Tag Archives: mobile application development

Creating Superior User Experiences

User experience is of paramount importance to today’s consumers, so making it easy for them to get the information they need or want is a critical part of today’s mobile experience. If your mobile application‘s users can’t easily find what they are looking for, they will quickly abandon your mobile application. If you offer a positive user experience, making it easy and intuitive for users to navigate your application and find what they are looking for, your brand can engage and potentially convert a greater volume of shoppers or develop a solid user base. There are huge advantages to developing applications with a sound usability strategy and a big risk that if you do not you will be quickly turning away potential customers.

When it comes to retail or online brands, offering access to immediate customer support through tools like mobile chat, brands can quickly and effectively engage and potentially convert a high volume of consumers. There is a big advantage to offering real-time, personalized assistance at a customer’s fingertips. These advantages only just start with increased conversion ratios and go on to include items like reducing overall support costs.

Another key area is personalization. Mobile users generally don’t have the patience to sift through irrelevant information on a mobile application. Therefore it is best to make sure that content is based on the consumer’s location, preferences and history. Making your users dig for relevant info will just send consumers to your competition.

With the amount of time and money that consumers are spending on mobile growing, it is more important that ever to offer well thought out consumer experiences. Better user experiences are helping to fuel the growth of mobile and those that are not offering quality experiences will quickly find that users are flocking to those that are offering what consumers expect.

Mobile Responsible For More Sales Than Estimated

ResponseTap has issued a new report stating that they have found that many more shoppers start their purchase process on a smartphone than was previously known.

Most notable on this report is the statistic that sales influenced by mobile devices are being vastly underestimated. ResponseTap found that since marketers were not tracking telephone call sales and linking them back to mobile activity that the overall conversion figures did not reflecting the true picture of mobile’s impact on purchasing. It was previously thought that mobile phones were part of 0.4 percent of transactions but by factoring in phone sales we see that it the number is actual 1.3 percent of conversions.

Adding telephone sales into tablet related conversions makes a huge difference in that area as well, doubling the previous 1.5 percent made via tablets to 3.1 percent when telephone calls prompted by their tablet activity are factored in. Web based sales reflect similar numbers as many do research on a pc before calling to purchase. These findings reflect previous research that found about half (54 percent) of consumers like to have human contact to complete a purchase.

“There are strong implications here that businesses need to be aware of,” says Kimber Johnson, Managing Director, Pacific App Design, “you need to be aware that while customers may not make the purchase via your mobile web site or mobile application, they may very well be starting to research you and your products there. A strong mobile app or mobile web site could be the key to getting those calls ordering your products.”

Full ResponseTap study results can be found here.

Shopping Popularity Advances on Mobile Devices

According to new report from Usablenet, most smartphone owners are reaching out with their smartphone to shop, and not to talk. Over three-quarters (79 percent) of American shoppers and two-thirds (64 percent) of British shoppers are using smartphones for browsing and shopping via both websites and mobile apps.

Looking deeper at the report we find that 70 percent of American shoppers have their mobile phone while shopping in-store and that a full 30 percent of US shoppers report that they use those mobiles to get a better in-store shopping experience. Additionally it is reported that 77 percent of American shoppers prefer browsing via their smartphone but buy using a tablet or computer. Not surprisingly, most American shoppers do not bring tablets into stores with them (78 percent).

“Right now, we are seeing retail shoppers regularly using their mobile devices to check all sorts of store and product related information while they are shopping” states Kimber Johnson, Pacific App Design’s Managing Director. “Currently there is a massive opportunity for retailers to integrate mobile with their in-store experience and we are seeing savvy businesses taking advantage of this opportunity.”

To better appeal to mobile shoppers, Usablenet suggests that retailers should focus making it simple to buy online, or in-store, by expediating check-outs and making it quick and easy to find about product availability or other product data.

The Power of Rich Media on Mobile Devices

In a recent report from JumpTap, new data shows that auto ads are currently quite successful at grabbing the attention of mobile users’ due to the use of rich media.  The data further shows that tablet users are engaging a full 180% more with mobile auto ads that are built using rich media.

Some other interesting items in their data indicate that drivers of trucks are more likely to use Android devices while SUV drivers are more likely to be using Apple devices. And that auto related information is most likely reviewed in the early morning on PCs but on mobile devices early evening is the prime slot.

But it isn’t just auto buyers who are responding more often on mobile devices. Mobile consumers are looking for all types of video on mobile devices. And while many are watching video, others are reading content from publishers. Confirming PQMedia’s recent digital media spending forecast that predicts that digital media content and technology spending will push $1 trillion by 2017.

“We are seeing growing numbers of customers looking to build mobile applications that utilize rich media such as video,” states Kimber Johnson, Managing Director of Pacific App Design, “As the mobile application industry is rapidly maturing this is one of the trends that is standing out. Along with strong growth of mobile application use in retail settings and more and more powerful and functional business applications, this is one area that is making strong headway.”

Along with the growth of the use of rich media, better integration of online display advertising with mobile will be a key driver for increased spending on mobile display marketing next year. As evidenced by the success in the auto industry, we are seeing this need starting to be filled.

Desire for Location Based Offers Grows

A new poll by Harris Interactive found a 19% increase in interest by users in getting local mobile offers since 2009,  assuming the users has given permission for the offers. Harris Interactive asked, “Assuming you gave permission, how interested would you be in receiving mobile alerts about new products, sales and/or promotions from your favorite merchants, restaurants, or stores on your cell phone/smartphone?”and 45% answered that they were at least ‘somewhat interested’. In 2009 only 26% responded similarly.

When those polled were asked what effect a mobile alert for an offer that they could redeemed nearby would have, over 75% said they find such location-based alerts at least “somewhat useful” and “more relevant” than traditional coupons. Clearly this is one of the areas we are seeing mobile applications mature in as users usage patterns starting to become more defined.

According to Pacific App Design’s Managing Director, Kimber Johnson, “Consumers are looking for offers. Smart organizations are including these offers as part of their mobile offering as these offers are valued by their consumer base and often these offers are the driving force for their consumers to keep regular contact with a brand via mobile application.”

Survey participants in additional questions offered further insight and responded that “offers via mobile were easy to act on” (89 percent), “made them aware of retail locations they had previously not known about” (87 percent), “encouraged them to try out new things” (83 percent) and “promoted spontaneous purchases since they are near the store” (73 percent).

Kathryn Koegel, Chief of Insights at Primary Impact Research, says that this increase “suggests that mobilized consumers are increasingly aware of how easy it is to use mobile phones to save money and time, and have come to value offers that incorporate their location”.