Last month, we published a report that offered a high level profile of today’s connected consumer. We looked at demographics, device ownership, and how device preferences are starting to shift with different retail categories. We clearly saw that today’s connected consumer is mobile, social, shopping on tablets, spending more, and planning to use her tablet more to shop in the coming year.

So, the next question we had was, “are retailers ready to reach these connected consumers?” That launched the next round of research that we’re publishing today.

We commissioned research firm HawkPartners to assess the mobile and tablet readiness of the Top 100 Internet retailers. The research analyzed the shopping and purchasing experiences provided across tablets, smartphones and Facebook. The results surprised us; among this group of leading e-commerce brands there are few who are fully ready to reach and engage consumers across all devices and channels. There are certainly some that are ahead of the pack, but HawkPartners found a large gap between how consumers want to shop and retailers’ current abilities to deliver.

The key finding was that less than one-third of retailers have optimized their sites for tablet commerce. The rest are relying on their standard websites to deliver an “adequate enough” tablet shopping experience. Some retailers’ approach has been to develop iPad apps to address the tablet shopping market, but one-quarter of these apps don’t allow shoppers to buy directly.

Retailers are more evolved when it comes to smartphones, with more than half of retailers having developed smartphone-specific offerings; but those are still falling short. While more than two-thirds of the retailers have developed iPhone apps, only half of that group offers the ability to purchase via the app.

Social commerce is another channel that is still in its infancy but growing in significance and ripe with opportunity. All 100 retailers we evaluated have branded Facebook pages, but just one (Coldwater Creek) lets consumers directly purchase from within its Facebook page.

So who is doing it right?

Kudos to Gilt Groupe, Disney and Urban Outfitters who were the three retailers that stood out as having the strongest and most robust mobile offerings across the board.

A further 19 retailers appeared to be making moves in the right direction by developing engaging content such as look books, catalogs, editorial picks, etc. However, none of them had applied the dynamic environment or optimized their brand experiences across the full range of smartphones, tablets and Facebook.

What does this all mean?

The tablet’s user interface, in particular, is so well suited to the creation of an immersive and engaging shopping experience. Not to harness it renders the device into nothing short of a small, flat laptop. Connected consumers plan to shop even more on tablets and on Facebook; they are seeking inspiration, an experience that is discovery-based and not limited to the confines of directed purchase typically found on PC-based ecommerce sites. Today, they face a range of inconsistent and unfulfilling experiences. Retailers are leaving their customers hanging. By not treating every touchpoint as a truly revenue producing storefront, retailers are neither capturing the imagination of, nor driving purchases from their highly valuable connected consumers. Fortunately, with Zmags, the opportunity and tools to create new kinds of tablet/mobile and social shopping experiences that drive discovery and profits are available today.