Monthly Archives: April 2015

3 Hot Trends in The Year of Mobile

There is no denying that mobile is no longer the “next big thing”. Mobile is here and mobile is now.

Regardless of what statistic you look at, mobile tends to show growth, and if you are like many business people, making your business mobile friendly is still sitting on your list of things to do.

But you can’t wait any longer.

As consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile their expectations are rising | Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flickr)

According to Marin Software, in a recent report, ad clicks on mobile devices have now overtaken clicks on desktops. Mobile devices now account of 44.8 percent of all ad impressions and 50 percent of clicks. On top of that, IMRG and Capgemini’s recently found that that mobile devices now account for 40 percent of all online retail sales. This number is growing at a rapid rate as it accounted for 37 percent in the previous quarter.

As consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile their expectations are rising. Retailers that are not delivering the experiences that customers want simply move on to businesses that do.

With mobile shopping getting more popular we are seeing growth in related areas as well, for instance 27 percent of customers plan on using mobile payments in the next six months.

Obviously mobile is where business is headed and if you don’t have a mobile application yet, plan on talking to a mobile application developer soon. But when you do keep in mind where the industry is headed and be prepared for the state it is in when you are able to present your business’s mobile friendly face to the public.

The trends are obvious when it comes to mobile in general, but what are the more specific trends to look for in the industry?

Personalization

The relevance of your message is more important than ever. Is your messaging tailored to your individual customers? Are you asking your self if your customers will value your message?

Don’t fall into the trap of putting too much emphasis on trendy messaging while ignoring relevance. You will want to put yourself in your consumers’ shoes when they are using that app. Would you messaging be considered welcome and relevant from that perspective?

Location

Context is more important than ever when it comes to conversions. Mobile is all about location. With mobile it is easy to reach consumers in specific geographies or even at a specific location. By providing the context of location, you increase the power of your message. By reaching people at the right moment, you increase your chances of creating sales.

Travel

When it comes to travel mobile is growing at an accelerated rate. Last year 28 percent of people used their mobile device to book their daily commute, a figure double that of 2013. (BuzzCity) Look for mobile to rapidly become the de facto tool in the travel industry. This presents great opportunities for mobile friendly businesses to appeal to consumers while traveling or commuting.

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Take Advantage of 4 Proven Tactics of Mobile Marketing Success

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Driven by the rapid growth of smartphone use business has changed dramatically over the past several years. Change has been rapid as people moved from desktops to laptops and now smart phones as their primary computing devices of choice.

Thinking mobile first rather than retrofitting your desktop website

Think mobile first rather than retrofitting your desktop website | Photo: Matthew Pearce (Flikr)

This surge in mobile usage has forced a shift in the way businesses approach communication with its customers. Savvy companies are now thinking mobile first rather than retrofitting their desktop website into a mobile platform. Beyond simply taking advantage of your mobile web sites and applications to build your business and engage with consumers, mobile presents several opportunities for advertising. Facebook, for instance, now makes 62 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile (which is even more impressive when you consider that about a 1/3 of their users are logged in via mobile devices).

A mobile first approach allows businesses to create mobile web sites and applications that are not only faster loading but also optimized for the smaller screens of the mobile experience. This includes a focus on proper font display as well as using mobile friendly navigation and movements amongst other items. User experience certainly is crucial and is something that you can discuss with your mobile application developer in detail.

But how do you maximize the value of your mobile marketing program?

It all start with a great plan.

Often looking at examples of what other companies are doing can be a source of inspiration. One such company that is finding success with their mobile marketing program is National Oil and Gas. On top of trying to encourage consumers to choose their stations over the competition, they wanted to encourage customers to enter the stores where the higher margin items are located.

Here are 4 tactics to the success of their mobile marketing program:

Utilize Location Based Messaging

Delivering personalized location based messaging to consumers near stations, National Oil and Gas found a 15 percent acceptance rate. Tailoring offers to users real-time locations, will increasing message open rates and redemption rates. But it is not just about getting more customers, in a separate study, Locaid found that customers that entered into stores because of location-specific mobile marketing messages spent on average 24 percent more

Make Sure You Reward the Right Behavior

To encourage customers into the stores, the offers would require that consumers redeem the offers inside the stores, right where National wanted them. This carefully considered part of the program enabled them to promote sales of higher margin items.

Don’t Forget In-Store Offers

National delivered in-store offers based on the shoppers locations in the stores that turned out to be so effective they could prompt teenagers to make purchases 74 percent of the time. In-store is becoming a bigger focus for modern retailers looking to create compelling shopping experiences for shoppers utilizing mobile applications.

Leverage Loyalty Programs

When prompted to do so, 54 percent chose to join a loyalty program. National integrated these with social media campaigns that allowed them to create future interactions and improve the customer lifetime value. Loyalty programs are somewhat expected it the modern economy by cost conscious consumers and consumers are known to choose vendors based on availability of a loyalty program.

Their success went beyond these individual components, but they are great ideas that can help you get the most from your mobile program. Crucial to the effectiveness of their program is the fact they were able to use mobile to generate data that they were able to analyze to create personalized offers that were tightly tied with the physical location to not only improve profits but to benefit the customer with relevant offers.

Modern retailers know that mobile drives guest engagement by leveraging some of their successes for your business you can experience some of the same successes.

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5 Key Advantages of Mobile Marketing that are Bound To Make An Impact on Your Business

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If you are like most businesses, then you are looking for the ways to acquire new customers.

Mobile marketing has some tremendous advantageous

What do your potential users intend to do with your mobile application? | Photo: Jorge Quinteros (Flikr)

Wise fishermen always go to where the fish are to drop their lines and wise business people do the same. Right now mobile is where customers are which makes mobile the place to be to acquire new customers. It’s growth has been phenomenal and in the near future there is no slowing down.

Mobile marketing has some tremendous advantageous over some of the more traditional methods.

Engagement

Never before have businesses been able to engage with their customers in as many ways as they can now. Savvy businesses give their customers the option to personalize communications to meet their preferences, so you may find the same promotion going to millions of customers via push, SMS, email, in-app notification and other ways, all to meet the individual preferences of the modern consumer.

Broad User-base

Mobile devices are used by practically everyone today and are not limited to particular audiences. Mobile is not just for Millennials, it is for adults as well, in fact the fastest growing demographic of smart phone use is between users between 55 to 64.

Quick Conversions

Mobile is a terrific medium to capitalize on impulse purchases. Businesses that provide a easy to use, intuitive path to making purchase via mobile device can capitalize on the impulse nature of consumers on mobile devices, while business that are unprepared are missing out on sales.

Mobile Messaging Gets Read

Messaging on mobile devices gets read and gets results. According to a recent study by Localytics, 52 percent of mobile users enable push messaging on their devices. Of those receiving the messaging Localytics reported observing an exceptional 7 percent open rate for segmented push messaging.

Search Leader

There are more searches on mobile now than desktop searches and the gap will continue to increase in the upcoming years. Businesses need to make them selves easy to be found where customers are looking for them. Much like businesses needed to be in the Yellow Pages in the 1970s for customers to be able to find them, businesses now must consider both mobile friendly web sites and mobile application development for interested customers to be able to find them.

While mobile web sites allow customers to find you with greater ease, for long term engagement, users prefer mobile applications. Users prefer the functionality of mobile apps and 89 percent of their mobile time is spent on mobile apps rather than the web based versions. (Smart Insights)

Before you contact an iPhone app developer or Android application developer, you should consider your potential users and what they intend to do with your mobile application or mobile web site.

Don’t add in unnecessary features. Focus on key features that your potential users want and don’t confuse them with unneeded features or clutter, if your applications lacks a focal point and clear path users will just delete it and move on.

Make sure you organize those features into and easy to use package that is intuitive. When it comes to user interfaces remember that there is no one-size-fits-all answer, but that if you keep abreast of development trends you will understand how users are used to performing certain tasks. Leveraging this familiarity can make your application easier to use.

Key is to learn basic principles and then adapt them to the specifics of your user base to learn what’s right for your project.

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Understand Your Users to Create Apps that Produce Remarkable Results

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Since the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, mobile devices have changed not only the behavior of consumers, but also their expectations.

Mobile devices help you deliver the right information, at the right time, in an intuitive fashion

Deliver the right information, at the right time, in an intuitive fashion | Photo: John Karakatsanis (Flikr)

We live in a world with 24-hour shopping, gaming, entertainment, access to information, and more all at our fingertips even when we are on the go. Mobile devices have caused a massive shift in the way people interact, not only with each other, but with the businesses around them.

Over this same time frame, mobile apps have grown and improved and now are able to offer powerful user experiences to cutting edge consumers. Quality mobile apps enable their users to fulfill a need efficiently and intuitively. Conversely, application users can become frustrated quickly and abandon poor quality apps.

Mobile Has Changed the Way We Do Business

Each of the past few years has seen accelerating growth in the number of companies turning their attention to mobile app development. This is trend is expected to continue to grow in the near future as more and more businesses are contacting mobile application developers and hiring in-house talent.

While the iPhone was only released a few short years ago, many companies are already significantly behind the curve. At the heart of the problem is a lack an effective mobile strategy. Many companies are releasing mobile applications which fail to consider trends in mobile application development, and worse yet; they do not fully understand their audiences and their expectations.

Beyond business and audience specific considerations, many businesses just do not fully understand mobile. Unfortunately, businesses that find themselves in that position will also find themselves getting left behind.

Stay on Top of the Rapidly Moving Technology Curve

A thorough and well-thought-out mobile strategy is critical to success. Remember, if your mobile application does not address real user needs, it will not create a favorable impression and it will have a high abandonment rate. A well thought out strategic plan can allow your business to invest wisely in your mobile applications.

If you want to stay ahead of your competition you will need to create an engaging user experience for your mobile application. Doing this requires a careful examination of what your business wants to accomplish, but beyond that, you need to look at the audience you are trying to reach and what that audience is looking for.

The goal is to deliver the right information, at the right time, in an intuitive fashion, and if you can do that it will drive user adoption rates and increase loyalty and brand awareness.

What does mobile mean for business? Forrester Research states “In 2015, marketing leaders who have embraced the mobile mind shift will accelerate spending to create an insurmountable gap between themselves — the industry leaders — and the laggards who view mobile as just another channel.”

Where to Start?

To start your process, begin by taking a good look at your customers (potential app users). Try to see your application and business from their perspective and determine what matters to them. You will need to dig deeper than looking at a few numbers though.

UI | UX specialists are trained to understand the process. They can help you understand the key touch points to the process and other important considerations regarding how your user base will interface with your application. UI specialists can help take user reactions and expectations along with your business goals to design applications that will be most effective.

When your in house personnel can work with researchers and design and development teams with these goals in mind, you can build software that meets your user’s needs. Don’t adopt an attitude that you can sit back and wait. If you don’t already an effective mobile strategy, you are already behind the curve.

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Deliver the Personalized Mobile Shopping Experiences that Customers Expect

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Are you delivering the personalized shopping experience that modern customers expect from mobile applications and web sites?

Personalize and enhance user’s stopping experiences in exciting new ways | Photo: TechStage (Flikr)

Businesses around the globe are missing out on millions of dollars in revenue due to their failure to personalize the online and offline shopping experiences according to Webloyalty. Their research goes on to state that more than 50 percent of those surveyed responded that a personalized shopping experience would motivate them to shop at a retailer. Further, Guy Chiswick, Managing Director, Webloyalty Northern Europe, stated that “personalization is the future of online shopping”.

However, their research also found that a full 26 percent of respondents replied that they had never received a personalized offer. Clearly indicating a gap between what customers want and what retailers are giving them with their online and mobile programs,

Personalized shopping experiences are well within the reach of most businesses due to the availability of affordable, high quality iPhone application developers and Android application developers around the globe.

With mobile technology more accessible than ever before, businesses have access to a wealth of opportunity when it comes to personalizing shopping experiences. With beacons or other location-based campaigns, businesses can personalize and enhance their shoppers’ experiences in exciting new ways that can propel sales.

Backing these numbers up, in another recent survey published by Merkle Inc., 46 percent of shoppers under 50 stated that they would like personalized offers for in-store purchases on their mobile phones. Paul Schottmiller, senior vice president of strategy, retail and consumer goods for Merkle, went on to state that “Consumers expectations are high and retailers have never had more options for using technology to deliver differentiated customer experiences.”

Personalization promotes customer loyalty, and loyalty is just as valuable (if not more so) than attracting new customers. Efforts to retain and increase sales from a businesses existing customer base can pay sizable dividends.

The exciting thing about personalization is that not only will customers be more loyal, but that you will find that they are willing to pay for personalization as well. Based on research by RightNow, 86 percent of consumers would be willing to pay up to 25 percent more for better customer experiences.

With data collection easier than ever before, consumers have come to expect retailers to know what they want without even telling them. Most consumers know that modern retailers have that capability and expect it from their shopping experience. Most consumers aren’t surprised by this ability to collect this information, and in fact, most opt in to programs and encourage it so that retailers can personalize their shopping experiences. In fact, according to MyBuys research, 78 percent of consumers are willing to allow retailers to use information from their in-store purchases to create more personalized experiences whenever they shop.

With mobile growing so rapidly and entrenching itself so deeply in the fabric of how we shop, failure to act on the opportunities available to marketers today would be short-sighted.

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