Qubit combats mobile discovery gap with Aura launch

Mobile retail performance still lags far behind desktop with revenue per visitor on desktop at £6.10, compared with £2.66 on mobile, according to research by Qubit. A key issue highlighted is mobile's weakness in helping users discover new products; senior marketers admit mobile retail sites don't allow visitors to easily browse products, and users are instead turning to social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest. 

Qubit has been analysing data across 35 fashion and cosmetics brands since January 2017. Whilst traffic to each channel is about the same (45.87% on desktop vs 44.7% on mobile), conversion rates on desktop are more than double that of mobile: 3.35% and 1.61% respectively. The average number of products viewed per customer is far higher on desktop: 17.99 vs. 13.65.

To help combat this, Qubit is launching Qubit Aura, an AI-powered Instagram-like feed of products personalised to users' individual tastes, which sits on top of retail mobile sites. The company has been beta-testing with brands including Diane von Furstenberg, Wolf & Badger, and Hobbycraft. It says that initial testing has seen one retailer boost average revenue per visitor by 4.3%.

“Mobile is where we continue to see traffic growth, but in terms of revenue versus desktop it’s not equal. 50% of our traffic is nowhere near half of our revenue,” says Felipe Araujo, Head of E-commerce at Diane von Furstenberg. “The challenge for e-commerce brands is to bridge the discovery that happens on Instagram, and similar tools, and make this discovery phase become native and within our walls. Qubit Aura provides a seamless transition between discovery and shopping on mobile web, and we’re delighted to see positive uplifts already.”

“We have over 30,000 products on our site, therefore discoverability is a challenge we're constantly working to improve,” says Emily Cuthbert, Product Manager at Wolf & Badger. “With this mobile personalisation solution, Qubit directly addresses the problem, by giving users a personalised selection of products and categories from across our entire product catalogue, tailored exactly to the user. We’re currently seeing conversion rate uplifts of 3.6% on mobile after the implementation of Aura.”