent of retailers having a mobile friendly website (in some form) compared to just 43 percent in the public sector. A small proportion has adopted a responsive approach to delivering this mobile friendly user experience, with public sector (17 percent) outperforming retail (3 percent) by this measure.
Additionally, the study has revealed that mobile apps are more prevalent in retail with some 80 percent of retailers having some form of app, although these are fairly poorly promoted with only 21 percent of the retailers that do have an app prompting the user with this alternative on relevant devices. 50 percent of those retailers that have invested in apps have delivered solely for Apple, compared to 17 percent in the public sector.
Despite investing in mobile, very few retailers have yet to fully embrace the potential to enhance the customer experience that mobile can offer. Just one site was using location to automatically display the nearest branch. On average, even with geo-location enabled, users have to take two manual steps before being presented with this nearest branch information.
Support for touch was generally poor, with 53 percent in retail and just 33 percent in public sector providing touch screen friendly navigation. Just one of the 60 organisations researched has provided a dedicated website for tablet users with, as a result, a substantially improved user experience on this type of device.
Finally, the study has revealed that 7 percent of retailers provide no form of mobile presence (mobile apps included), with 40 percent of public sector organisations similarly ignoring the needs of mobile users.
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