Mobile devices have become a gateway to information for most individuals. If you think about it, your mobile phone might be the most personal device you have ever owned.
Your mobile device is how you search for local information, shop for goods and services, interact with social circles, perform work tasks, track your hobbies, entertain yourself and so much more. Mobile devices have become a focal point of our lives and our window to the world.
With mobile devices being integral to modern life, brands should approach mobile with the goal of creating experiences. Before you start your mobile app development and contact an iPhone app developer or Android app developer, make sure you understand the user experience that your customers want.
Mobile first
With mobile devices being many customers window to the world, a mobile first approach can help you build relationships with your customers. Users appreciate brands that are working to give them the tools they want and will be loyal to those that do. Brands that have made mobile a priority have been able to connect with customers in entirely new ways and adapt to them like never before.
Mobile is transforming the shopping experience
Smart phones have changed the shopping experience. Stores gave become showrooms to many rather than a purchasing center. Quality mobile experiences can work with the in-store experience to assist with consumers pathway to purchasing. Savvy brands understand that the shopping experience most likely began before a customer ever walks through the door and may end with an order via mobile app days after a visit to the show room.
Provide a unified experience
The combination of a brands’ in-store experience with that of their mobile apps and web site all contribute the the opinion consumers have of a brand. It is important for brands to maintain a consistent experience for customers that cuts across all platforms. This experience must allow orders at multiple points, customers won’t research your app on their mobile device and then order it later off your web site because you don’t offer commerce off your mobile application.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flikr) http://bit.ly/1Bc702r
Mobile is rapidly becoming the primary device for many activities around the world.
Recently Google reported that more searches are now taking place on mobile devices than on desktops. Clearly this shows a massive shift in the way users are interacting with digital data. Mobile is no longer on the fringes and something businesses need to talk about doing.
Mobile is here and it is now a way of life. From search to email, mobile should be many businesses’ primary consideration when preparing for customer interactions. Fact of the matter is that users interact with data differently via mobile devices and if you are trying to use a shoehorn to squeeze your web site into mobile devices you will most likely have disappointing results.
As the mobile application development market has grown and evolved we have found that it is as much about building for customer behavior as it is building for smaller screens. Before you talk to your iPhone application developer or Android application developer, make sure you take the time to understand your customers.
Over the past few years we are finding that it is the customers themselves that are causing businesses to re-explore the notion of the purchasing process to meet their needs. Savvy businesses are taking the time to understand customer behavior and are adjusting for that behavior.
These days a visit to the showroom floor is just as likely to be for research as making a purchase. You will find the purchase journey often started days ago with a customer reading reviews on their smartphone while commuting to work. Mobile has become integrated with the purchase process.
By understanding customer behavior you can provide the tools your customers are looking for to improve the purchase process and increase likelihood of making sales.
Mobile commerce is growing rapidly as the market matures and it is set to be the next wave of growth within mobile. Remember that within the new shopping paradigm, a customer may not buy a product until days after seeing it on a showroom floor or they may want to buy it while reading reviews on their smartphone. You must present a unified experience that inspires confidence whether a customers is standing in your store or set to buy products from their smart phone.
Smart phones have become deeply integrated with our lives and can augment almost any activity we engage in. Brands that understand this can develop mobile applications to compliment their customers’ lives.
One of the greatest advantages of mobile is its ability to respond to a user’s contextual information. Delivering specials or other relevant information when a user is near one of your physical locations can be useful and desirable for you users, many who are willing to opt in to notifications and data programs to improve the quality of their experience. The opportunities for improving the quality of your messaging are endless if you work toward improving user experiences.
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One of the key features of mobile devices when it comes to marketing is geo-locating. Fact is, the opportunity to deliver the right message in the right place is a marketer’s dream.
Geo-location is the ability to determine a smartphone’s location. Clearly an advertisers ability to deliver personalized content to a user, based on their exact location sounds like a fantastic opportunity. The tools are available now, are you taking advantage of them?
Before you discuss geo-location with your iPhone application developer or Android application developer, familiarize your self with the different approaches. While you may know about geo-location you may not understand the details or the differences of different types of campaigns.
Geo-fencing
Geo-fencing allows you to deliver ads, messaging or notifications within a specific perimeter around a location. Typically 5 miles is considered the most effective radius as results fall off quickly at distances further in studies (JiWire). Your messaging must be effective to get results but communications within this range have been shown to have greater effectiveness due to increased relevance.
Geo-conquesting
This is simply a variation on geo-fencing where you create a perimeter around a competitor’s locations and deliver ads, messaging or notifications in that area. There are several cases of geo-conquesting shown to have great results but you must be careful to use it when appropriate. It has also not worked well in cases where a great deal of customer research is involved in selecting a product. Make sure to decide if customers view your product as more of an impulse buy before implementing a geo-conquesting strategy.
Part of the reason that location oriented marketing is so powerful via mobile devices is that phones have become the de-facto source of local information now. Users are quick to check their phone to find local information so location relevant messaging can leverage this to be truly effective. This extends to consumers using mobile phones while on the showroom floor making mobile devices important to purchase decisions.
A well thought out campaign can draw customers in at the most opportune times. Savvy brands are expanding the mobile marking programs with improved data retention and analysis to improve performance, but already mobile ads and location based campaigns are showing impressive results.
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