Cam Fortin Senior Director of Product Development

M-sites vs. Apps When does a site work and when is an app the better approach?

• The leading and only national online wine store

• Founded in 1998 and acquired the Wine.com name in 2002

• Our business: − Customers: consumers (novice through collector),

corporate accounts and partner websites − Products: bottles, gifts, clubs, and futures – from

$6 to $6k − Purchase occasions: everyday consumption,

collecting and gifting

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Who We Are

Selection

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0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

Liquor stores Supermarkets

Value

Convenience Information

Maplewood,  NJS an  F rancisco,  C A(Headquarters)

B erkeley,  C A

Medley,  F L

Avon,  MA

Durham,  NC

Westbury,  NY

Houston,  TX

4 days

1 day2 days3 days

Time in transit via ground

HeadquartersWarehouse

Why buy from Wine.com?

Source: Euromonitor, Forrester Research. Wine.com estimates of 2% online wine penetration based on $200M online wine retail estimate and $10B target market (off premise, over $7/bottle).

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Online Wine Market – lots of room for growth!

1% 2%

9%

15%

24%

58%

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10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

(online share of retail spending) Online penetration by retail category

Total retail 8%

Total retail 8-10%

World is going mobile, and Wine.com is going mobile even faster (38% mobile traffic, up from 27% a year ago!)

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April  12   April  13  Other  Mobile   6%   9%  iPhone   10%   17%  iPad   11%   12%  Desktop   73%   62%  

0%  

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60%  

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100%  

Wine.com  Traffic  by  Device  Type  

App or m site? Unfortunately, the answer is “it depends”, maybe “both” and one likely answer isn’t even in the question…

•  What are you selling?

•  How do customers engage with your brand? •  How do they find you? •  How often do they buy and visit?

•  What functionality do you want to offer?

•  How large is your development team and what technologies do they know?

Our Mobile Lineup

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M.wine.com for mobile phones

App & Wine.com for iPad

Wine.com chose an app for iPad and an m. site for Wine.com (so far)

Why an m site for phones? •  Cohesive experience for multi-device user •  Many “1 and done” gifters who would never download an app •  We rely heavily on search and email for customer acquisition •  Older demographic who are used to sites not apps •  We wanted our first mobile presence to be commerce based •  Works on all phones, not just built for iOS (although that’s where the $ is!) •  Updates on our schedule •  Our team already knows web technology (3rd party built out iPad app) •  HTML5 makes a lot of “app like” behavior possible Why an app for iPad? •  Site worked already for tablets, needed something exciting •  More screen real-estate to create interesting and unique experience •  Harness device-specific functionality (performance, camera, shake…) •  In the future we might pre-load catalogue for speed and offline usage

Biggest reason for going “m” site first? Creating a cohesive customer experience! Our customers use multiple devices to interact with us

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Add to cart at dinner on your phone

Open abandon cart email on desktop the next day

Even if you just visit the desktop site, as long as we know you, your cart is waiting!

Click through ON ANY device and your cart is waiting

If you decide to go web, an “m” site might not even be the right option!

Screen sizes and operating systems are proliferating fast – there isn’t a “desktop” and “mobile” user

Sources: internal data, http://www.sitefinity.com/mobile/responsive-design-graph

Google is starting to penalize m sites, if paid and natural search are important to you a responsive site might be the answer

Quick Responsive Example

App, M site or responsive? Pros Cons

M Sites •  Specialized site for one form factor •  Straight-forward to create •  If you are a web shop, same

technology •  Less code = “Lighter” •  Faster release cycles

•  Bad for SEM and SEO (Duplicated content) •  Hard to maintain two code bases, creates

Feature Divide •  Only optimized for smart phones

Responsive •  Optimized mobile experience for all devices – including ones that don’t exist

•  Paid Search and SEO friendly •  Aligned with best practices - Even

Google recommends it. •  Coexists well with Mobile Apps

•  Takes more up front time to design and develop •  Performance, as sites have to perform all server

side functions, regardless of display •  Challenging to set-up, maintain and test •  Difficult to apply to large existing sites •  No unique device experiences

Apps •  PUSH PUSH PUSH •  Harness all device functionality and

device specific capabilities •  Very specialized and optimized

task-focused experience •  Constant reminder of your brand/site •  Can act as user acquisition if you

show for highly searched terms •  Possible to use offline

•  Users have to actively update to newer versions •  Difficult to create and must be created for

rapidly changing platforms (ios, android, windows, blackberry)

•  Harder to maintain and update, without a dedicated team. Creates Feature Divide

•  Must packaged for multiple app stores •  Sits outside the CMS •  Different analytics needed •  Barrier, as a customer must download and

install app

M and Responsive sites are generally more immediate, findable, shareable and upgradeable.

What other people say

Mark, School Webmaster “All depends on the content....if you need the functionality of the mobile device (making calls, calendar,

contacts, maps) then an app is the way to go. Otherwise, if it's a mostly static site then a responsive/mobile site is cheaper and sufficient. (But I'm no expert...)”

Kyle, UI Design Guru “I think each approach has its benefits and drawbacks. App benefits: increased functionality, potentially

better design (although not so much anymore given HTML5's capabilities), greater presence on user's device. App drawbacks: barrier to entry (having to download the app), siloed from other web content and from search entry points; more work required to develop and maintain across multiple platforms. Mobile site benefits: easier to build and maintain across platforms, easy to keep seamless with the desktop experience. Mobile site drawbacks: inability to fully utilize devices native functions.”

Chris, Lead PM at PeaPod “I agree with Mark & Kyle, but there is another factor - developer resources. If I had a developer for each

platform, then building rich & native applications is definitely the way to go (again, depending on the content). As a product manager, our focus should always be providing the best possible customer experience to as many customers (or potential customers) as possible. What you can do these days with HTML and Javascript is incredible, and building an app for the web allows you to create an almost-as-good-as-native customer experience across all platforms with just one web developer. You also have the hybrid approach (Like PetDuel) where you develop in HTML & JS but use a framework to build multi-platform applications that have access to native APIs (like Camera, GPS, Accelerometer, etc).”

Max, Designer “Mobile sites. There are too many apps! If the mobile site can look & work like an app that'd be best I

think. The designer can update it without everyone having to update constantly. Less clutter. My opinion!”