The Treehouse Florist: January 2011

We've been working diligently together with our new florist website provider, Epic Flowers, to update our website over the past couple of months. This change brings us a lot of flexibility and a host of new options, not to mention a much friendlier web presence. One of the greatest features it provides is mCommerce. Some of you might be asking “what exactly is mCommerce?”.

Great question! For starters, Wiki defines it this way:

"Mobile Commerce is any transaction, involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is initiated and/or completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the help of an electronic device."

So, basically, it means you buy something using mobile access, like a smartphone. This definition can be expanded to talk about "True mCommerce", which uses a site that is re-formatted for mobile use. You may not have noticed it, but all of the big boys are on it!

Below are the standard sites for eBay and Amazon, and next to them, the mobile versions, re-formatted for the iPhone.

So, why is this important to you?

If you’ve tried to do any online shopping from local businesses through your smart phone, you’ve probably found the process to be less than desirable. The reason is that most independent eCommerce sites are not capable of providing a truly mobile formatted page. So, you end up zooming in, zooming out, and fumbling through the shopping cart process. Mobile formatting changes all that.

Here are a couple of screen-shots of what the The Treehouse Florist’s new mCommerce-ready site looks like on the iPhone. We know you’ll love this new feature, because you no longer need a computer to order flowers on-line. And, we hope you enjoy browsing our new site from the comfort and ease of your smartphone.