Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly #4

Just for our retail & travel clients, here’s our weekly roundup of inter­est­ing links & news about retail, online retail, and travel & hos­pi­tal­ity, com­piled by the indus­try experts & thought lead­ers on our Adobe Con­sult­ing Retail & Travel team:

Urban Out­fit­ters: All Sales Will Be Done On iPods And iPads [Busi­ness Insider Retail]
It its first even ana­lyst day yes­ter­day, Urban Out­fit­ters execs talked about how they’re ditch­ing the tra­di­tional POS in favor of iPads. “Sales peo­ple will have iPod touches, and cash reg­is­ters are being phased out in favor of iPads on a swivel.”

Turn­ing the Retail ‘Show­room­ing Effect’ into a Value-Add [Knowledge@Wharton]
Again, we hear about the power of upping the ante with stronger in-store ser­vice, as well as mak­ing tighter ties between the retailer’s store and dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, as key to over­com­ing Show­room­ing in the war for retail.

Wired To Please: Retail’s past offers clues to its dig­i­tal future [Hub Mag­a­zine]
More on the personal/digital con­ver­gence and the part that good old cus­tomer ser­vice plays in strength­en­ing the in-store experience.

Face­book is Get­ting Back into eCom­merce with ‘Gifts’ (again) [Busi­ness Insider]
’Gifts’ are back on Face­book as of yes­ter­day, in a few key cities. But this time around, you can buy & gift real world items to your friends on the site.

Report: Retail Check-Ins Most Pop­u­lar on Sat­ur­day After­noons [Street Fight]
It looks like shop­pers who are check­ing in on Foursquare and other sim­i­lar ser­vices are mainly doing so on Sat­ur­day after­noons. How about test­ing a pro­mo­tional strat­egy to invite those Sat­ur­day shop­pers back for some mid-week deals?

Gap and Tar­get Offer Swag, Dis­counts With Apple’s New Pass­book [Mash­able]
Some retail­ers are embrac­ing Apple’s new Pass­book fea­ture. This week, Tar­get added some spe­cific offers, while Gap is test­ing an offer of free swag for stop­ping by some of its Japan­ese  locations.

Have you seen the posts by our own retail & travel team this week on Adobe Dis­cover — Retail Quick Wins? Brian Au posted on Tues­day about using Dis­cover for site fea­ture usage analy­ses. Matt Gibby posted yes­ter­day on the power of props in Dis­cover as com­pared to Site­Cat­a­lyst. For a lim­ited time, Adobe Site­Cat­a­lyst 15 clients can inquire with their account team and ask to take part in a free trial of Adobe Dis­cover. We’ve made it eas­ier than ever to try Dis­cover, and we’re show­ing some great Dis­cover analy­sis oppor­tu­ni­ties spe­cific to the retail indus­try. For more infor­ma­tion and to request trial access, con­tact your account man­ager or account exec­u­tive. More posts in our series of retail Dis­cover quick wins next week.

If you’re in the retail or travel indus­try, are you tak­ing full advan­tage of the indus­try & dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts on our retail & travel con­sult­ing team? Most of our con­sul­tants have 4+ years of work and/or con­sult­ing expe­ri­ence in the retail or travel indus­tries, plus expert knowl­edge and skill with our Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Suite solu­tions and with nur­tur­ing, men­tor­ing, and devel­op­ing mature dig­i­tal ana­lyt­ics and opti­miza­tion prac­tices within our clients. We’re eager to engage with you more deeply to help grow and mature your analy­sis and opti­miza­tion of your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and online prop­er­ties, and to fur­ther inte­grate both the online and offline views of your cus­tomers for max­i­mum optimization.

Michael Hal­brook is a man­ager in Adobe Con­sult­ing focused on dig­i­tal strat­egy, ana­lyt­ics, and opti­miza­tion in the retail & travel indus­try. His team serves retail & travel clients with the Adobe Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Suite, help­ing retail­ers with online & offline mea­sure­ment of retail & travel acqui­si­tion, opti­miza­tion, and con­ver­sion, and devel­op­ing & exe­cut­ing on new dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies. He tweets at @Hal­brook.