The company is planning to introduce an iPhone application in the company weeks. Aéropostale tapped Usablenet to develop its mobile offerings.

“We have over 5 million Facebook fans that are engaged and active with our brand on a daily basis,” said Scott Birnbaum, senior vice president of marketing and ecommerce at Aeropostale.

“Creating this shop was a natural step in completing the experience of liking and sharing with friends to then being able to buy right in this environment,” he said.

Aéropostale, Inc. is a mall-based, specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, principally targeting 14 to 17 year-old young women and men through its Aéropostale stores and 7 to 12 year-old kids through its P.S. from Aéropostale stores.

Usablenet’s platform lets companies in all sectors to extend their brand to consumers across multiple channels, including mobile phones, mobile applications, tablets, Facebook, in-store kiosks, and other platforms – with minimal impact to the client’s IT resources. It’s clients include Amtrak, Delta, Estée Lauder, FedEx, Hilton, Marks & Spencer, Sprint, JCPenney, Victoria’s Secret, and others.

Mobile shopping
Via the mobile app, consumers can shop by category, such as girls, guys and sale.

Consumers browse in-store coupons and see if there are any available.

The mobile app lets consumers track their order, find the nearest location and see what’s currently in their cart.

Shoppers can also use the search function when they are looking for a specific item.

Additionally, the company’s mobile site is being relaunched in HTML5 as part of the Usablenet Mobile 2.0 platform.

Aeropostale had a mobile optimized-site previously, but now it includes advanced features enabled by the HTML5 redesign like enhanced image galleries with “tap tap zoom” functionality and location-aware features.

Facebook intergration
In addition to rolling out new mobile apps, Aéropostale is letting users complete transactions with its new fully-integrated Facebook Store.

In addition to being able to buy from among Aéropostale’s entire inventory, the integrated Facebook ecommerce store lets users to easily ‘Like’ and share items and purchases with their Facebook network – leveraging the viral nature of Facebook’s news feed.

“Aeropostale is a leading teen fashion retailer with nearly 1,000 stores,” Mr. Birnbaum said.

“We are always looking for ways to engage and excite our customers and we know that social media is part of their every day lives and we are happy to be a part of that,” he said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York