Dick’s Sporting Goods QR Code Mobile Site Promotion

Dick's Sporting Goods QR Code Mobile Site Promotion

Having a name that tends to make jocks snicker doesn’t seem to have hurt Dick’s Sporting Goods‘s business. The largest publicly traded athletic store chain in the country operates 409 brick and mortar stores in the US as well as a an online shopping site at dickssportinggoods.com.

Dick’s just went mobile with an attractive mobile new Website at dsports.mobi.  It was launched with a 2D barcode promotion on what is allegedly the world’s largest HDTV video screen during the nationally televised Dick’s Sporting Goods Cowboys Classic college football game (University of Oklahoma vs. Brigham Young University) at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium this past Labor Day weekend. Fans with Quick Response (QR) code-enabled phones were directed to the new mobile site for an exclusive offer.  It’s nice to see some mainstream U.S. exposure for 2D mobile barcodes, a technology that is huge in Japan and has great potential for mobile marketing and site discovery.  2D bar codes have failed to take off outside of Japan thanks to squabbling over competing proprietary formats and the reluctance of handset makers and operators to include code readers in most phones.  I’m especially pleased that Dick’s choose to use the QR code format which is the Japanese standard. It’s also royalty free and is the most widely used mobile barcode format in the world.

The new mobile site  has an iPhone app like user interface but uses modest page sizes and is functional without JavaScript  so it should be functional on most phones. The use of several fixed width elements do prevent the pages from reflowing to screen width on many devices with less than 320px wide screens, however.

Dick's Sporting Goods Nobile Website

Surprisingly there doesn’t seem to be any way to actually purchase anything on the site. There is a web form on each item page with a field for the quantity but no submit or “Add to cart” button. I tried it with several different mobile and desktop browsers and was unable to find any way to make a purchase. This is in spite of a press release that clearly says

“The mobile site, which was designed and created by Pittsburgh-based Branding Brand (www.BrandingBrand.com), allows people to browse and purchase a complete selection of sporting goods online.”

Not to mention that the exclusive offer  promoted during the football game launch is apparently a $10 off on online purchases coupon on the front page of the mobile site. Too bad there is no way to actually use it!  I suspect that  after Dick’s spent quite a bit of money to launch their mobile site the shopping cart feature just didn’t get finished in time to make it into the first release. You would think that they would have at least reworded the press release to reflect reality though.

I suppose the mobile site is useful for price comparison while shoping at competitor’s stores until the mobile shopping cart functionality is implemented. There’s a store locator on the mobile site so if Dick’s has a better price you can check to see if there is store nearby. Source: Press Release via Mobility.mobi

Filed in: Wap Review Directory – Shopping

Ratings: Content ****_ Usability XXXX_

Ready.mobi Score: 2 “Bad”

Mobile Link: dsports.mobi

2 thoughts on “Dick’s Sporting Goods QR Code Mobile Site Promotion

  1. Pingback: QR Codes Show You Something Worth Your Time

  2. Excellent commentary, Dennis, and great exposure by Dick’s.

    As the company who “does Japan”, at least where it relates to QR code mobile software, it is nice to see the QR open standard being pushed by more and more marketers.

Comments are closed.