Mobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big LeapMobilizing Enterprise Apps: The Next Big Leap

Sales By Mobile: Still Small

Some businesses may feel safe waiting until consumers' mobile expectations are a bit clearer. Even in the retail and hospitality industries, which are delivering some of the most intriguing new mobile apps, the sales and usage numbers aren't going to make a screaming ROI case. But the potential's so clear, people like Pizza Hut CIO Concors aren't waiting.

Pizza Hut has found that catering to the smartphone crowd isn't just about enhancing brand perception. An iPhone app Pizza Hut introduced in 2009 racked up $1 million in orders within three months, and in 2010, the app surpassed 2 million downloads on the Apple iTunes store. Of course, $1 million is miniscule compared with parent company Yum's $2.5 billion in sales last quarter, but Concors thinks the smartphone customer will be critical.

iPhone app customers are loyalists, he says. Analytics show them to be mostly tech-savvy 18- to 34-year-old males, and they're more affluent than the average customer. Mind you, Pizza Hut has had an e-commerce site for years, and it launched a mobile site in 2008, for access by mobile browsers. But the device-native app is far simpler, faster, and more fun to use.

Customers can use two-finger pinch and twist to select the size of their pizza and then drag and drop toppings onto the pie. Add too many toppings and the pizza explodes, sending ingredients flying across the screen (with a suggestion to ease up on the toppings). Some customers tell Concors their kids "go nuts" with those features, while others say the features make it easy just to reorder their usual.

Pizza Hut's internally developed app is integrated with the company's custom-built enterprise software for menu content and promotions. It also integrates with the same Web site e-commerce framework that lets customers pick one of more than 6,000 Pizza Hut restaurants to order from.

Meeting the expectations of iPhone app consumers was Pizza Hut's biggest challenge. Concors' standard: "Amazon-like" usability. It took thorough testing to avoid rework and delays in Apple's app review process.

Once your app is deployed, analytics become the single most important function, Concors says. Pizza Hut looks at order attempts and conversion rates in real time, thoroughly testing changes and enhancements before broadly rolling out updates. "The metrics will tell you whether a change is going to hurt you or help you," he says.