Not all retail businesses have the budget for app development, and that may be the reason why the earliest adopters of beacon technology are the retail giants like Macy's, Target, or Lord & Taylor.
In any case, the arrival of the Eddystone protocol should be a breath of fresh air for SMEs, because along with the benefits of open-source software, Google's beacon solution also takes a more open approach to mobile device communication.
While it would be incorrect to say that no app is required (as the hype machine might have made you believe), Eddystone communication packets include a compressed URL, enabling beacons to interact with web apps like Google's own Chrome browser. This eliminates the need for your retail enterprise to develop its own app.
In fact, Eddystone's dual web/mobile app compatibility offers a couple of important advantages for retailers:
- Implementation costs can be minimized by using mobile web instead of native applications.
- Consumers don't have to be persuaded to download a specific app to access your location-technology services.
One of the biggest challenges faced by retailers in proximity marketing is getting shoppers to download apps. So while the first advantage highlighted above is good for your IT budget, the second is really important to the process of engagement.
Moreover, getting shoppers to keep your retail app on their phones or tablets can be even trickier, especially if its performance is even a little shy of perfect. As the survey results reported by eMarketer show, 89% of smartphone owners will delete retailers' apps if performance is slow, and 92% will do so if the app freezes or crashes.
Similar results were revealed in a survey conducted by Forrester, and can be seen in the graph below, indicating that consumers have little patience for underperforming retail apps.