Mobile First means Mobile First. Why our Sunrise App might be helpful for your Mobile Commerce Strategy.

I often talk in customer meetings or at conferences about the fact that we live in a beyond Desktop world. As this is the truth for all elements of our digital live this naturally includes (e)Commerce. Unfortunately most retailers are not there yet. According to various surveys most brands and retailers still get a big portion from their revenues through the Desktop. Let’s have a look at the numbers for a few regions:

• Germany: In January 2016 41bn EUR came through PCs while Mobile Commerce made up around 42bn EUR (across smartphones, tablets, apps and mobile sites). Source: Deals.com; RetailMeNot, 250 retailers, Statista
• US: In 2017 Mobile Commerce was responsible for 34,5% of all US retail commerce sales according to a study from eMarketer.

If you compare that to digital native and fast growing commerce players these numbers seem still fairly small (for example rumors are that Zalando makes already 70% of their revenues through mobile and most of that through its apps). There is no doubt that Mobile Commerce will the main revenue driver for the next couple of years while new models and touchpoints like Conversational Commerce, Voice, AR and more are rising.

According to technology and market research firm Forrester, mobile purchases — or mcommerce — will account for 49 percent of ecommerce by 2020. (Forrester Research Mobile And Tablet Commerce Forecast, 2015 To 2020)

Do you know our new Mobile App already?

At commercetools we always think beyond the desktop, this is why we built and run the first and leading API-lead Commerce Platform. We are now releasing Open Source the latest version of our mobile reference App Sunrise. It comes in a complete new design with a best-practice UX/UI concept for the connected customer. I was personally so excited when I saw the first screens that I decided to share some insights with you.

Find your Style — Engage, Personalize, Recommend

Sunrise is a native app for iOS devices that we provide as a mobile framework on top of our commercetools platform. We developed it to support our partners and customers in adapting the mobile channel faster and avoid re-inventing the wheel. We believe it is more important to innovate than to copy. With that in mind standard functionalities like product browse and search, cart handling, checkout etc. are already pre-implemented and ready to be customized. Our mobile app is also not a 1:1 copy of our web framework version of Sunrise. It contains features and UI components you can achieve best in a native application.

Best for Pure-Play and Multi-Channel

Different retailers need different functionalities. So Sunrise cares about all of you. At first it’s Open Source and made to be customized — you use the components you like and drop or rebuilt those where you differentiate. At second it already comes with features you need in various environments. Multi-Store retailers will love our built-in product finder that leverages our Channel Management. It allows to search for products that are either nearby or to have a click-and-collect reservation offering based on the local product inventory.

One Customer — All Touchpoints

For many retailers it’s hard to be consistent when it comes to product information and customer preferences across all touchpoints (eg. web, smartphone, tablet, in-store, social commerce etc.) while they need to be unique in their offering and differentiation across these channels. As our Sunrise App runs against the same APIs as the web frontend and/or the Social Commerce applications do this has never been easier. All carts are persistent, all product and customer information is available in real-time — and everywhere. You can add items to your Wishlist at home via your Smart Home Assistant, change it later on your tablet and place the order on your smartphone.

We don’t stop here. Mobile is the beginning, not the end. New devices and fast changing customer behaviour requires adoption and innovation constantly. Therefore we have solutions in place for Augmented Reality(do you know our Microsoft HoloLens Shopping Demo?), Social Shopping, In-Car Commerce and many more. If you want to learn more about our offering checkout our website www.commercetools.com.