Dive Brief:

• Staples said that more of its customers are shopping via its mobile apps and are jumping to competitors when they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly enough.

• Staples has been trying to catch up, shifting its focus from its brick and mortar stores to m-commerce, with its first iPad app coming this spring.

• The office supply retailer is foregoing development of a comprehensive responsive design approach and concentrating on making its website and mobile apps faster, more personalized, and capable of handing increased traffic, VP of Global e-Commerce Faisal Masud told an audience at the IRCE Focus mobile conference this week.

Dive Insight:

Staples' approach of refining its m-commerce and e-commerce sites separately and eschewing responsive design caught observers at the IRCE Focus mobile conference off-guard this week. Masud says that Stapes will move all sites into a responsive design platform at the end of the year, but he also says that maximizing the speed and accessibility of separate sites is the best way to ensure that Staples’ customers stick around.

This all sounds a little desperate, but these are desperate times. Masud is right that inept mobile sites can quickly turn off customers, who, if they find what they’re looking for more easily elsewhere, could be gone for good. After all, it’s no longer about stopping by Staples on the way to get gas or while heading home from the office; now it’s all taken care of with a speedy swipe of a finger.