Showing posts with label Mobile Computing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mobile Computing. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Mobile Now Exceeds PC: The Biggest Shift Since the Internet Began

If you're still struggling to leverage the website to support goals, you have some catching up to do, as the landscape has recently experienced a tectonic shift.

Mobile Exceeds PC Internet Usage for First Time in History

In early 2014, the landscape in which businesses operate changed forever when Internet usage on mobile devices exceeded PC usage.
Time Spent on Internet Desktop vs Mobile
It has taken considerable time for businesses and brands to embrace the potential of the Internet. Today, most recognize the Internet as a vital foundation for everything from operations to marketing and sales to logistics, CRM, and customer service.
Still, many businesses and brands struggle to truly leverage the digital landscape to meet the expectations of their customers. Many more will struggle with the migration of audiences (customers) to mobile.
The time has come to seriously consider integration of mobile-friendly versions of all mission-critical assets: applications, data, the website, communications, demos, sales materials, customer service, etc.

What Are Consumers Doing on Mobile?

How do consumers use mobile devices to access the Web? According to Online Publishers Association/Frank N. Magid Associates:
  • 99.5 percent access content/information
  • 63.1 access the Internet
  • 62.1 percent check email
  • 49.2 percent listen to music
  • 46 percent play games
  • 41.7 percent download and use apps
  • 15 percent make purchases
  • 15 percent read a book

Shift to Mobile Impacts B2B Significantly

If you imagine that the mobile usage is merely a reflection of consumers logging onto social media, checking email or conducting search, or shopping, think again.
Executives lead the way in mobile adoption, validating the theory that digital assets for a business or brand must serve target audiences 24/7, and not just during business hours.
What Time of Day Do B2B Professionals Conduct Mobile Research
Meeting your customers wherever they work is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity. If you wish to convert interaction to action you must compel the decision-maker.

B2B Decision-Makers Rely on Mobile Devices

Mobile is preferred over the PC for executives conducting research during and after office hours, according to the IDG Global Mobile Survey 2014.
  • 92 percent of executives own a smartphone used for business.
  • 77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business.
  • 93 percent of executives will purchase that product via the Internet using a laptop or desktop.
  • 86 percent use their tablet and 72 percent of executives use their smartphone to conduct research for products or services for their business.
Business Product Research on Mobile
Executives rely upon mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) to conduct business research more frequently in the evenings than any other time of day.

Mobile as a Competitive Advantage

Whether your day-to-day focus is business management, marketing, sales, SEO, social media, advertising, software development, or customer relationship management, the mobile device has increasingly become the preferred tool for work and communication. How quickly and effectively an organization plans, develops, and adapts to deliver quality mobile experiences will likely become a competitive advantage.
Some organizations may continue to view mobile as an "add-on" or supplementary effort when planning for digital interaction with customers. However, those who embrace the shift in behavior and deliver what their customers want and need to make a purchase decision will likely be the ultimate winners.
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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Why Mobile Apps Will Drive the Future of Marketing

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Virtually every day, new evidence emerges of the consumer shift to mobile. According to new data from Gartner, by 2017, mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating revenue of more than $77 billion and making apps one of the most popular computing tools for users across the globe. To put these huge numbers in context by comparing them to the current world population of approximately 7.1 billion and counting, by 2017, every man, woman and child on the planet will have downloaded 37 mobile apps. In reality, considering that a large swath of the world’s population still does not have access to mobile apps or capability to download them, this means that those of us who are wielding smartphones and tablets will be downloading A LOT of apps. Looked at another way, by 2017, mobile apps will have gone completely mainstream, giving businesses a new way to connect with consumers.

Of equal significance to businesses, Gartner predicts that mobile users will provide personalized data streams to more than 100 apps and services every day. Taken as a whole, the Gartner findings anticipate an overarching theme that will continue to gain force and shape the marketing function in the digital age: consumer connection through data aggregation. It is in this way that mobile apps will drive the future of marketing.

Forming Connections with Mobile

Even now, research shows that apps are beginning to dominate the mobile ecosystem. In 2013, the U.S. consumer spent an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on smartphones and tablets. 80% of that time (2 hours and 7 minutes) was spent inside apps and 20% (31 minutes) was spent on the mobile web. Digital marketers focused on producing ever greater amounts of web-based content in an attempt capture consumer mindshare may want to consider this and shift some resources into specific-use mobile app production.
Businesses can utilize specific-use mobile apps to enhance and/or simplify the customer experience with their brand. As mobile device usage proliferates, users are becoming more reliant on mobile apps for search and needs discovery. Businesses should view this not as a threat, but as an opportunity to gain competitive advantage.
The very idea of mobile implies proximity (be it geo-locational or online) in action. Moreover, given that mobile devices are ultimately toted around by humans occupying a physical (and virtual) space, the future of mobile is inextricably linked with social media.
As I’ve written before, the rapid advancement of mobile technology - with its integration of social media and expanding geo-locational capabilities - has elevated the concept of contextual relevance in digital marketing. This is equally important for businesses, as contextual relevance breeds brand affinity- a necessary prerequisite to forming connections with consumers. Today’s social-Local-Mobile (SoLoMo) consumers now expect businesses to provide contextually relevant online content and resources that inform and entertain, or resolve a need or a want. In brief, SoLoMo has shifted power to the consumers, and they know it.

Consumer Connection through Data Aggregation

To survive and thrive in the consumer-driven digital age, businesses must figure out how to provide contextually relevant content and resources to consumers. They need information and feedback- some way to tap into the continuous streams of consumer-generated data to properly measure and refine their initiatives- all in an ongoing attempt to connect with their target audience. In an era rife with data, the greatest challenge for businesses lies not in the data itself, but in its efficient aggregation and meaningful interpretation. The ability to quickly compare marketing initiatives with real-world results allows businesses to continually refine brand messaging and marketing initiatives, using content and context to form deeper connections with prospects and customers.
As the aforementioned Gartner data suggests, mobile apps provide an indispensable tool for businesses to form connections through data aggregation; by doing so, they will drive the future of marketing.

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Monday, October 14, 2013

6 Important Mobile App Features for Your Business

Mobile App Features
From small businesses to large scale corporate companies, Mobile has become the latest frontier. Entrepreneurs now seem to delve more into building a mobile application for their business instead of investing in a mobile friendly version of their website.
The mobile app world offers countless applications, but generating an application that actually adds value to your business is the major challenge. Some applications actually facilitate in creating great revenue for their businesses. Here are 6 important mobile application features that every business must consider.

1 – Social Integration

Integrating social media sharing has become a necessity for every mobile application. The crowd over social media will share almost everything they feel passionate about. Use Facebook or any other social media platform to allow your user to sign up, like, comment or share posts about various events, making it simple for the users to remain engaged with your application.

2 – Allow Customization

Make sure that the users feel safe and comfortable using your app. Allow them to customize the app the way they like it, by choosing colors, fonts and most importantly if it happens to be a social application, allow them to get a strong hand on the privacy settings. This way it gives users the opportunity to alter the application to the way they like it.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

2013: The Year Of Responsive Web Design


2013 The Year Of Responsive
2012 was a pretty crazy year in the world of computers. For the first time in over a decade, the volume of PC sales projected for the year was lower than that predicted in 2011.

So, if PC sales are declining, what type of devices are consumers purchasing instead? Well, it’s been said that in 2013 tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million units, and may, for the first time, top the number of notebooks that are sold.
Apple’s iPad has been a huge success since it was launched and is now the device of choice for many consumers who like to shop online. Last year also saw Amazon and Google gaining market share with their respective tablet devices, Kindle HD and the Nexus 7; however, Apple continues to dominate the market.
Smartphone usage also continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with many more mobile users choosing to ditch basic feature phones; with mobile web usage set to overtake desktop usage in 2014, now more than ever, it’s vital that your business has a mobile web presence.
It’s no longer acceptable to develop a website that won’t be accessible via mobile devices; however not every business owner has the budget to create a separate mobile version of their desktop site (in fact it might be wise not to consider this option due to the negative impact it could have on your business’s search rankings).  Another option is the creation of a dedicated mobile app however with new mobile devices regularly being launched, often with their own operating characteristics, this may not be the most cost effective solution available.
So, given the drawbacks of all these options, what is the best solution for a business looking to have a mobile presence?
Responsive web design is now being adopted by many organisations as standard. It uses flexible images and fluid grids to automatically detect the screen size of the device that is being used to visit a website, changing its size and behaviour accordingly, making it accessible to all platforms. This means that once a site has been developed, it will be compatible with newer devices as they come on the market, making it a future-proof option.
Given the rapid adoption of tablets and smartphones and their ever-changing screen sizes, and the fact that internet users increasingly prefer to consume information and make purchases on these devices, I think it's inevitable that 2013 will be the year of responsive design.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Will mobile internet replace desktop? [infographic]

Mobile is growing, and fast. For example, use of mobile search has grown by 500% over the past two years, while average smartphone usage almost tripled in 2011. 

Many are predicting that mobile internet use will replace the desktop, and it is predicted to overtake it in 2015. 

This infographic, from 34SP.com, sums up some of these stats and more... 


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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Mobile Ad Revenue Outlook: Local Search Leads the Way

Mobile advertising will also move down market to SMBs through a combination of self-serve tools, and local media direct sales channels. We'll also see premiums develop for location-targeted ads – a function of higher performance that's already evident from data shared by mobile ad networks.
local-vs-national-ad-spend-in-mobile
Another important breakdown of these mobile local ad revenues involves format. Though mobile continues to broaden into different forms of "native advertising" (i.e., Facebook News Feed Ads), most mobile ad formats today fall into the main categories of search, display, SMS, or video.
The story here is that search eclipsed display last year as the leading format, and will continue to increase its share in the coming years. This has a great deal to do with evolving devices that are search friendly. But it also has a lot to do with user evolution to brave the mobile web, where search is central.
In this way, search's fate as a mobile ad format is tied closely to the "apps vs. mobile" web debate that faces app developers and publishers. For users, apps have created a warm and fuzzy environment (so search isn't relied upon as heavily). But look for the mobile web to grow at a faster rate.
Much of that will result from its economics: It's cheaper and easier to build and update a mobile website than a native app. And one can reach many more users in avoiding platform fragmentation. Meanwhile app-like functionality can increasingly be achieved with things like HTML5.
It's true that apps still beat mobile web in functionality – especially for media-rich mobile experiences such as gaming. But for lots of app categories like social, local, and news, sufficient functionality can be seen on the mobile web. Here the debate shifts from functionality to discoverability.
mobile-local-ad-spend-by-forecast
App stores have proved to be a safe and easy place for early smartphone users to find things. This is compared to the wild west atmosphere that is the current state of the mobile web. But as the above developer economics set in, the mobile web itself will become more user-friendly and optimized.

That will create more usage, which will in turn boost search volumes; as search is the front door to browser based experiences. Google – with its 95 percent share of mobile search – will benefit greatly from this. That's a clear reason it's pushing for a more user friendly and optimized web (see GoMo).

But back to our forecast, all of these factors will converge and ignite mobile search query volume in the coming years. In addition to volume, the dollar share shift will accelerate from the premiums placed on search ads (compared to display) – a function of their intent-driven and pull-based nature.

Local intent will boost that even further. Once again, 50 percent of mobile search queries have local intent. One year ago that was 40 percent, and the year before that, it was about 30 percent. This should tell us something about mobile local search and its impact in shaping the ad revenue opportunities of the next few years.

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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Smartphones and tablets drive an increase in impulse buying online

A new survey of UK smartphone and tablet owners shows that mobile is helping to drive an increase in impulse buying, 
particularly for clothes and music.


Almost one-fifth (17%) of respondents to the Rackspace survey said that mobile devices have increased their impulse purchases.


71% of this group said that the main reason for the increase in spending is that the process is so simple and the technology is so easy to use, while 

27% said that the experience of shopping with smartphones and tablets is better than shopping in-store.


Clothes are the most popular impulse buy for 41% of mobile shoppers, followed by books (35%), music (32%) and fast food or takeaways (14%).

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

4 Ways to Help Consumers Discover Your Mobile App


mobile-app-discovery-angry-birds
Image via CNNMoney 
There are nearly 1 million apps available in the app store and 1 billion of them are being downloaded every month. This makes app discovery a lot more challenging for developers, perhaps an even tougher mountain to climb than creating the app itself.
For SEOs, app discovery is juicy new territory to break in to.
Here’s a glance at some of the global mobile stats for 2012:
  • 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide
  • In the US 25 percent of mobile Web users are mobile-only
  • Smartphones represent 31.8 percent of all handsets shipped since February 2012
  • 1 in 4 mobile apps once downloaded, are never used again
The app landscape is expanding rapidly, but its current lagging point when compared to non-mobile platforms, is search capability. Mobile marketing is becoming more competitive and to increase app visibility, brands with a mobile strategy should strongly consider implementing optimization strategies for ranking and maintaining a user-base through social media.
Here are 4 ways you can break through the gated app stores:

1. App Store Optimization

Is App Store Optimization (ASO) ”the new SEO”? Many new factors are influencing app store results and Apple's recent acquisition of Chomp, the app discovery engine, as well as Google Play’s use of Google+ endorsements to influence app store rankings are evidence of a significant change in how users discover apps.
Peter van der Graaf shared some great tips on app store optimization with key recommendations for optimizing five important mobile app search elements:
  1. App Name: Include a relevant key search phrase to your app name (e.g., Unblock me: [Puzzle game]). Tip: Apps starting by a letter closest to ‘A’ may also get better display.
  2. App Publisher: Include keywords associated with publisher name (e.g., Zynga: [Social Games Services]).
  3. Keywords and Description: Include keyword rich descriptions, meta descriptions text, images and video.
  4. Installs: Track number of installs and uninstalls to learn why people do or don't like your app.
  5. Ratings and Reviews: Ask for feedback and get reviews on websites, blogs, forums.
One popular method for ensuring that an app’s user base is actively providing reviews is scripts like Appirater, which automatically prompts the user with a message asking for a review. This message can be launched based on specific conditions (e.g., a user has had the app for 30 days and launched it at least 15 times).
Mobiledevvhq is another interesting service to look into. They tout themselves as the SEOmoz for mobile and have created a series of iTunes/Google Play compatible ASO tools to track rankings and help position important keyword results in the app store.
Here is a screenshot of their dashboard:
mobiledevvhq-dashboard-sudoku

2. Social Media

Social media channels are a great way to increase awareness and engage users. Promoting through Twitter and Facebook as well as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can help amplify the reach of your mobile app.
Three avenues you can take are:
  • Facebook Connect
  • Twitter Promoted Tweets
  • Mobile PPC

Facebook Connect

Integrating Facebook Connect to mobile applications is a key way of generating free advertising via the news feed. Developers can get people talking about their app with Facebook friends directly on their platform and increase engagement for the application.

Promoted Tweets

twitter-promoted-tweets-hootsuite
image via Hootsuite 
Twitter has announced that it is slowly beginning to rollout Promoted Tweets for mobile and will use a variety of signals to determine which Promoted Tweets are relevant to users. These will be based on who/what the chooser decides to follow, how they interact with a Tweet, what they retweet, and more.
Build a following on Twitter and connect with other mobile developers. There are members-only Twitter groups for mobile game developers to help each other promote apps and spread the word about sales and promotions. Cross promotion works!

Mobile PPC

A well-optimized paid mobile advertising plan via pay-par-click can increase your visibility and rate of conversion. Mobile users are more likely to click on ads than their desktop counterparts, mainly because they are using their phones when seeking services, like restaurant recommendations, products reviews etc.

3. Blogger Outreach

Traditional blogger outreach is still a very powerful avenue in the mobile promotion space. A favorable review on a popular blog can spike and sustain downloads quite dramatically.
Some major mobile review blogs include:

4. Chomp Paid Keyword Search

Chomp is a popular app discovery search engine that claims (Digg’s) Kevin Rose as well as Ashton Kutcher among its board of advisors. Chomp is redefining app search with auto search suggestion capabilities and search based on function rather than just names. There is a good chance that Chomp will eventually become a new version of the app store.
Chomp offers keyword rankings and monthly reports with detailing search query trends, free vs. paid ratio, price ratios and popular categories. The most promising feature of chomp.com isChomp Search Ads. Along with keyword analytics, paid keyword search is available to promote apps based on specified queries.
chomp-search-ads
Chomp recommends search terms, which subscribers can bid on. They can set up campaigns choosing bid price and budget.

ASO: The Future of SEO?

The global app market will be worth an estimated $174 billion by 2017, according to Global Industry Analysts. App store optimization will be an integral factor affecting visibility and growth in the ever-expanding mobile market.
SEO is already playing an important role in the improvement of app search and will continue to be refined to meet the demands of a mobile user-base. As ASO tools become increasingly available to developers, they will be able to improve the experience for mobile, working off a set rigorous performance metrics that can measure a wealth of user information.
This will help app developers identify how to better engage and retain their app user-base and use this rich data to create better upgrades and apps in the future.