Welcome to Mobile Mondays, a weekly column by customer experience expert Mike Wittenstein, focused on mobile apps in retail. Each Monday, you'll get a customer's-eye view of smart phones, tablets, and occasionally behind-the-scenes technology.

Last week, we reviewed the Champs Sports app. It incorporates a shake-to-suggest feature for matching uniform elements and a great way for teams and coaches to co-shop for the right uniforms.

Quick Summary
This week, we review the Alternative Apparel App, version 2. It totally nails social media integration. Already more advanced than its larger competitors, this is a brand that truly gets how brand and social media and products intertwine. Alternative is a premiere casual lifestyle apparel brand based in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

Review
Opening the app doesn't just bring you into a program, it brings you into the Alternative brand. On the home screen, notice how <1> the on-screen reminders fade off after several seconds so you can focus on the brand.
The News option offers three tracks: Official (for company-created stories), Tweets (focused on products and the customer experience, generated by customers and fans), and Buzz (covers topical events like pop-up store openings).

Check out this story <2> about the store designer and how he approaches his work. It's not a plug for the store, just a cool story that's entertaining and interesting to read. It does create a desire to go see the company's first retail store in Venice.
Unlike many other lifestyle apps, the Alternative App tightly integrates social media with the customer experience in a way that's natural, easy, and helpful. Approximately 50 percent of the app's content comes from customers and fans. Now that's authentic.

Clicking on any tweet, blog, or comment <3> gets you involved in the conversation—and in the brand.
Videos are becoming more a part of apps these days. Alternative's videos aren't just repurposed television commercials, they are specifically edited for the app. The videos introduce new music (part of the company's "alternative" heritage) and show people living the lifestyle <4>. The result is that this part of the customer experience serves to connect people more deeply with the brand.
Music was part of the first version of Alternative's app. Now, music is available for purchase—and commentary. More involvement options equates to more traffic.

Alternative uses music in the app to make the brand and the lifestyle tangible, meaningful, and fun. Notice <5> how tightly linked the on-screen and print designs are.
The More menu only offers one shopping option out of eight choices. This is a lifestyle brand (not a shopping brand) and the content reflects that purpose.

Instead of replicating the product display, selection, and acquisition features of most apps, Alternative just ports you to their website <7>.
Another browsing option is a look book in photo gallery form. Notice how the images <8> are uncluttered by product descriptions. That doesn't affect the shopper experience negatively, because Alternative is a casual lifestyle brand and its clothes tend to be loose-fitting.
Alternative's app takes full advantage of proximity searches and geolocation features. The map and photo mash-ups make customer-contributed content <9> more engaging.
Several choices on the More menu are simply for social media account handling. Alternative anticipates users' needs by providing the functionality they need at the right place and time in the experience.

The result is that customers and fans can hang out longer. That makes sense, because for lifestyle brands time spent can sometimes be worth more than money spent with the brand.
What's Good

• Stays in frame 100 percent of the time
• Brings the brand and the lifestyle

What's Not So Good

• Load times could be faster by caching content in the background
• Jumping to the web makes shopping less natural

What I Would Do

• Add a built-in shopping feature with permission-based size lookups for your Facebook friends so that you can surprise them with an unexpected gift
• Offer friends a way to join each other in the app
• Alert users when their friends are in the Alternative app and offer them something to do together
• Offer a mobile-optimized version of the website for shopping or bring shopping inside the app