MobileWebsiteWatch

All retailers take note: Ralph Lauren is leading the way in innovation of more than just clothes. The visionary luxury brand has taken some big and bold steps into the mobile realm, including a new mobile e-commerce site. The site, (http://m.ralphlauren.com or just ralphlauren.com if you’re on a mobile device) allows you to do a number of things including shop for, and buy apparel right from your phone. There are also sections about tennis and style and about the brand in general.

One oddity that was noted was the rendering of different site sections. The home pages and informational pages about tennis and other stuff seem to just be plain old CSS and, although heavily designed a and well put together still a little dumb. When the home page renders on a hi res screen (like an iPhone) the entire site is crammed into the upper left-hand corner of the screen, forcing the user to zoom and peck and basically defeating the purpose of the mobile site.

The shopping area, on the other hand, has a much more robust interface. We tested it on 3 different devices and it resizes for all of them perfectly with zero distortion. On an iPhone, the pictures even resize when you rotate the view. Strange why they didn’t do this for the rest of the site.

Another big move is the major push for the QR code campaign. MobileWebsiteWatch caught this clip on Good Morning America on Wednesday. In the video you can see how easy it is to get to a product right from the camera on the phone. While this application is not yet widespread here in the US, the idea is very solid and it seems that Polo is making big strides to get out in front of the market which I expect will pay off pretty big. According to a Reuters interview with David Lauren, SVP of Advertising:

The apparel maker will begin placing special codes in print ads, mailings and store windows along with its sponsorship of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which begins later this month.

Shoppers can download special software to camera-phones to scan the codes and be directed to a phone-friendly version of a Ralph Lauren website, where they can shop, watch tennis videos and read company content…

Cell phones with preinstalled code-readers should come to market within a year, Lauren said.

Full back cover ad of "New York Magazine" this month

Polo Ralph Lauren is a sponsor of the US Tennis Open Tennis Championship and is expected to release the marketing blitz with the commencement of the tournament on August 25th, 2008. Lots of print material is already floating around, like the full back cover of New York Magazine this month (the issue with “Race” on the front)