Marketers in the past never had opportunities like they do now. With a mobile device, consumers have a regular connection to brands right in the palm of their hand.
With mobile devices shopping has been evolving and changing as users are leveraging the power of mobile devices to enhance their shopping experiences. In fact, Google found that 84% of smartphone owners use their devices while in physical stores.
The shopping process has grown, in fact, consumers most likely started shopping on their mobile device before they ever entered your store. Due to this growth in the shopping process, brands can extend their marketing strategies. Brands can start engaging consumers in the shopping process before they arrive and continue to interact with users after they leave or even while they are at a competitor’s store.
Key to this process working is data. Companies have access to data now like they never had in the past. Businesses can utilize insights from location based mobile data to help them understand the customer journey and improve the experience.
Location based mobile data is a marketer’s dream. But you can’t use it if you aren’t collecting it, make sure you discuss your intent with your mobile application developer. Your iPhone application developer or Android application developer can help you prepare for a data driven mobile shopping application.
Typically customers are happy to provide the data in order to improve shopping experiences, so make sure you start off by giving your users the opportunity to create a user profile. The data from the user profile can be used to help you segment your messaging and deliver it to users as applicable, rather than sending out one-size-fits-all style messaging.
Additionally, it is easier than ever to deliver your message on a localized basis, providing locations, pricing and deals for each store. It doesn’t matter to someone in Phoenix, AZ if you have deals in your CO locations, make sure you are delivering content relevant to your user’s location to increase interest in your messaging.
Location based mobile data can help you understand which brands or products a user is interested in when they visit your physical stores and allow you to deliver content based on the user’s specific interests. Keeping a user’s interest in a great part determined by relevance. The more relevant your messaging, the more interested users will be.
As you are gathering data plan ahead to use data as part of your planning process to better understanding the sales process and how you can improve user’s shopping experiences.
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By now you have probably heard of the Internet of Things many times.
But you may not yet understand what it is. Maybe the simplest way to think about it is realize houses and other buildings are going to become much smarter and more connected over the upcoming years. You may have already seen this with thermostats.
While many don’t understand the Internet of Things now they will soon as growth is predicted to be tremendous.
Business Insider predicts that connected home device shipments will increase at a compound annual rate of 67% over the next five years (this is faster than smartphones or tablets). This results in an astounding 1.8 billion units they are predicting to be shipped in 2019. They describe connected home devices as all smart appliances (such as washers or refrigerators) and energy related devices such as smart thermostats and smart lighting.
In terms of sales, connected-home device sales will account for over $61 billion in revenue this year, but that number will skyrocket at a 52% compound annual growth rate to $490 billion in the year 2019.
There are great opportunities for forward thinking businesses.
But how do you seize your opportunity?
Start by evaluating the market to look for opportunities that overlap with your business capabilities. Many businesses will have new opportunities where they can extend their products and services in a meaningful way into their consumers homes. For instance, look at Amazon’s Dash Button that lets customers order Tide, Glad trash bags and more than 250 other brands with the touch of a finger.
Are their area of your business that overlap with the opportunities presented by the Internet of Things? Sometimes the answers aren’t always obvious, try to think out side the box and see if you can find a connection that isn’t necessarily the first and most obvious idea. Perhaps speak with an iPhone application developer or Android application developer to see if they have ideas of how to integrate external devices with mobile applications and your products. Application developers are are the front lines and understand the industry trends.
Once you identify areas of opportunity remember that it is all about the execution.
How do you make your idea the most user friendly? How do you make your user experience intuitive? Do you have the feature set and hardware that is right for your opportunity? Are you giving your consumers what they want? or will your idea fall flat because you failed to consider how your customers interact with your brand?
Having and idea is only part of the battle as execution is essential.
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When it comes to mobile, usability certainly is crucial, but you also need to know how to create content for your mobile users.
Reading content from a mobile device is different from reading content on a laptop. Users interact differently with mobile data than they traditionally have done with web based data and content must be created with that in mind. For instance, studies have shown that users pay most attention to the top two-thirds of the screen and content should be optimized with that in mind.
Consider these issues and create a strategy for content before you begin start building your mobile application and then your iPhone application developer or Android application developer can help build an application that works with your strategy.
Here are 4 tips to help you write mobile content like a pro.
Start with a Killer Headline
First of all make sure that you keep you headlines short and sweet. You don’t want headlines that take up half the space on your screen and push key content down below the fold. Beyond that, you want to make sure that a busy mobile user can take a quick look at your title and not only know what the story is about but be interested in it. Assume that your users are busy and distracted while reading your content and that you need something brief with a lot of pop to grab their attention.
Grab Their Attention Early
Space is limited on mobile screens so you want to make sure you start off with key points and information that will grab a user’s attention. If your headline can spark some interest you must have strong enough early content to keep them reading. Its an old copywriters adage that the point of each line of copy is to keep the user reading the next. Perhaps no where is this more true than with mobile.
Don’t Forget Images
It has been shown in studies that on mobile devices people view images more than they look at text. Their eyes are just naturally drawn to the images over text. Don’t forget that it is the natural tendency of human eyes to be drawn to images and keep that in mind while creating content. A well placed and relevant image can help interest in your article.
Make It Concise
Writing more isn’t necessarily better. It’s easy to ramble on; it takes effort to be succinct. Concise writing takes time and work and when it come mobile, concise writing is indispensable. Think about the size of the screen and you will understand why. The key isn’t just to try and be short but rather to write what is needed and carefully edit so you can express the ideas in a succinct, cogent way. Make your content as long as it needs to be without wasting space. Make sure you format your text in short paragraphs that aren’t intimidating to readers. Short paragraphs require less concentration and are preferred by mobile readers.
Like anything else writing great mobile copy requires practice. There isn’t a magic wand you can wave and be a master but if you follow these principles and focus on writing copy that complies with these ideas you will find more users reading your copy on their mobile devices.
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