• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, January 5, 2012

Weekend appliance shoppers left wondering about the difference between a “console” and “fully integrated” dishwasher or exactly what an “AccuSimmer” range burner really does can find some answers on their smartphone at the new Whirlpool.com mobile site (m.whirlpool.com). In partnership with agency Arc Worldwide, the appliance brand launched a new set of tools for mobile browsers that help decipher terminology and quickly compare Whirlpool offerings.

Whirlpool Mobile makes more portable the toolset the company introduced last Spring at Whirlpool.com on the Web. In a smartphone browser, the site allows you to drill down to explore all Whirlpool washers, dryers, dishwashers, ranges and refrigerators.

The site has app-like interactivity, allowing the user to tag items for later comparisons, save or share them as well. Numerous detailed images of every offering are accessible, as are good and bad user reviews and a store locator. The product comparison engine produces a scrolling chart of side-by-side specs for multiple products that can be emailed to oneself for later printing.

“The site is a fresh build that uses a common set of data points with the Web site,” says Brad Williams, Associate Creative Director, Arc Worldwide. The brand had been seeing traffic from mobile devices to the main Web site increase by a rate of 1% to 2% a month. The aim was to overcome the vagaries of in-store experiences. “In retail it is a crap shoot,” he says. “You have a varied level of information about a product and we wanted to put more of the information from the site into the hands of consumers.”

Arc Worldwide says the design emphasizes information over promotion. Resisting the temptation of making the hard sell, the mobile site is structured as a tool for better understanding and evaluating model difference -- albeit all from Whirlpool. But there are also glossaries of terms and a basic buyers’ guide that calls out the key decisions a user must make in finding the right appliance to match their needs.

The individual items are cataloged extensively, including direct downloads of product manuals, use and care guides and warranty information in PDF formats. In our use of the site, for instance, the downloaded PDFs could be opened, read, bookmarked and saved into iBooks on an iPhone. In addition to being a reference and promotional tool, the mobile site can become an aftermarket customer resource.

Williams says they chose the mobile Web instead of apps for this first stage of the rollout in order to reach the widest audience quickly. No point-of-purchase push to the mobile site is in place yet, but Williams says that the natural migration of users to mobile resources has already created a hearty mobile audience for the Whirlpool.com site.