The Brand Canvas » Mobile

Go mobile now, here’s why

Francesca — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:09:43 +0000

It is pretty clear now that the smartphone fever is not only here to stay, but it’s growing at an incredibly fast rate.

By 2013 we’ll be living in a place where more people will be accessing the Internet through mobile devices than desktops. Inevitably this will mean your business must make a few adjustments to be able to benefit from the huge impact of smartphones & use new methods of mobile marketing and mobile commerce to cater for today’s consumer.

Nowadays consumers find their smartphones an indispensable shopping tool throughout the research and decision-making process. A study conducted by Google and Ipsos OTX MediaCT, an independent market research firm, shows us the following remarkable figures:

79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, finding more product info to locating a retailer
74% of smartphone shoppers make a purchase, whether online, in-store, or on their phones
70% use their smartphones while in the store, reflecting varied purchase paths that often begin online or on their phones and brings consumers to the store

Consumers can now be seen responding to ads online and offline using their smartphone as a bridge between these two mediums, for instance smartphone users have the ability to search for a product or interact with a brand through their device as soon as the ‘offline’ advertisement has sparked their interest, no more do we have to rely on memory and chance so fully. This new ability of immediately searching online for the products we see and like, gives us a new sense of freedom & opens great opportunities for businesses to convert the simple interest from a customer into a sale.

A good way to start this process is making sure your business’ website and online shop are built with “responsive design” techniques, meaning that they are optimised to view on desktops, tablets and mobile devices. I predict that in a very short time this will be an absolute imperative in order to face the more techy-aware competition but especially to avoid your customer’s frustration and disappointment when not able to purchase your products online.

So here’s a couple suggestions to get you started:

Test your website from a mobile and a tablet. Is it readable? Are the images visible? How would you rate your user’s experience when navigating your website from a smartphone?
Local information seeking is common among smartphone users, so why not incorporate location based products and services and make it easy for mobile customers to reach you.

If you need help in making the ‘big step’ of going mobile, give us a call and we’ll be able to advise you on the best strategy forward.

The rise and rise of QR codes

James — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:14:02 +0000

There’s a lot of hype floating around the internet about QR code technology, and with good reason, the use and number of people scanning them has risen faster than your grandmother’s 100% yeast loaf. While the technology has been around for over a decade, the proper execution of it is still in its infancy.

QR codes (Quick Response codes) are those square 2D barcodes that you see (increasingly) on some forms of print advertisements, such as magazines, business cards, posters & there are even plans to cover entire hotels with giant versions of them. Their basic aim is to allow people to scan them using an app on their smartphone or tablet, which then takes them to a webpage that (hopefully) has further information about a brand or product. The benefits are many, the most obvious being saving the user and their sausage-like digits from prodding frantically at a touchscreen to enter an often ludicrously long URL into the mobile browser.

So what’s with all the negativity surrounding these magical little squares? I feel the fault lies not with the technology itself, but on the shaky shoulders of the marketeers whose execution of this technology is often at best, ill planned… There are countless examples of QR codes being slapped on an advertisement & pointed to a poorly mobile-optimised site, which rewards the user with a free bit of spam. You can see with such an example why QR would get a bad rep, for this misuse of the technology benefits neither the consumer nor the business and results in a complete waste of time for the involved. One example of particularly stupid execution was that of QR codes being purposely put on advertisements in the subway, where obviously no network coverage existed, at all… Nice one JetBlue, better luck next time.

However keep thy faith friends, there is huge potential for this technology if brands are to utilise it properly. These codes have the ability to bridge the gap between online & offline through the rapidly spreading medium of mobile marketing. Used correctly and with the consumer in mind, this technology could be the answer to capturing the audience & sales that currently evade a business.

To add to the magic hidden within these codes, there exists the possibility to track how people interact with them, if the offer is appealing enough to entice people to scan the code, the ability is within them to instantly capture precious consumer data and more.

The figures are also there to support the buzz, in Q3 of last year there was a 1400% increase in QR code scanning on smartphones (source: mobio.net. This evidence suggests that users are now more aware of how this technology works and more inclined to adopt the use of QR into their habits.

So if you are thinking of including QR codes in your next marketing spend here are 3 golden rules to follow when dreaming up your next QR campaign:

Give it a purpose – make it worthwhile for the user, there is nothing worse than scanning a QR code and getting taken to a pointless spam-like webpage, it will just result in frustrating and disappointing the consumer, plus harm your brand’s good name.
Give an incentive – everyone loves to get something for free. Put yourself in the consumers shoes, what would you scan a QR code for if there be no reward?
And lastly, though this may be obvious, please do make sure wherever your QR code is going to be displayed that you have decent reception…

With the implementation and scanning of QR codes growing at such a rapid rate, it’s the perfect time to get on board with this technology. If you would like to discover the true potential that QR code technology can offer your business, holler at us.

How to survive the mobile epidemic…

James — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:22:01 +0000

Deny as you like but as they say, the numbers don’t lie, soon we’ll all be trading our trusty desk dwelling machines for the more nimble, more portable, more pocket-sized mobile device that will become the norm for web surfing purposes.

The latest CISCO report on this ‘mobilosity’ shows that Mobile Devices with data accounts have been multiplying faster than a plague of rabbits and it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. For the last four years mobile traffic has more than doubled year on year and by the close of 2012 the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth…

They are not the only devices on the rise either, in 2011, the number of mobile-connected tablets tripled to a staggering 34 million, plus these data hungry users were gobbling up to 3.4 times more traffic than the average smartphone. Much of this data is attributed to the consumption of videos on mobile devices, which is responsible for more than 50% of mobile traffic.

So what does this shift to mobile mean for businesses, particularly those who generate much of their customers from online sources? Well the obvious answer is be prepared, but the questions are many, what is your business doing to make sure its brand stays afloat when the devices topple the desktop tower?

Here are some suggested basic steps you can take now to help ready your business for this mobile revolution:

1. Buy a smartphone or a tablet – if you can’t beat them (and you can’t) join them. It’s inevitable that soon these touchable, portable, 4G+ devices will be in more hands & pockets than packets of gum, so get on board and start prodding at them till you know them inside out.
2. Mobilize your brand – start to ask yourself how your brand or business looks on devices, can your audience easily find your company & get in touch from a mobile browser, if you have an online store, is it easy to navigate with digits rather than a traditional point-and-click mouse?
3. Connect to your audience through social media – all main social media sites are already catering for users on most mainstream mobile devices, so you can communicate with customers through these right now, and start establishing your brand in the mobile world.
4. Better know how your audience and how they find you – You can use free tools, such as Google Analytics, to gather invaluable data on the users that frequent your site. Find out how much of the traffic coming to your site is from a mobile or tablet device, and accommodate for the higher percentile.
5. Run and hide – though I don’t see these as achieving the greatest results for, well, any business really, but you can remain blissfully ignorant and feel safe and warm, as if you’re back in your mother’s womb.

So if you’re not already making plans to accommodate this inevitable shift to mobile, then I’m afraid in the near future your business will be missing out on a large percentage of internet users.

Need help getting mobile ready? Get in touch, and we can have chat about how to improve your chances of taking your piece of the mobile pie, and eating it too…