• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, December 15, 2015

Before you start planning next year’s mobile strategy, first consider those retailers that are doing it right.

More than ever, that means Home Depot, according to the latest mobile commerce report from EPiServer.

With its intuitive search, strong navigation and content features, the retailer is delivering a consistently strong approach to application design. Not even ecommerce giants like Amazon, Safeway, and Target can currently compete with HD’s seamless in-app chat and in-store collection services.

Even superstars are imperfect, however, as EPiServer’s researchersfault HD’s mobile site for a lack of social and video integration.

For its findings, the marketing service software provider benchmarked retailers’ overall mobile commerce strengths, and then compared current functionality against consumer expectations. 

More broadly, what should you be shooting for in 2016? Well, 46% of U.S. consumers cite “speed and convenience” as the top reasons why they browse products on a mobile device rather than using a PC, or going into a brick-and-mortar store location.

What’s more, 63% of U.S. consumers said they would abandon a mobile site if it proves difficult to access, while 22% say they’ll go straight to a competitor if a mobile site doesn’t work.

When compared to their international retailer counterparts, American retailers scored particularly high for the quality of mobile commerce applications across both Android and iPhone devices.

Unfortunately, U.S. retailer rankings fell drastically when it came to Android tablet applications, with very few retailers having a dedicated tablet app. This is likely related to Apple’s dominance within the U.S. tablet market, causing many retailers to focus development efforts purely on iPad applications, EPiServer speculates.

Also of note, 39% of U.S. respondents listed “physical stores” as one of their top three locations to browse a mobile device.

As such, you should be looking to create unified experiences across platforms, says Bob Egner, vice president of product marketing at Episerver.  “The key to success is tight integration between mobile, point-of-sale, customer data, content management and ecommerce platforms,” according to Egner.