Brookstone has been building up its mobile offerings over the past few years as part of a multichannel marketing approach. Although tablets have proved to be strong sales drivers, not many marketers have developed device-specific sites to capitalize on the commerce potential.

“An increasing number of consumers are using their tablets to discover, browse and shop,” said Jim Speltz, vice president and chief operating officer at Brookstone, Merrimack, NH.

“Tablet and mobile device penetration has exploded in the last year, and we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of Brookstone customers accessing our site on mobile devices,” he said.

“Given the state of the industry and customer feedback, we knew investing in a tablet site would provide a better experience for those who discover us through these devices.”

Mcommerce vessel
The Brookstone tablet-specific mobile site has been designed with features geared at taking advantage of the size and use case of tablets.

For instance, the top of the home screen includes a store locator, a button to track an order’s status and lets users sign into their Brookstone.com account.

Additionally, the page is merchandised to feature timely product categories such as holiday gifts or discounted items.

The bottom half of the screen lays out tabs that lets users quickly browse through product categories without clicking through to individual product pages.

Links to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are splashed across the bottom of the page, and an email registration box is promoted for newsletter sign-ups. Both are a great way for Brookstone to build a closer one-on-one relationship with shoppers.

On individual product pages, a section recommends other products that users might be interested in based on their browsing history. Users can also view videos and multiple photos of products.

With mobile commerce increasingly taking up a larger portion of digital sales, personalization and recommendations play a big role for brands looking to capitalize on mobile sales, especially with tablets.

The check-out experience has also been simplified on the site to help streamline mobile purchases, according to the brand.

Users can find nearby Brookstone stores via the site

Mobile multichannel
Brookstone has been in the mobile space for a while.

In 2010, the brand rolled out a mobile site to let users shop the brand’s entire inventory (see story).

Additionally, last year, Brookstone placed QR codes in 30 stores and in catalogs that gave users more information about products to drive sales (see story).

Earlier this year, Brookstone rolled out an app that controlled a foot and calf massager (see story).

“Overall, tablets are important to the Brookstone multichannel strategy,” Mr. Speltz said.

“Consumers are increasingly shopping from their tablets and phones, and even more are using their devices to research and browse products they will ultimately purchase in-store,” he said.

“For tablet customers shopping at home, we wanted to create a much simpler way for customers to easily browse and learn about the wide product assortment we carry on Brookstone.com. For customers who are in-store, we wanted to make it even easier for them to get additional information about product data, images or customer reviews. Brookstone will continue to innovate as new shopping trends emerge.”

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York