High-flying 'Skybird' app revamps Port Elizabeth shopper experience

A new app available to shoppers at Baywest Mall in Port Elizabeth aims to allow brands and stores to communicate tailored retail deals to customers with smartphones as they trawl the mall. It also aims to give the mall's developers analytics about shopper behaviour in the building.

In a first for South Africa, this type of beacon technology - which makes use of geolocation and encryption features - can be used by shoppers, harnessing the downloadable app in a similar way to patrons at the US Open golf tournament, the Broadway theatre strip, the Super Bowl football event and Apple stores in the US.

Messages are intended to be personalised and relevant to each shopper's needs, and avoid irrelevant information and updates. The app learns each shopper's preferences over time. Encryption means the messaging cannot be hijacked by a retail competitor looking to dominate shopper attention.

While this information can help shoppers locate the best prices and sales on offer, it also helps retailers analyse customer behaviour, from typical arrival time to dwell time in-store, time spent in certain aisles, and conversion ratios - that is, the proportion of customers who enter the store and actually buy something.

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According to Kyle Porter, director of app developer Skybird, companies used to rely on loyalty programmes and cards to harvest such information.

He said the platform developed for Baywest Mall could also be equipped to handle other aspects of the shopping experience.

The platform covers the app itself, as well as the geolocation-awareness service, the Wi-Fi offering, websites, touch-screen information pods and advertising screens.

It has also integrated the Snapscan payment service for shoppers to make purchases without plastic or cash in their wallets.

If a shopper opts to add a retailer's loyalty-service updates through the mall app, their phone will receive updates from beacons installed throughout the mall.

When these 7cm by 8cm beacons, which require no cabling or power other than batteries, are placed on retailers' shelves, they can accurately track the shopper's movements 10 times per second and send promotion-relevant information to smartphones when shoppers are within range.

"The ability to know that I'm in your store before getting to your till opens up many possibilities to engage, up-sell and enhance my experience with a personalised offer at just the right time," Porter said.

This is not intended to prejudice the leases of retailers that do not drive as much foot traffic through the mall, however.

"Most leases include a turnover clause, so it's in the best interests of the retailer and landlord to achieve a high turnover. Using this technology, underperforming tenants can better understand their shopper profiles, dwell times and repeat visits to focus their marketing on the correct audience and media platform, as well as promoting offers and sales to drive revenue," he said.

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Traditionally, he said, malls measured shopper activity through foot counters and data from parking pay stations.

Although some malls have started using Wi-Fi connections to measure shopper behaviour, accuracy in determining position and user information was limited, Porter said.

The kind of heat-mapping of shopper activity available with this geo-fencing technology allowed much finer profiling of shoppers in and even outside the mall, he said.

"It's no different to traditional marketing; it's just a new battleground where context, relevance and interesting content for users is of paramount importance."

Skybird has struck a data agreement with Vodacom, so that every app user gets 1GB of free Wi-Fi data per day in the 90000m², R1.7-billion mall, which opened last year.