After attending the ICSC Recon Convention in Las Vegas, something became pretty clear to me. As more and more people use the Mobile Web to guide their offline purchasing decisions, brick and mortar retailers will only stand to benefit.

When e-commerce became popular about 13 years ago, there was a battle between online and offline sales. Both practices seemed deadlocked in a struggle for the same customer. Many large retailers jumped into the e-commerce game only after they realized that they must embrace the new technology and sell their inventories to shoppers who never set foot inside physical stores. For some retailers, the process of formulating, implementing, and refining an e-commerce strategy took years.

Fast forward 13 years later, and there isn’t a retailer in sight that doesn’t sell it’s own products online. Well, maybe there are a few holdouts, but what has changed since 1997? People have become more comfortable with the concept of their credit card information whizzing through cyberspace in secure and encrypted environments. Also, the number of users who have shopped their entire lives making purchases online has grown. And that group is continuing to expand.

But my prediction is this: as the web evolves, and the number of smart phone users grow, both will have a great future impact on offline sales for retailers, as opposed to just more point-and-click purchases.

As the web becomes more mobile and social interactions continue to revolve around handheld devices, the research that shoppers conduct before making purchases will get closer to the point of sale. If the average Internet user was miles from a store when she researched a product online (usually at her desktop computer), now that average user with a smart phone in hand might only be meters away from making that same purchase, whether from the parking lot, the food court at the mall, or the store next door.

Mobile-assisted purchases will satisfy the shopper’s immediate gratification associated with offline purchases. Items will be purchased without waiting for items to be shipped. Additionally, the more challenging sale of items like clothing and shoes will only stand to benefit if shoppers can use the web to find out about special local deals and try the product on before making the purchase, creating a more researched and confident sale than ever before.

It all comes down to a shopper feeling as though she has made an informed decision to purchase. If she has stumbled upon something she might like, but hasn’t researched the product, she’ll most likely browse, but pass. If she feels in control of the process and has found a great deal that fits, she will make the purchase. Smart phone shopping will close the gap between the brick and mortar window shoppers and the Internet savvy, ready-to-purchase shoppers that retailers have been targeting online for the last 13 years.