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Mobile Commerce, What Every Retailer Needs To Know

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 by Annette Tonti

The mobile phone has become so important to our everyday existence that we feel lost without it!

It is truly a personal digital tool that has transcended it’s “phone-i-ness”. The killer app started simply as the “voice phone” – imagine you could connect live with any person – from anywhere and any time of day. Next, and building this past year, it has been about connecting this device to the Internet – The Mobile Web.

By connecting the mobile device to the Internet, the “phone” has become a personal web enabled information machine. You can get to a portable website, and handle any web based application – anywhere you are. Suddenly it is in fashion to make your website mobile friendly.

Today we are standing at the forefront of the next evolutionary chapter – and retailers need to listen up!

That ‘oh-so-indispensible’ device is about to give your wallet a run for its money.

By linking our personal mobile device to everyday transactions, enter the next “can’t do without” – mobile commerce. Purchase anything, anywhere – and use the device to move currency!

There are 3 formats most often used for mobile commerce today:

1. Text message donations – recent earthquake relief put this format squarely on the map for moving currency very seamlessly – for good! The Red Cross received well over $22 million in text based donations in January 2009 for Earthquake relief in Haiti.

2. Mobile web page checkout – through Google Check out or others such as Paypal and even Amazon, retailers have many options now to create a mobile website and get a shopping cart front and center for mobile buyers

3. Near Field Communication - NFC is a short-range, high-frequency, wireless communications technology that enables the exchange of data between devices over four inches apart. The 2010 Mobile World Congress is underway this week in Spain where a key topic is ‘contactless mobile payments’. It is being tested in many areas around the world now.

With all of this focus on new mobile payment formats, every retailer needs to have mobile commerce on their radar now. Mobile web readers will soon become mobile web buyers.

How will mobile payments help to ease transactions between buyers and sellers? What do you need to do now to prepare for this inevitable future?

We present the top 10 things every retailer should know now about mobile commerce:

1. Mobile Internet usage continues to grow – US mobile web usage alone grew over 110% in 2009. Retailers that do not have a mobile commerce site will be behind the curve in 2010 as more people conduct transactions on mobile.

2. Mobile Drives In- Store Commerce – Mobile search for a retail locations will become among the number one uses for the device. Store locators on mobile sites are a quick way to assure that the mobile consumer will find you when they are out and about.

3. Shopping All The Time – Further breaking the ‘bricks & mortar’ boundaries, mobile retail allows customers to make transactions even when they aren’t in front of the computer.

4. Powering the Impulse – The mobile Internet is great for impulse shopping. Mobile couponing and in store discounts really help to create excitement for buying.

5. Comparison shopping – Mobile sites help customers to comparison-shop while they are out and about – further in store comparison shopping will be huge!

6. Inventory management– Consumers can check in-store availability via a retailer’s mobile site the ultimate great experience for your customers.

7. Marketing – Retailers can ask consumers to opt-in to receive coupons, special offers and ongoing mobile “just in time” specials.

8. Check order status wherever, whenever – A mobile site also serves as a 24/7 customer service representative. Consumers can check their order status right from the retailer’s mobile site.

9. Location-based services – Retailers can use mobile to target consumers who have opted-in and are close to their retail locations. Special promotions by geography will be welcomed by those who choose to receive them.

10. True Multichannel and Brand Alignment – Be there or be square - that's right- your teenagers will get it immediately. The mobile channel needs to be a part of any retail brands offering.

The Top 10 adapted from information provided byGiselle Tsirulnik, Article from The Mobile Marketer

Mobile Cambrian Era – Here We Come

Thursday, December 10, 2009 by Annette Tonti

If we had to pick our favorite geological era - it would be the Cambrian when there was a profound radical change of life on earth. The very rapid explosion of new animal and plant life on earth is a bit like what we are about to experience in the mobile era. Diversification of a great number of organisms occurred over a very short period of time. As we enter 2010 we are experiencing the launch of a huge number of new mobile devices. Some centered around a phone while others are more functionally focused on reading or gaming.

Every one of these devices will have the ability to connect to the Internet.
Get ready for your Internet based content to be seen on any of 1000’s of mobile platforms.
Hint: you’ll want to have a mobile site built and managed just so these devices can take advantage of your content.

Smart Phones on the Rise

This recent IDC Press release tells the story: Nokia, Research In Motion, Apple and Android based "converged" devices continue to rise quickly.

According to Wikipedia there is no industry standard about what exactly constitutes a smart phone. We know one when we see one. Truth is “Phone” will only be a slice of what this device will come to mean to the human race. Why not a “Smart Camera” or a “superintelligent music player”? A smart phone can do a lot and they are built very differently than the more single focused ‘feature phone’, which was really built to make phone calls on the go. One thing we know for sure, the Smart Phone penetration is on the rise globally.

The combination of readily available big bandwidth (3G and above) and these ‘smart’ devices make a compelling reason for people to move to the full featured device. The smart phone market will climb to 37 percent of global handset sales in 2014 with emerging markets as the key growth engine, according to a new report from Pyramid Research. Cambridge-based Pyramid estimates that smart phones will account for a 16-percent share of total handset sales in 2009. Also everyone expects that 2010 will be the year China takes top spot for Smart Phone sales – as iPhone will enter that market. Also from Pyramid, they forecast that Brazil, Turkey, India and Nigeria will be the fastest growing market for smart phones over the next 5 years.

But something else is going on- as smart phones rise in the market – so do a number of other functionally focused mobile devices. For example, this holiday season we've kicked the launch of a number of ebooks into high gear. Like game consoles, these are single purpose mobile devices and the early success of Kindle proves we are more than willing to own a few mobile devices to do everyday things. Nooks, Kindles, the Sony eBook or any mobile web readers all have a chance to own a piece of this rapidly advancing market.

Growth of the mobile web has reached a Cambrian-like level of diversification of devices. You’ll want to think about the state of your business content as it will most certainly be accessed by these mobile organisms. If you develop a mobile website you will be in the best position to capture the market that are already accessing the Internet anywhere they can! Today MoFuse optimizes your mobile content on nearly 5,000 different mobile devices worldwide including Sony Playstations, Kindle and any smart or feature phone. We can help you win in this new era.

The Need For Speed

Sunday, September 27, 2009 by Annette Tonti

Do You Need A Separate Mobile Website? – Revisited

Yes - because people don't want to wait for your heavy desktop site to load on their mobile phone. That is if that big ol' desktop site loads at all!

InsightExpress released a study in September about the levels of engagement among
various smart phone users. They also compared ‘feature phones’ (basic non-smart phones) and desktop sites.

When mobile Internet users were asked to identify the top three elements that most influence their decision to return to a mobile Internet site, they reported:

1. The speed at which the site loads
2. The ease of navigation on the site
3. The quality of the content on the site itself

What is very remarkable is that when a mobile site was available and well designed, smart phone users felt “positively engaged” almost at the very same level as desktop website users: 68% smart phone to 70% desktop site. That means when you develop a mobile website for your mobile audience, you will have satisfied repeat visitors.

On another note, those who access the mobile web on a feature phone (think: basic mobile phone) were only 48% positive about the experience. This isn't shocking really. Most desktop sites simply won't load at all - but if you develop using a platform like MoFuse the site give the feature phone user an optimal experience.

So we know that your audience will be truly engaged with your cell phone website, the study proves that. It's up to you to take the stress out the experience by building a new mobile site that will load in about 1/10th of the time.

When you build a mobile site – you assure: Very fast load time (compare 36 seconds typical of a desktop website loading on a mobile device vs. 3 seconds for the majority of MoFuse mobile sites).

You design good, easy navigation into the site by making relevant content easily available – up front – without a lot of scrolling.

You get to select the content ensuring that is relevant to the mobile audience which means it will be high quality. To read more about the study check out Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Stand Up and Be Mobi Counted

Sunday, June 28, 2009 by Annette Tonti

The first mobile phone to have Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator, launched in Finland in 1996 (source Wikipedia). NTT DoCoMo in Japan launched the first mobile Internet service, i-Mode in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile phone based Internet.

That was 10 years ago!

In 2008 the cross-over happened, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC user on the Internet (Wikipedia). Is there more of a compelling reason to consider making you website mobile friendly?

Earlier this year in Las Vegas the latest numbers were in: the mobile web had seen a sevenfold increase in mobile-friendly Web sites since last year. This reported by dotMobi, the company behind “.mobi” mobile web site naming convention. New mobile sites are on the rise.

When dotMobi first performed this study a year ago, 150,000 mobile Web sites were available. dotMobi now counts approximately 1.1 million mobile site addresses in the world, based on a scan of the largest Top Level Domains (TLDs) in use. The 1.1 million number means that approximately 0.8 percent of all domains are likely to have mobile-friendly content…. In perspective 99.2% of all web sites do not have a mobile friendly site!

As a comparison, Verisign estimates there are approximately 77.4 million “live” PC based websites (with ‘.com’ or ‘.net’ extensions).

Why should you care?

People are looking for your mobile site. In May comScore released a study that showed mobile users (in the US) are accessing the Mobile web 35.3% of the time, compared to 37% for voice and 27.7% for SMS. The demand is growing very fast. If you aren't sure how to get started, check out a mobile website builder like MoFuse who can get your started immediately and at a low cost. You need to be counted on the mobile web!

Mobile App or Mobile Website? (Hint: You Need One Of These For Sure!)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 by Annette Tonti

If you believe that mobile is a strong medium to reach your customers – you need to be thinking about how your brand will evolve on the mobile web. Today you have a few interesting options and they are not mutually exclusive.

As consumers wake up to the idea that they can actually reach the internet on their phone, we are about to see an explosion of new mobile devices; ITouch, Kindle, “netbooks” and even Sony Playstation Portable already are rapidly changing the ‘connection’ landscape.

What is a marketer to do?

First and foremost, every marketing executive should do a quick experiment and look at how their current “desktop” website looks on various mobile devices. Not great? We thought so. Though iPhone may deliver a version of your current desktop site – it is likely not an optimal experience either (too much pinch & zoom is not good) and certainly won’t cover most of the mobile internet user base.

Next question: Do you really need a separate mobile site?

Yes you need a mobile site… Why? One of the fastest growing activities people are doing on the mobile web today is search. The growth of mobile search is soaring! Further Google’s mobile traffic has quintupled since 2007 that growth will continue as smart phone penetration rises around the globe! They are looking for you and it will be important to be there with a great mobile site experience for your mobile viewers.

The good news is that it is easy to make your website mobile friendly. There are a few ways to do this, some require custom work others leverage mobile web tools. At MoFuse we aim to help speed your way to a mobile site. We also take the pain out of managing and editing that site over time. Check us out at: www.mofusepremium.com .

Well then, what about Apps?

The iPhone changed the game for the downloadable application or “App”. Apple got the storefront right and helped to ignite the mobile app as a standard in the mobile ecosystem. Today over 1 billion apps have been downloaded from the Apple iPhone app store alone! Everyone else has followed- so consumers can also buy downloadable apps from carriers like Verizon or newer storefronts just for phones such as Google’s Android or Nokia’s new Ovi. Apps are cool, often fun, and useful - those are the key elements you will want to architect into your app if you go that way. Today about 25 million people tap into apps, Cnet reports that the number of users who will tap into the App store will be at 100 million by 2013!

While having a mobile site is ‘table stakes’, deciding to go with an app requires another level of consideration. The growing number of mobile app options is staggering. Today Apple offers over 40,000 apps in their store. Nokia is about to release their app store, Ovi with over 20,000 apps. The Android store is built to grow apps even more quickly as they offer an ‘open’ environment for programmers. Don’t forget the Blackberry app store… Wheeew! So the first question is where do you fit in? Should you build an app for each individual device (store)? Just for iPhone or Blackberry?

Second consider how will people find your app? Finding a brand’s mobile app will continue to be a challenge as apps multiply quickly. Standing out in the app crowd is a key issue for marketers.

Third, what should your app do? You’ll want to consider how to get the most brand engagement as the data shows that apps with practical use work best at long term, continued usage.

That said – is an app right for every brand? The answer is no- not every brand or storefront needs an app. Today they are the “new” thing but longer term the mobile ecosystem will evolve.

We believe the pattern of usage of the mobile web today makes it imperative to have a user-friendly mobile site that works on every phone (like you can build at MoFuse). Depending on your business objectives you should consider apps carefully and of course SMS messaging.

Check out mobile web tools that can help you get a new mobile site in a hurry.

What Should My Mobile Site Do?

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Annette Tonti

As phones get smarter and mobile browsers get better at rendering your desktop site, many ask the question: “Why do I need a mobile site at all?”   The mobile experience is not about shrinking your site to fit on a tiny screen, rather it is about communicating with your customers when they are in an entirely new context. No matter the certainty of new devices, faster browsers and higher bandwidth in the future, the mobile experience merits its own design! Let's get started to make your website mobile friendly.

It all starts with the user- they are in a different ‘mode’ or context when they are using a handheld to access your site. The point being, your user is mobile and their needs at that moment will be quite different from that of a desktop viewer.   Your full website on a mobile screen would be overwhelming at best and a major annoyance at worst.

Rethinking Mobile: How do I begin?
Mobile Web Development

As usual, the first thing to do is to step in to your customer’s shoes.   If someone is accessing your site for a mobile device what are the kinds of things they would want to do there?    Will they read your latest article, find a store location or perhaps check to see if you are offering a special promotion?

Consider some basic aspects of the mobile user: They are likely out and about and time is an issue for them. They are looking for something more specific from you – either a recent article or some information to connect with your brand, maybe they want directions to your storefront.   By the way, they are holding a device that can make a phone call so consider adding voice interaction (can you say “click to call”).   The device probably has a smaller and perhaps less comfortable keyboard than the desktop- so you’ll also want to consider what keystrokes you will ask them to perform.

Less will always be better- that is the primary rule of converting your website to mobile.

Here are some questions to consider when you are making a website mobile:
•    What is the context of the average mobile visitor?
•    What are the goals of the mobile user?
•    Why are they going to your mobile website at this time?
•    What are they likely and unlikely to have any interest in?

MoFuse Top 10 Rules of Mobile Website Design

1. Keep it Simple
With over 5000 devices and screen sizes, simple layout is the only way to go

2. Make it Convenient
Put most important information at the top, easy to access

3. Speed Up Their Use
Think less keystrokes, use radio buttons or dropdowns to get data entry when possible

4. Don’t Annoy Them
If you use images use jpeg or gifs to make them quick to load, nobody likes to wait for a slow loading site

5. Pay attention to Navigation
MoFuse ensures a ‘back’ button on every page, nesting topics leads to quicker understanding

6. Consider Color Contrast
Make sure text shows up against a pleasant, yet contrasted background for easy reading

7. Connect With Them
If it is appropriate for your business type, enable them with a Click to Call button, use the phone’s core capabilities

8. Help Them Find It
A search bar is more than a convenience; it is a time-saver and often their quickest way to get answers

9. Keep Them Up To Date (and make your job easier)
Use RSS feeds to populate your mobile site, whatever you use on your desktop site should work fine

10. Listen and Iterate
Just like with your desktop site, you will learn as you go and it is easy to make changes with the premium site builder

For more information on Best Practices for Mobile Design visit the W3C guide: http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/

To get some ideas on the best new mobile site designs you can check out: http://www.mobileawesomeness.com

MoFuse has a platform that helps you build sites for mobile devices around the world. Find us a www.mofuse.com