Have you ever accessed your company’s website with a smartphone or tablet? I can almost guarantee your customers have. Millions of mobile searches happen daily, and research predicts that by 2015 more people will access the Internet through their phone than their computer.
The 2011 Mobile Search Insights Study (conducted among smartphone users by Performics and ROI Research, Inc.) reveals some compelling numbers:
- 84 percent use mobile search to look for information about local retailers (hours of operation, address, contact information, etc.)
- 66 percent use mobile search while watching television
- 71 percent use mobile search to learn more about a product or service after seeing an advertisement
Despite these large numbers, some surveys indicate that as many as 70% of business do not have a mobile website.
Does your company advertise with billboards, company car decals, bumper stickers, or television and radio spots? You can bet customers are accessing your website from their cars or couches — it’s your job to ensure their mobile experience is as good, if not better, than when they access your site from a computer.
Your customers are going mobile; it’s time you do, too.
First steps
Before you hire someone to design and develop your mobile site (or dive into that work internally), do some research to find out what will make your audience happiest.
Establish your mobile audience’s goals
What do mobile users want to do on your mobile site? Are they stuck on a long plane ride and want to read articles or blog posts? Do they come back often to check sports scores or weather updates? Or could they be one-time visitors who wants to know your location or hours of operation?
What your audience wants to do on your mobile site should affect how your mobile site looks and functions.
Choose a development approach
There are several ways a developer can create a mobile site; the goals you set for your website will help determine which approach will work best for you. You can simplify your main website, create an adaptive or responsive layout, or create a dedicated mobile site.
Each of these has their pros and cons, and should be discussed in detail with a designer and/or developer.
Tips
Stay focused
You want your mobile website to be accessible to all, but it’s crucial to cater to the needs of your target audience (the ones who will spend the most time on the site). In trying to please everyone, you’re more likely to frustrate everyone, including your target audience.
Keep your audience’s wants and needs in mind throughout every step of design and development.
Test, test, test
Although there are many smartphone and tablet simulators you can use to see how your mobile site will appear on different devices, there is no substitute for design and function testing of your mobile site on the devices themselves.
Do you want your mobile visitors to visit a certain page, fill out a form, or interact with your site in a specific way? Test—either internally or with a focus or test group—that it’s easy for visitors to perform those tasks.
Keep testing and tweaking until you’ve optimized the user experience for your target audience.
How to get started
For a more detailed look at mobile website design ideas, strategy planning, and best practices, download the Marketer’s Mobile Blueprint to Mobile Websites. This guide has everything you need to get started with your mobile website.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Why Your Company Needs a Mobile Website
Time Out New York Launches New iPad And iPhone Apps, Embraces E-Commerce
Time Out New York is making a big leap into the digital world today, says Aksel van der Wal, who’s president of Time Out North America and chief operating officer of the Time Out Group. Specifically, it’s launching its first iPad app, an updated iPhone app, and a new e-commerce model for all of its properties.
As a product, the new iPad app sounds the most interesting. (I wasn’t able to try it, and also I don’t live in New York, so I’m going off the company’s description.) Time Out specializes in reviews and listings for arts, food, entertainment, and more, and now the iPad app personalizes the experience. Apparently, every time you select content in a specific category, that increases the likelihood that the app will present you with similar content in the future. In six weeks or so, Time Out plans to improve these personalization features, so that content that’s been viewed or liked by similar users is also recommended.
The personalization is based on technology from LikeCube, a semantic analysis company that Time Out acquired last year.
More broadly, van der Wal characterizes this as major milestone in Time Out’s shift from the print business into “more of a digital direction.” And that includes settling on a digital business model — the website now allows transactions, so if you read about a great Broadway show or a hot new restaurant, you can buy tickets or reserve a table. Time Out will also be offering discounts and deals. (Advertising will play a role too. In fact, MasterCard will be the first global sponsor of the iPad app.)
Apparently the new direction can be laid at the feet of Oakley Capital, which acquired a 50 percent stake in Time Out London in November 2010, followed by a majority stake in New York (which operated independently) in May of last year. Time Out says unique visitors to the website have increased 92 percent since the deal, from 967,000 in May to 1.85 million in February.
Time Out London will get a similar revamp eventually, van der Wal says.
I will update the post with a link to the iPad app as soon as I get it. In the meantime, you can download the iPhone app here.
Monday, April 09, 2012
This Year’s Digital Spend Expected to Surpass $98 Billion
2012.04.09
GROUPM STUDY SAYS 2011 GLOBAL INTERNET AD SPEND HIT $85 BILLION FOR 17 PERCENT OF TOTAL INVESTMENT
GROUPM STUDY SAYS 2011 GLOBAL INTERNET AD SPEND HIT $85 BILLION FOR 17 PERCENT OF TOTAL INVESTMENT
Internet advertising hit $84.8 billion in 2011, representing a 16 percent increase over the previous year and accounting for more than 17 percent of all global measured advertising expenditures, according to a new report from GroupM.
North America led the pack in terms of overall digital ad spending with an estimated $34.5 billion; Asia-Pacific came in second with $24.8 billion followed by Western Europe with $21 billion, according to the study, entitled This Year, Next Year: Interaction 2012.
The study is part of GroupM's media and marketing forecasting series drawn from data supplied by parent company WPP's worldwide resources in advertising, public relations, market research, and specialist communications. It was released today by London-based GroupM Futures Director Adam Smith and New York-based GroupM Interaction Global CEO Rob Norman.
The study also predicted that in 2012 digital advertising spending will reach $98.2 billion globally, almost 16 percent more than this year. The figure represents almost 19 percent of all measured advertising investment. In the 2012 forecast, North America once again ranks first with an estimated $38 billion in digital ad spend; Asia-Pacific follows with $31.4 billion followed by Western Europe with $23 billion.
In the U.S., digital advertising spending hit $32.2 billion in 2011, representing a 22 percent share of the overall domestic market and a 12 percent increase over the previous year, according to the study. This year those figures are expected to reach $35.4 billion for a 23 percent share and a 10 percent increase over 2011.
The report also includes detailed commentary on the current state of various digital marketing developments and offers insightful observations on the evolution of digital communications and the inherent implications for marketers.
“At the risk of an ‘oh really?’ response, it’s possible to argue that for the first time since these reports began that the last year has been one of evolution rather than revolution,” Norman wrote in the report’s introduction. “It seems that less is brand new and that a combination of scale of usage of an increasingly social and mobile web, the penetration of devices supported by it, and the continued atomization of audiences and content, in both their creation and distribution combine to tell the story of the year.”
Norman added: “In 2007 we speculated about a world that would be truly social, searchable, mobile, addressable and interactive and illuminated by data that could be collected and applied across all marketing functions; in 2012 that is no longer a matter for conjecture.”
In addition to spending forecasts, the comprehensive, 20-country report also details ad investment in paid search and Internet display as well as providing data on broadband penetration, media time spent online and e-commerce per user data.
Additional key findings in the survey include the following:
• Digital advertising’s share of total ad investment rose from 4.4 percent worldwide in 2004 to a projected 18.8 percent in 2012.
• The average percentage of consumers’ “media time” spent online increased from 11 percent in 2006 to 19 percent in 2011. The absolute number of broadband homes worldwide has nearly tripled in this period to reach 500 million, and the typical country has seen broadband penetration grow by half.
• Aside from general monetary inflation, ad investment growth has two main vectors: aggregate audience hours, and advertising intensity per individual. Average online advertising investment per online user doubled between 2006 and 2011. For 2011, Norway had the highest per-capita online ad investment in the study’s sample--$200.
• E-commerce accounts for about 5 percent of global retail sales today, with instant-on devices, secure and simple payment, vouchering, and the optimization of retail for mobile serving as catalysts for growth.
• Consumer tablet penetration reached double digits in only three of the survey’s countries in 2011: the US, Finland and South Korea. However, take-up is expected to be rapid and nine countries should reach double digit penetration in 2012.
via GROUPM
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MediaCom, MEC and Mindshare. Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our shareholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.
Michael Salafia // Internet Marketing & Designmike.salafia@gmail.com sent you a link to content of interest
http://gigaom.com/2012/04/09/breaking-facebook-buys-instagram-for-about-1-bil... The sender also included this note: Next step: Integrate Instagram content into a Facebook Places map interface. "Instamap" or "Intaplace". Or someone should develop a Facebook app that automatically monitors Instagram and will post photos that were taken at a the business location to their Facebook page.