This year omnichannel is omnipresent. Consumers are at the forefront. And retailers are sold on multiple touch points as the pinnacle of user experience.

Research via mobile while standing in a store aisle. Share an ecommerce purchase via social. Revel in catalog imagery gone interactive on a tablet. Order online, pick-up in-store.

You’ve seen the wheel diagrams with arrows pointing every which way. Seamless interaction is the panacea.

But what if you’re a branded manufacturer? For you, channels are retail chains upon which your business relies. Distribution networks may not look kindly upon direct competition. Retailers have been carefully courted and any perceived alienation could negatively impact your bottom line.

Feel conflicted about going full force into direct digital commerce? At Fluid, we’ve seen a resurgence of branded manufacturers grappling with this issue. You are not alone.

Internet Retailer reports that web sales for consumer branded manufacturers in their Top 500 had a 2011 YOY increase of 12%. Web-only merchants 32%. Store-based 15%. Catalog call center companies 12.3%. No one likes last place.

In 1998 Levi’s famously false started into ecommerce when their retailers negatively responded to their aggressive online strategy of retaining exclusive online rights to the Levi’s and Dockers brands. Long before digital, brands like Coach sold in branded stores and via department stores.

In other words, this is not a new dilemma.

The good news: With the right strategy the dilemma can be diffused. Branded manufacturers have a right to pursue the rich opportunity of digital commerce directly. Not doing so runs the risk of lost revenue. In the right circumstances this can be collaborative vs. competitive.

So how to strike the best balance?

At Fluid, we’re seeing six main models of direct digital selling for branded manufacturers:

1. Full On Swagger
2. Full Price Promise
3. Sharing the Spotlight
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Will Your Site Withstand the Onslaught of Holiday Shoppers on iPads?

It’s likely over the past 12 months you’ve seen an increase in traffic to your site from iPads. If you’re lucky, you’ve also seen a corresponding increase in revenue driven from iPads. With the holidays right around the corner (you’ve started holiday planning, right?) and no shortage of growth in the iPad user arena, it’s critical your site be ready to deliver on customer expectations when they shop (and purchase) from their iPads this holiday season.

We know that customer behavior and purchase tendencies are different on tablets than from standard browsers and also from smartphones and those behaviors are starting to drive a serious divergence in customer expectations as they traverse your site across their various devices. As far as tablets go, customers expect a richer, more immersive, and, well FUN experience relative to their standard browsing and smartphone usage and that demands a different design approach to meet customer expectations. Simply delivering the standard browser experience to your iPad visitors will not differentiate your brand in the emerging ‘tablet-first’ design space. Customer expect more and if you can capitalize on that expectation, it’s likely you’ll also capture your visitors’ dollars.

Surprisingly, the majority of Internet Retailer Top 500 sites not only haven’t starting delivering tablet-specific experiences to deliver on customer expectations, but a wide swath of them deliver sites to the iPad that have serious usability issues. Issues that aren’t problems for the standard browser, but can present serious barriers and frustrations to visitors on iPads.

Assuming there’s no time at this point for a tablet-specific design for your brand’s site, I’ve created a list of common usability issues seen when standard experiences are delivered to iPads, as well as some hints on how to avoid them. Take a look and see any of these issues plague your site, and fix them pre-holiday. Then, start planning for next year!
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