When Web Meets Mobile, Brand Meets Hand

Aug 13

JonathanMobile Internet , , , No Comments

Yesterday Google officially launched their Chrome to Phone extension. This concept, which was introduced at the recent Google I/O conference in May, is a simple: If you use the Google Chrome browser and have an Android phone running Android 2.2, you can install an app on both that allows you to instantly transfer whatever web content you are consuming to your mobile phone.

As they usually do, Google has created a video demonstrating the concept:

Cool, right?

Variations on this already exist for Firefox and there are rumblings of it being expanded to other mobile operating systems.

While you would be right in saying this is really only relevant for a small subset of the overall consumer market given Chrome’s and Android 2.2’s market share, that argument won’t hold water for much longer. Availability across other browsers, porting to other mobile OS’s, Android’s skyrocketing market share and ever increasing Smartphone penetration mean wider use is very much on the horizon.  And can Apple really be far behind with something similar?

It’s such a powerfully simple and useful application that uptake is inevitable.

What it spotlights is the need for brands to have a mobile-friendly web destination (as if there weren’t enough reasons already). If consumers are engaged enough with a piece of content to port it from web to phone, it better be a good experience for them on their mobile devices. You content is going for a walk and you’ll trip consumers up if it’s not optimized for the mobile context.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere how full web capable browsers with pinch and zoom functionality is a weak excuse for not investing in mobile web properties. Pinch and zoom is not an innovation. It’s a stop gap at best.  Full web browsing on a mobile device is an awkward experience. It requires additional and unnecessary consumer actions and neglects the fact that mobile context brings with it content and design distinctions.

This is why native mobile apps are so popular. They feel natural on the device. They meet user expectations for a seamless, scaled and efficient experience.

I feel that good marketing makes it as easy as possible for consumers to interact with your brand, your product, your service when they want and how they want.

Welcome to web to mobile world. It’s where brand meets hand. Don’t have sweaty palms.

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How To Roadmap Your Mobile Web Development

Jun 01

JonathanMobile, Opinion, measurement , , , No Comments

Note: This article was originally written for and appeared on MobileMarketer.com

I sat recently on a panel about mobile marketing analytics at the eMetrics Toronto conference.  It was a wide ranging discussion on marketers’ use of mobile advertising, the mobile web, apps and even SMS, as well as a debate on how mobile campaign success should be defined and measured.

While my fellow panellists and I were not short on opinions, it was an audience comment that struck me as particularly revealing and raised a number of important issues for brands building their mobile web properties.

The comment went something like this:

“We’ve built a number of mobile websites for clients but we find that when mobile users visit the full web version, they stay on that version of the site even when presented with an option to switch to a mobile optimized view.”

Scary stuff if you’re invested in the mobile web space. But let’s unpack this observation a bit as there’s a lot we can learn here.

Now, it wasn’t the right forum to ask a ton of follow up questions and I didn’t get to speak to the gentleman who posed the question after the panel, so I’m going to make a couple of assumptions:

  • The full web version of the site is served up as default regardless of whether the visitor comes from a computer or a mobile phone.
  • Most visitors tracked or referenced had devices with full web capable browsers such as an iPhone or Android device.

There’s also some important information that we just don’t know:

  • Who are the clients in question? What is their business, what are their products or services?
  • How are the full web sites built? Flash heavy? Mostly HTML?
  • How prominently was the ‘mobile view’ link displayed?
  • What is the content being consumed by mobile visitors and how does that compare to a wired visitor?
  • How do mobile visitor site visit times, page views per visit and bounce rates compare to wired visitors?

When I heard the remark, I proposed that this situation actually created a great testing point for him and his clients. Instead of having the full web version set as default for mobile browsers, use device detection and serve up the mobile optimized version and see how many switch to the full web version.

With this type of A/B test, you can now see how a mobile-friendly version impacts content consumption, visit times, page views and bounce rates and then bake that information back into your content strategy and site design.

If your mobile site is already well designed with a data-driven content strategy, you should see improvement across page views and bounce rates. What happens to your visit times will depend more on the content you’re offering and the nature of your business. Is the information ‘snackable’ or response-driven like it would be for a retailer? Or, are you a publisher whose content naturally demands more sustained consumption?

The case for having a mobile site has been well stated elsewhere and there’s plenty of evidence supporting the development of a tailored mobile experience to account for unique mobile behavioral dimensions and device capabilities.

The real outcome of this exchange, for me, was a clear, broad definition of how to road-map your mobile web development from an analytics gathering to development input perspective. Here’s a four-step high level view:

Step 1: Use existing web analytics to gain a view into mobile visitor devices, content preferences and usage patterns.

Step 2: Develop a content strategy based on content preferences and consumption patterns. Develop a design strategy based on device and OS trends. Consider how content consumption relates to a user’s context.

Step 3: Leverage device capabilities (e.g. GPS, accelerometer, camera, and messaging) based on content strategy and contextual relevance. Wherever possible, build in response mechanisms.

Step 4: Test the mobile version against wired web norms and mobile content and design premises using mobile-centric analytics. If behavior fails to validate premises, adjust accordingly.

Just because something is working, doesn’t mean it is delivering maximum performance. A streamlined mobile version of your website will likely do a better job at delivering against KPIs than a full web version viewed on the device. To make sure it does, use the data you already have at your fingertips.

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Connections, Context & Content, Part 8: Mobile & PR Brand Building

Jun 01

JonathanMobile, PR, Random , , , , , No Comments

Mobile & The Brand

Recalling Mary Sachs’ comments that the lines between marketing and public relations are blurring, the first place where mobile can fit in with a public relations strategy is in the area of marketing communications. While traditional marketers would look to mobile as a way, ultimately, to sell product, the public relations professional can use mobile as a tactic for extending brand equity and experience.  David Jones, also of Hill & Knowlton, says, “The obvious starting point for mobile and PR is branded content, games or mobile applications that connect people to the web experience. PR is starting to play in brand extensions and direct to consumer communication is starting to become everyone’s space. Anytime you’re trying to influence public behaviour there’s an opportunity to reach them through the mobile device.”

A perfect example of this approach comes from global fitness giant Nike. Nike launched the ‘Nike Training Club‘ application for iPhone users. The application targets women and provides tools for customizing workouts, training tips and peer to peer interaction. This type of application builds positive brand associations and can create a community of advocates.Similarly, an application called ‘My Diabetes Guide‘ allows the 24 million Americans living with Diabetes to develop strategies for coping with the disease. The CEO of the firm responsible for the application says, “The amount of information on the Web about healthcare is too much to digest but mobile’s small screen is actually a plus in this case – it makes it easier to sift through the content. We are transforming into a teacher and a coach, giving advice and encouragement when people need it most.”

Both of these examples demonstrate approaches for building favourable opinions about an organization or an issue.  While these examples involve applications, mobile messaging and the mobile web provide plenty of opportunities as well. Absolute Vodka used text messaging to promote responsible alcohol consumption with its ‘Recognize the Moment‘ campaign while Barak Obama created mobile websites to promote his policies, notify supporters of upcoming events and provide the tools to engage potential voters at the grassroots level.

Using mobile to promote brand information or create a branded experience relies on the some of the same principles as more traditional PR activities: creating messaging that is relevant to your audiences, provide value to the recipient and inform with the objective of stimulating action.  Ultimately, the objective of brand communication efforts is to build community confidence in, and goodwill towards, the organization and its operations.

Next Up: Mobile for community relations

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Connections, Context & Content, Part 6: Intro to privacy and measurement

May 22

JonathanMobile, PR, Ryerson , , , , , , , No Comments

Intro to Mobile Privacy & Measurement

Two other issues that must be addressed when using the mobile device to communicate with stakeholders are privacy and measurement. The concept of mobile as permission-based communication has been introduced previously, but the debate around consumer privacy is still very much on the radar. In Canada, the Canadian Wireless and Telecommunications Association (CWTA), governs all business to consumer mobile messaging programs. They have mandated that any messaging program have consumer opt-out functionality built in. The buying and selling of lists of mobile phone numbers collected as part of a business-to-consumer campaign is also prohibited. There are no mobile-specific standards around data use and collection via the mobile web or mobile applications, though most campaigns appear to follow standard online privacy and data collection guidelines (note: if anyone has more info on mobile marketing privacy guidelines, I’d love to know more).

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has released a report offering guidelines for behavioural advertising. Though many privacy advocates call the guidelines ‘meaningless’, it is still a step in the right direction and MobileMarketer.com, in their analysis of the report said, “In the FTC’s report the consumer watchdog said that companies should provide reasonable data security measures so that behavioral data does not fall into the wrong hands, and should retain data only as long as necessary for legitimate business or law enforcement needs. ‘The key theme underlying this guidance is the need to balance the potential benefits of the various practices covered by the principles against the privacy concerns the practices raise,’ the FTC document says.” Mobile privacy will continue to be a contentious issue but there are enough safe-guards in place to protect both the consumer and communicator, provided existing regulations and common sense are applied.

Though mobile is one of the most highly measureable communication channels available to the professional communicator, unified standards around measurement are still in a nascent stage. Text messaging programs that use keywords and shortcodes offer the most consistent measurement platform. Shortcodes are 5 or 6 digit numeric codes that work just like phone numbers but are more accurately thought of as the URL of mobile messaging (Ex. Text WIN to 12345 where WIN is the keyword and 1235 is the shortcode.). Among the measurement points are total number of users, total number of interactions, location and time of interaction and content of the interaction.The mobile web and applications offer many of the same measurement points as online communications such as page views and visits, time on site, handset type and location though not at the same level of granularity.

Market research firm Nielsen has been working to advance mobile measurement by introducing a mobile segmentation targeting solution that organizes targeting data into easily interpreted and manipulated groups, or “segments,” to help advertisers better target their key demographics. Solutions such as Nielsen’s allow communicators to serve up content relevant to a particular user based on information contained within the handset, such as geo-location, or from information provided by the user. Hill & Knowlton’s David Jones says, “Because mobiles are registered to real people, there are some good tracking options. Specifically, the typical mobile measures such as interactions, area code, time, and so on, but also looking at more traditional web-tracking options. It would be great to get access to more detailed user demo info, but can that be done without being too invasive?” As with any communications program, setting the right objectives is essential. By understanding the strengths and limitations of the mobile experience and by properly addressing user privacy concerns, objectives can be set that map onto the available measurement metrics.

Up Next: An introduction to mobile tactics for public relations

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