As more consumers turn to mobile devices for everyday activities, some merchants are skipping building a website suited for mobile, and instead working to ensure their products are optimized for mobile devices. So, even if you can't make your website practical and pretty for mobile, you can definitely make your inventory ready for mobile shoppers.

This article from ecommercebytes.com indicates that 65.2% of merchants do not have a mobile website - but mentions that 60% are willing to optimize their online product listings for mobile shoppers.

A recent study by ClickIQ demonstrates how badly consumers want product information while shopping. ClickIQ polled consumer panel members who used their phone or mobile device to research products while shopping. 61% said they used the internet to research a particular product, far and away the most popular activity.

Intelligent 1:1 marketing has been foretold for decades. It was even featured in Back to the Future II, for goodness sakes. But only now are we getting to the point where technology, the consumer, the retailer, and product data are all capable of supporting it.

In this insightful article at the Forbes website, author Lisa Arthur, the CMO of Aprimo, defines and lays out the case for intelligent 1:1 marketing. By her definition, 1:1 is "Going forward, it won’t be enough to know that a certain customer bought a shirt from your store last month or that they “liked” your brand’s Facebook page last week. Going forward, marketers will need to combine and analyze these data points plus others, from a variety of different resources, in real time.

"Sure, you’ll still want to know about that past purchase, the more recent social media engagement, etc.  –but you’ll also need to integrate that data with even more information. Perhaps most important of all, you’ll want to know when that customer is in your store, considering a purchase. Then, you’ll be able to put all that CRM data to work. (Does your customer want another shirt like the one she bought last month –according to warehouse records, there are plenty more left in stock. Does she know that slacks to match are now on sale? Etc.)

"Think of intelligent 1:1 marketing as a strategy defined by this simple formula: Intelligent 1:1 Marketing = Mobile Devices + Triggers + Social Media + Point of Sale Data."

We couple Arthur's comments with Google's "How to GoMo" promotion - where the tech giant gives you insights and resources on taking your site mobile, and you can see the world changing.

The assumption in Arthur's column is that product data is going to be rich, complete and plentiful. Unfortunately, today's web can only attest to one of those three. There's a lot of data out there. Whether it's good, bad, complete or not is another issue entirely. That's the reason the two largest search engines in the world, and more and more retailers and shopping sites, are flocking to Edgenet to receive an optimized product data feed. The 1:1 model doesn't work without the best product data possible. And no one delivers better product data than Edgenet.

Remember the old days? Like 2008? Back then foot traffic was one of the biggest desirables in retail. Retailers wanted nothing more than shoppers to walk into their store, shop the specials, stay to peruse the inventory, and be upsold by the staff.

In his latest article, Ad Age’s Antony Young has announced the new old days.

The fabulous site Internet Retailer reports in this article that 50% of U.S. mobile phone owners use their devices to shop online or to assist while shopping in stores. It's a stunning statistic - but one of those emerging statistics that you just know is going to change radically in a short period of time. Remember when Facebook was the big thing because it had 500,000,000 users last year? Yeah, that's 800,000,000 now.

Internet Retailer goes on to describe a burgeoning group of shoppers called "light mobile phone users" who are demanding more from retailers and their mobile device to assist them with their shopping questions and needs. Apps are great. Mobile sites are necessary. But let's lock in on the problem and solution. Are you ready for this?