Yesterday I attended one of the Web 2.0 sessions which I quite enjoyed. Speaker – Jason Grigsby with Cloud Four. Topic – “Get me a Mobile Strategy or You are Fired”. Below is a snackable summary of his talk.
“Mobile. It’s on everybody’s lips, but no one knows what to do about it” – John Battelle
We all know that mobile adoption rate is outpacing internet adoption rate, which is quite mind-blowing, but not surprising. Every marketer embraces the concept, however, not every marketer knows how to effectively incorporate mobile experience into the overall consumer experience design. Jason walked us through Dos and Don’ts of mobile strategy which I personally think every marketer should know.
DON’Ts:
- Don’t assume customers have downloaded your app.
- Make sure they can easily get to your business info through the app.
- Don’t rely on flash. Most mobile devices don’t support flash.
- Don’t make finding store locations and hours difficult.
- Simple to use does not mean dumb – don’t skip core functionalities for the sake of simplicity.
- Don’t forget that the ‘U’ in URL stands for universal. “Actually U stands for ‘uniform’, but it’s close enough” says Jason.
- Drive traffic to a specific piece of content, not generic home page.
DOs:
- Know your customers and what device they use. Know your demographics and your geographies. For example, did you know that Blackberry has 40% of global enterprise mobile market and emerging markets account for 80% of worldwide MMS traffic?
- Device detection must be core part of your mobile strategy!
- Look beyond native apps to mobile web, SMS & MMS. BMW turned $70k MMS into $45M revenue.
- Create apps for your most loyal customers and make sure you add value.
- Reward people for downloading your apps.
- Have consistent experience across different devices and offline. Create holistic consumer experience. Example: if you start reading something on one device make it easy to continue reading it on another.
- Understand mobile context. “Create a product, don’t re-imagine one for small screens” – Brian Fling. Understand unique characteristics of mobile devices.
Mobile’s Nine Unique Abilities:
- Personal
- Permanently carried
- Always on
- Built-in payment channel
- Creative impulse
- Social context
- Location aware
- Accurate audience measurement
- Augmented reality
“Always think Mobile First!” says Jason. “Always build for mobile first, not for desktop”. And remember that mobile analytics are different from your regular analytics.
You can find Jason’s slided here.