• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, July 15, 2013

Mobile technology is evolving to do more behind the scenes work in a continuing quest to enhance the customer experience.

One case in the hardware category is how the Samsung Galaxy S4 can tell when a user turns away from the phone screen, so the phone can auto-pause a video, for example.

There are other efforts underway that also aim to make mobile shopping a little easier.

Many of the companies that power many of these efforts are far from household names, though what they do can impact millions of shoppers.

Over the past several months, many visitors to the mobile and desktop websites of Neiman Marcus may have noticed that their experience between screens was getting a bit more seamless.

The retailer has been using a connection to ‘big data’ to identify customers by their shopping behaviors and then match content for them no matter which screen they shop from.

The idea is that for shoppers who are seeking certain items while on the desktop should not have to sign in or start all over again when they move to mobile, especially while near or in the store.

Neiman Marcus has been using a platform from California-based Bloomreach, which after several years specializing in search, is moving into mobile commerce in a big way with  Bloomreach Mobile, using what it calls cross-channel-optimized mobile search and discovery.

With Nieman Marcus linking into the system, the Bloomreach engine continuously detects and interprets consumer expressions of intent and behaviors when using both the mobile and desktop sites of the retailer.

A feature on the Nieman mobile site gives users a one-click “more like this” feature, so they tap photos of products they like and are instantly shown more items like that.

The system continually ‘learns’ the shopper’s preference to increase the relevance of items to suggest later.

The behind-the-scenes big data crunching allows a retailer to anonymously identify users visiting its website on a desktop and a smartphone and link the shopping histories together.

The company says it generally takes a couple of days to make the initial correlation and reports that revenue per visitor is up to 40% higher once they start receiving the enhanced shopping experience.

Users of the more-like-this feature generated 150% more revenue than those who haven’t used it, according to Joelle Kaufman, chief marketing officer of Bloomreach. The system identifies behaviors over time and makes product suggestions based on those behaviors.

The mobile shopper may never know or care about the ‘how’ but may become aware of the increased relevance of products in their mobile shopping experience.