The company rolled out its mobile site last year to engage its tech-savvy customers. Finish Line tapped Unbound Commerce to execute the mobile site.

“Unbound and Finish line are letting the results speak for themselves,” said Wilson Kerr, director of business development and sales at Unbound Commerce, Boston.

“Finish Line saw their mobile-originating traffic triple when they launched their mcommerce site last year and mobile traffic now makes up a whopping 14 percent of all online visits,” he said.

Finish Line is a retailer of athletic shoes and apparel and operates more than 650 stores in the United States.

Unbound Commerce provides services to retailers seeking to capitalize on the booming consumer adoption of mobile and social technologies. 

Mobile results
At the end of 2009, Finish Line saw that 3 percent of its site visitors were using mobile devices.

The company’s first priority was to provide a better experience for customers who wanted to use mobile for the services its site provides. 

Finish Line put click-to-call buttons on its mobile product pages, alongside the add-to-cart button. 

According to Finish Line, buyers are using click to call and the mobile site has increased calls to the company’s call center.

The company also included store-related features on the mobile site designed to benefit store shoppers such as store locator and product review look-up.  

A new feature, in-store pick-up, gives customers the option of using their mobile device to find and buy the products they want and pick them at a nearby store.

“Unbound allows retailers like Finish Line to extend and leverage their current ecommerce infrastructure into the mobile space,” Mr. Kerr said. 

“Once Unbound completed a software-based integration, Finish Line quickly looked beyond mobile commerce toward a full cross-channel mobile approach to support local stores, to support brands they carry, and to use both the mobile Web and downloadable apps to drive new, incremental revenue,” he said. 

Continued efforts
In addition to a mobile site, Finish Line is also targeting active consumers with real-time inventory via an iPhone and Android application.

The app uses geo-tracking to locate the nearest store and lets consumers view product availability in each store location.  

“Finish Line is dedicated to providing their increasingly mobile customers with both a mobile commerce site, as well as a full cross-channel mobile service strategy in support of their core in-store business,” Mr. Kerr said.

“While mobile commerce and click-to-call sales have increased dramatically, Finish Line also sees mobile as an essential gateway to increased in-store foot traffic, real-time product availability look-up, and in-store pickup of purchases converted within a downloaded mobile app,” he said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York