While our annual 2010 State of the Retail Industry report delineates the challenge for retail brought about by consumer behavior changes in reaction to the great recession and the rapid adaption of mobile technology—many of those challenges will take several years to address. To find seven things that retailers can do right now, we asked our experts.

Scott Jeffrey, Chief Creative Officer 

Push for differentiation. There is no time to rest on your laurels. Realize that innovation isn’t a stage, it’s an ingrained brand behavior. In fact, stop thinking of innovation as a  “next step” all together–”step” as in a phase of something that stops and starts, or merely cycles through.

My ideal retail brand would be one that never completes a store design prototype. The “never done” mentality is always asking, “What else? What else can we do to make it better?” That type of thinking requires courage. Belief in the importance of change. Granted, not every one of your new ideas will be a game changer, but once you entertain doubt and back off, you pretty much lose momentum. Particularly now, when the customer expectations are so far ahead of what most retailers are delivering in terms of the brand experience.

The minute you rest on your laurels and let your brand and your stores get outdated, you have a really big, hardest-to-do maneuver on your hands: a turnaround. If you have a fleet of any size, you’re in danger of being too big and too rigid to manage a turnaround. But if you’re a constant seeker, a brand that remains loose and nimble, the maneuvers are much smaller and easier to manage. Your creative adjustments and transitions will be happening all the time. Knock down any silos in your way and get to that mindset as soon as you can.

Bill Chidley, Senior Vice President, Shopper Sciences

Consumers’ rapid adoption of the smartphone means it’s time to start thinking about connecting and communicating through that little screen. To make the most of the opportunity to drive demand, mobile optimization should be a top priority for your brand. It’s all about being in the game. Don’t try to justify mobile initiatives with ROI.  Move forward with a reasonable hypothesis and prepare to learn and adapt.

Don Rethman, Senior Vice President, Architecture

Consider doing a site survey. Do your shoppers expect to share their shopping experience instantly? Do you plan to make fast calls to action in the store? Your building needs a wireless-based backbone to support that, with wireless connectivity that allows for transitions.  This goes even beyond the creation of mobile hot-spots. Buildings must have a distributed, robust and flexible IT infrastructure which will allow technical access to all spaces. It helps if you’re working with architects who are aware there is such a thing as a path to purchase so they can help create a store that increases productivity and doesn’t skimp on the brand experience.

Amanda Yates, Vice President, Strategy & Analytics

It’s vital to map the “customer journey” to understand where best to make the wireless investments, as well as other investments that help your brand drive choice. Mapping will provide the insights that will help you gain advantage and protect sales by offering shoppers what they want in the modes they desire. Not every retailer will need a full-blown program, but each must understand the needs of its customers, what information and access they are looking for and where or how they want to access it. Once these insights are known, the appropriate level of investment and how to spend it will become much clearer.

Dave Nixon, Executive Director, Digital Strategy

The multi-channel ideal is a seamless transition from the physical shopping experience to the virtual experience through every digital touchpoint–one that’s painless for the shopper and profitable for the retailer. However, for most retailers that’s not the first thing you can do. There will be silos to take down, brand strategy work and brand engagement initiatives to adopt before that nirvana is reachable. I’d like to elucidate further on what Bill says (above)—“Get in the game.”

Companies that spend too much time planning their next technology steps will find themselves playing catch up to those that are already moving. One of the main benefits of digital is the ability to deploy it quickly and then modify or adapt the solution depending on the performance metrics for success. In that respect, adopting new digital platforms into your channel strategy is less expensive and presents less risk than physical channels. The time is now to leverage digital technologies for increasing revenue, efficiency and customer loyalty.

Kris Medford, Ph.D., Director of Shopper Sciences

Get to know your shoppers again. Segmentation that is a few years old is downright archaic so make sure your insights are recent and actionable.  Who are your shoppers—both those in your store today and those you want in the future?  What’s important to them from a digital perspective, and how can you use digital help to make your brand be more relevant to their lifestyle?

Justin Wartell, Senior Consultant, Brand Strategy

The physical store needs to evolve from its position as the “jewel in the crown” to a “tool in the arsenal.”  For retailers, the most important thing that can be done right now is to (re)examine the relationship between the physical brand experience and all of the other expressions of the brand.  Brand experiences are inter-connected organisms that create an overall customer feeling about the brand.  By understanding the role that retail plays in the context of the other touchpoints that are, or can be, deployed, retailers can drive loyalty, reputation, efficiency and value across their organizations. 

Once. Twice. Yes, starting very soon, Apple will have done it for a third time: changed the way we buy and listen to music. Apple acquired digital music startup Lala in December and shut the site down in May, leading tech pundits to speculate on the coming of “an iTunes in the cloud,” once the streaming music service is incorporated into Apple’s business model.

Although Apple won’t comment on its plans, as a loyal Lala.com user and Apple fan, I’m fully expecting to enjoy a cloud-based iTunes experience in the near future, and I think it’s great that Apple continues to advance their retail strategy and break paradigms of the industry by sourcing great ideas, making them profitable and bringing them to a larger audience.

I look forward to having full access to my music library anywhere an Internet connection is available, as well as being able to add/purchase songs from any computer with the added benefit of instantaneous downloads to mobile equipment. I hope Apple is able to keep some of Lala’s unique features, such as letting customers listen to an entire piece of music for free before purchasing it. Also, I really appreciated being able to pay 10 cents for the rights to stream a song an unlimited number of times from the Web as opposed to downloading a song.  I think Apple’s genius lies in asking questions like: Why do I have to download music?

Okay, I admit, I’m a technology laggard, but for the sake of “being in the know,” I have embraced the iPhone and downloaded those apps that I was told were “must haves.” So far The Weather Channel, Facebook, and Mah Jong have proven the most engaging. But here is one I’ve tried that I was told would revolutionize my grocery shopping…

GroceryGadget. In theory, this should be a great one. Create your shopping list, take photos of preferred brands (so when Dad shops he knows what to buy), tick off your items as you shop, and the list recreates itself in the order products are shopped for next time.  Total winner right? Not so much.

Imagine pushing your cart down a crowded grocery aisle, baby in seat, purse hanging off shoulder (or shoved in baby’s lap), iPhone in purse (because let’s be real—holding a slippery, expensive piece of electronics while pushing a heavy cart whose wheels are probably not working properly just isn’t realistic), and scanning shelves. 

You’ve found the product you want, throw it in the basket, now…(1) pull the iPhone out of purse, (2) swipe the phone on, (3) scroll down the list to find your item on the list, [I’m presuming you launched the app before you entered the store to “save time”], (4) click button to turn iPhone off [can’t risk using up precious battery life in between items], (5) put iPhone back in purse, move on down the aisle. Five steps! Each time you check an item off your list!

The traditional list method? Three steps! (1) pull written list and pen out of purse when entering the store, (2) scratch off item with pen when the item goes into the basket, (3) put pen back in purse when checking out. The list presumably has been crumpled in your hand while shopping and will now be thrown out by the cashier. 

Thanks iPhone, but I think I’ll stick with my old method…that is, until my grocer of choice uploads my loyalty card data and I can download my preferred brands and most-frequently shopped items onto a list on my phone without ever having to create anything.

So who really is using all these apps for the iPhone? Who is creating them…and have they talked to us, the end users? Have they really figured out what we need, how we’re going to use it, and what our current circumstances are that beg for some sort of improvement? I’m all for simplifying my life—fewer steps, consolidated tasks—bring it on! But technology for technology’s sake…no thanks. I’ll keep searching for the app that is really relevant and meaningful.

So with much fanfare, and at least as much controversy, Apple’s iPad has been released to the masses. Okay, I admit it, I ran out and bought one the day the 3G model was available and I also admit that I’m a bit smitten with it. I have no doubt that it will change my behavior in much the same way my iPhone did. But as much as the general public was anticipating the launch, I wonder if retail wasn’t equally as excited about it as part of the digital retail experience of the future.

From what I’ve seen so far, I can use it as a creative tool (no more losing my pen cap thanks to the sketch app). And I’ll be more efficient with my time away from home.  I can imagine that, put to the right use, a device like this has the ability to bring a different set of efficiencies to retail.

Maybe the iPad and the inevitable wave of competitors will have the ability to transform my experience at checkout. Maybe checking in at a hotel will be easier. Maybe big, clunky counters will become the symbols of a time when associates and customers weren’t connecting.  Maybe the augmented reality apps will give retail a new way to resonate with customers that both informs and delights. Maybe benefits for retailers and customers alike are in store, pun most certainly intended.  Maybe those customers walking out of an Apple store are leaving not only with an iPad, but a buyPad as well.