Category Archives: mobile application development

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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Embrace the Opportunities Created with Mobile Marketing

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The business world has changed in tremendous ways over the past couple decades. It has become increasingly more and more high-tech and high-touch. This technology has allowed for a new focus utilizing data in ways that were only imagined a decade ago. Businesses are now able to connect with the consumers at the beginning of supply chains and create high quality personalized experiences throughout.

With the changes in technology, businesses have an tremendous opportunity to transform and increase their market share. But be careful not to think change is a luxury, business is changing and those businesses that don’t adapt will be left behind. Whether you are actively altering your strategy to meet changes with consumers and technology or are dragging your feet and making changes begrudgingly, you will need to understand and address these issues or you will be left to watch your forward thinking competitors increase their market share.

Mobile applications allow businesses to address the needs of modern consumers

Take advantage of technology to address the needs of modern consumers | Photo: Jason Howie (Flickr)

First the Internet, and then smart phones, gave consumers increasing amounts of accessibility to brands and product information. Over time consumers have come to demand quicker and easier access to products, as well increasing amounts of information about the goods or services, which items are available and help choosing between them.

In fact, brands must now understand that it is their consumers who are dictating what a company must do in order to receive their business. The old school model of cutting prices to entice consumers had evolved as modern brands now use data to understand their consumer’s preferences and deliver exceptional, personalized shopping experiences based on what their consumers want.

Mobile applications are a perfect medium to deliver personalized shopping experiences to your customers. Before you start your iPhone application development project or your Android application development project. make sure you understand what modern consumers are looking for and incorporate these features into your applications.

Customization

At one time people sought to ‘fit in’ with their peers, but times have changes and more and more we see that the cool is now days based on individual style. The modern consumers is partial to exclusivity. Businesses must understand this and design their mobile applications in a way that allows consumers to account for personal preferences. There are a couple ways to do this, the first is to offer customizable products to you customers. This may not always be feasible, nor may it be the right approach for your business. Another way that you can offer customization to your customers is through targeted marketing strategies and options for users to customize their shopping experience. A simple change like giving your customers options to control push notifications can result in a big improvements in engagement. But don’t stop there, industry leading apps offer curated choices for users and smart navigation that can transform a mobile device into a powerful shopping tool. Mobile apps can be programmed to learn the preferences of users over time and then customize product suggestions to each user’s preferences.

New and Now

Consumers no longer just want something new, they want something new right now. Businesses now must offer fast and faster delivery as consumers are not just looking to buy something new, they want it to arrive immediately after they make the purchase. The Internet and smart phones are perfect tools to cater to your customer’s desire for instant gratification as you can either deliver content instantly to their mobile device or you can give them real time updates on shipping or their product to keep them involved in the process.

The Line Between Regular Life and Work has Blurred

We are seeing lines between work hours and personal time eroding as smart phones allow people to work anytime and anyplace. The Internet and mobile devices gives people the option to spend work traditional hours at leisure and to opportunity to address work issues in the hours normally thought of as being for personal time. Our lives is becoming more integrated, which creates new opportunities for marketers in determining ways to make contact with consumers and their changing lifestyles.

Savvy businesses are embracing the opportunities this technology present and their ability address the needs of the modern consumer.

While mobile marketing is relatively new, it has advanced by leaps and bounds in just a few short years. In the near future expect to see tremendous growth in this area including items such as mobile point-of-sale promotions and other in-store strategies leveraging the strengths of data and mobile devices.

Information has always been important in business and no time more so than now. Businesses need to be as informed as possible about their consumers to be able to target marketing strategies that will appeal to them. The more specific and personal that businesses can be with these strategies, the better the results will be.

Many brands are yet to capture the data available through their customers mobile shopping experiences and to utilize it to improve their users experiences, but as mobile marketing continues to mature the businesses that do not adapt to their customers will be left behind more strategic and forward thinking competition.

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