Bill Hanifin
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Belly is one of the fastest growing loyalty solutions for local merchants. Offering an escape path from paper punch cards, Belly places an iPad on the merchant’s counter as an interface to its system and for customer identification. Merchants are able to customize their offers to customers and can influence the blend between discounts and other freebies with events and unique experiences that delight customers and keep them coming back. For local merchants with limited budgets, Belly makes sense.
As has been heavily publicized, Apple issued an operating system upgrade iOS6 shortly after introduction of iPhone 5. The potential impact of the Passbook app within the upgrade is to have a META Loyalty effect over the longer term as the mobile handset begins to fulfill predictions of the device as the new definition of “don’t leave home without it”.
Belly seems to be on top of its game as it just released that it has developed a functioning application within Passbook. I’m an Android user and instead upgraded to iOS6 on my iPad. Surprisingly, finding Passbook in that environment is about as much fun as arriving late to an Easter Egg hunt. In other words, I’m still looking for the egg.
My ineptitude or poor Apple design aside, the Belly app allows anyone playing the game to locate a Belly business, tap “Get Pass” and be able to collect and track rewards within Passbook. I’m viewing this from the outside for now, but Belly has promised to deliver an Android version of its app in the near future.
On that note, I wonder if Belly and other loyalty players have noticed that Q2 2012 Smartphone sales in the US show Samsung to the highest selling manufacturer and Android the most popular operating system. As standard practice, if I were developing loyalty apps for smartphones today, I would not release anything less than versions to serve both the iPhone and Android users. Sorry to say, but Blackberry users might have to wait given its declining market share.
The founders at Belly have been smart to recognize that “Loyalty to a small biz isn’t about coupons and discounts”. CEO Logan LaHive added the winners in this crowded space will the ones “who creates the model with the least amount of friction, the most engagement in terms of users”. Judging by the millennial research we have in our files, Belly will be successful if it can keep its eye on that simple objective. Quickly moving to integrate with Apple’s Passbook was a strong step in that direction.
