experience matters

According to ABI Research, people spent approximately $1.6 billion via m-commerce last year. Consumers are increasingly using their mobile phones for financial transactions and there is no question that the opportunity is huge. But what is the best way to go about it? If you’ve surfed the mobile web, you’ve undoubtedly encountered some pretty terrible experiences.

So we set out to identify the best practices that make a mobile experience extraordinary. Why are sites such as m.espn, m.google, mobile.yelp, bbc.co.uk/mobile, mobile.nytimes, iphone.ebay, m.facebook so effective? What makes them almost as indispensable as our mobile phones themselves?

With such a diverse client roster, we’ve created mobile sites for retail, travel, banking and fashion. Though each client had distinct needs and business challenges to solve, clear patterns emerged and this post synthesizes our POV on the best ways to craft a mobile site experience.

The Insights
We took a look at how Google breaks down mobile users into 3 behavior groups: (A) Repetitive Now, (B) Bored Now and (C) Urgent Now. We outlined their similarities and differences. We also looked at how consumers use mobile for multi-channel retail. Here are some shared behaviors we uncovered:

• People usually have a goal.
• They’re doing something in real time.
• They’re looking for seamless experiences.
• They’re comfortable shopping online.

The problem is that most mobile experiences fail to deliver on these essential needs, especially for consumers on the go.  We’ve outlined a toolkit of mobile best practices to ensure that your mobile site delivers the value that consumers have come to expect.

Click Here for our 8 Best Practices in creating mobile sites

Originally posted at Experience Planner blog.

At first glance, the new Apple iPad doesn’t appear to be a game changer. Honestly? What it is, is an upgraded, tricked-out iPod Touch and in typical Apple fashion, they’ve focused on basic functionality the first time out. There is no camera, no HDMI, no USB – not without an adapter, at least – and it lacks multi-tasking.

Apple has created a low-risk product based on their existing technology. So unlike the Apple iPhone, there’s no new real technological or user experience innovation here (i.e., touchscreen tech and an application delivery channel in the form of the Apple App store). I can only assume that Apple created this device at a fraction of what it cost to research, develop and market the technology behind iPhone and iPod Touch.

That being said – I, for one, will be getting in line two months from now to pick up a 16gb Wifi iPad.

Personally, I really enjoy the touchscreen experience. I’ve been an iPhone user for over two years and I’ve craved a larger touchscreen experience for watching films, reading books and playing games while on the go (as I travel for work frequently). I get that now with the iPad and I’ll buy it because of that. Yes – I could have that with a small laptop or netbook, but neither of those device types are built for delivering a portable, high-end media experience.

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People go to high school reunions to evaluate other people. I pick evaluate because ‘judge me’ seems a little harsh but lets face it, we are a fickle society.

I tend to play amateur psychiatrist so the thought of walking around a room of people I used to know and of whom I have 20-year-old opinions of was appealing. I looked forward to forming new, cynical & unbiased opinions. Enter Facebook.

I didn’t receive an invitation to the reunion. I was friended by HEHS Class of 1989. Within two weeks I went from having zero high school friends to about 50. That’s a good thing, right? Not so fast. Would Facebook remove the curiosity factor? Would it jade me more than I was already jaded?

I attended the reunion a few weeks ago. It was made up of two separate events. On Friday night was what was billed as a Pre-Reunion Reunion at the restaurant of a classmate. Cash bar, no name tags (which lead to me saying “Who the hell is that?” a lot) and good food. The reunion itself was the next night. Open bar with name tags (but $90 to get in). What is the difference between the two? Friday night I got home at 3:00am. Saturday night I got home at 11:00pm. Enough said.

So is Facebook replacing Reunions entirely? (read more)

Twitter announced last week that it would be using CT3 (community, crowdsourced and collaborative translation) to make its content available in the FIGS (French, Italian, German and Spanish) group of languages. They’re stepping on ground that brought some trouble to LinkedIn some time ago. Despite specific website approaches, the CT3 matter will be sure to generate a lot of debate in the times to come. So it would be nice to start understanding the factors that surround it.

The first factor is resistance. Professional translators may feel their market is at risk. To be honest, as a web developer, I felt the same in the past, when potential clients started considering the option of having their nephews, who “knew a bit of HTML”, build their corporate sites. So they probably question how people, who are not even professionals in the language area, can do their work for free, especially for-profit corporations. On the other hand, this kind of initiative can even bring more work for language professionals, as it can create opportunities for proofreading content which didn’t exist before.

On the CT3 defense side, it’s said that costs are not the motivation of crowdsourcing. CT3 is desired because it’s faster, better, wider and democratic. The article about LinkedIn I mention above goes deeper into this discussion, but I’ll try to summarize it below.

It’s faster: whoever has worked with contracting services for a specific business knows how long and painful the process can be. Vendor selection, contract process, prototype design, implementation and tests can take months. CT3 can bring results in a fraction of this time, as you can check out in this article about the Facebook experience.
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If you’ve attempted to use Internet Explorer to access Google Wave you have already encountered what may be one of the most interesting salvos in the renewed browser wars. Apparently frustrated by Microsoft’s ongoing lack of support for HTML 5 especially the canvas tag and compliance to Web standards generally, Google has released what it describes as an “early version” of a plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer. It’s called Google Chrome Frame. Google Chrome Frame literally replaces Internet Explorer’s HTML/CSS rendering and Javascript processing with Google Chrome’s WebKit-based rendering engine. WebKit is the standards-compliant guts inside Apple’s Safari, Google Chrome and about a dozen smaller and/or device-specific Web browsers.
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The first draft of the HTML5 specification was released on January 22, 2008, and though it’s an ongoing work, some parts of it are already being implemented in some browsers, such as Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. Microsoft has started implementing it in IE8.

In his article “Are You Ready for a Flash-Free Future?” on Advertising Age, Garrick Schmitt gives us some links to HTML5 experiments and discusses if the adoption of this technology will happen only with the final recommendation in 2022 or before, at the final draft stage, in 2012. I personally believe that the industry will push this date to even earlier and we’ll start seeing more and more examples in the following months.

But how is HTML5 going to change the way people interact with websites?

To be honest, I believe that, from a non-technical standpoint, people won’t see much difference. Because we already have a lot of rich interactions happening in our websites today, thanks to the use of Flash, Silverlight and Java, the point is: with HTML5, things we are already building with these technologies will be achieved more easily, with less code and less dependencies. That may mean reduction of time, complexity and cost for projects. Some JavaScript libraries, such as JQuery and Prototype, have been playing the role of making web development easier for some time and with great success, and HTML5 applies some of their principles for the sake of productivity.

These are some cool features of HTML5 that will contribute to building good user experience:
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You sir, are not my friend.

I picked up my voicemail messages on Sunday evening to find a call from a nice sounding man trying to sell me some sort of holiday package. He stated that he got my information from one of my Facebook friends. This angered me. I quickly deleted said “friend”.  I have to admit that I had a quick moment of nostalgia when I received the message, but I quickly checked the irritated box once I heard why and how the silver voiced man had reached me.  Needless to say, my experience was not a positive one and I lost a “friend” in the mix.
Experiences – we all have them. Hundreds of them. They define our likes, our loves and our lives. Some experiences are good, some bad, some are even questionable, but what we care about are the valuable ones because they happen on OUR terms.  We (consumers) have come to expect the instant provision of service, information and entertainment on our terms and not on the marketer’s terms.

What’s a marketer to do?

Listen to your audience. Get to know what they really feel about your brand. No, what they REALLY feel. You may be surprised what you hear – good and bad.  There are some free social monitoring tools that can help with this process, but if you only listen for a small amount of time you will find yourself back at square one sooner than you can tweet about the experience. Build a solid foundation for the future. Take the time and invest in a tool that will help you get ahead.

Mr. Silver Voice may have irritated me no matter what, but what if he changed up his approach and spoke to me in a different channel using a different message? I just got back from a wedding in Oklahoma and tweeted about it. If he was listening and approached me in a different manner, I may not have had the same emotional reaction. Being equipped with the right messaging in the right place when the consumer chooses to engage is being ON DEMAND.

The creation of an On Demand Framework is essential

Without a framework, most marketers tend to start with the tactics, focusing on the hottest new channel, tool or gadget, without thought into how, who and why they are there. So where should you start? We here at Critical Mass have outlined seven principles for being an On Demand brand to get you started.

Be…

1. Insightful – Know your audience. What do they like? What is their online behavior?
2. Remarkable – Stand out from the crowd. Use emotion to connect with your audience. Let them know you understand them and can make their lives easier and/or more enjoyable.
3. Valuable – Getting someone to engage with your content is the first hurdle, but how do you get them to return or engage with you again? Give them something of value. Make it about them, not you.
4. Dynamic – “2.83 million pieces of new content are posted every day.” (Nielsen BuzzMetrics) Don’t be part of the clutter; create a path that is uniquely yours.
5. Portable – Engage with the consumer wherever they are, at any time. Consumers are looking for you – be there to greet them.
6. Conversational – Online media has transformed into a social and interactive experience. Brands must participate in the conversation. Consumers now expect it.
7. Everywhere* – Consumers don’t see the difference between channels. They do not care nor do they want to understand your online strategy.  They just want to find what they are looking for when they want it. Simple. Be where your consumers are. Use insights to make these decisions.

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The buzz around augmented reality seems to be growing. This technology involves the interaction of live and computer-based data. It can be used to retrieve real time data based on what’s being captured with an input device, like a camera or a microphone, and display the information layer over the input one.

The video gaming industry seems to be definitely going towards that direction. First, Sony released the PlaystationEye, but the titles released until now didn’t seem to achieve great popularity. I believe they hope to change it with EyePet. Microsoft, in its turn, is now investing on Project Natal, which uses the same movement recognition principle. The gaming industry will probably be a huge factor for the popularization of augmented reality. You can read a bit more about the two systems here.

Outside the entertainment industry, applications based on this technology start to pop. The GR Smart Grid seems to be one of the most popular at this point. Recently, I came across the USPS shipment box simulator which “project box holograms onto the image from your [webcam]. Then, compare the size of the real stuff you want to ship to size of the virtual box on your screen,” according to the USPS Priority Mail website.
When we see the current state of the interaction between real and computer data (how things take a while to follow the path and their movements are not that natural), we realize that there’s still a lot to improve, like Total Immersion did, and we start thinking what’s the real value of augmented reality aside seeing cool 3D graphics that react to your movements on a screen. How can this technology help the developmThe buzz around augmented reality seems to be growing. This technology involves the interaction of live and computer-based data. It can be used to retrieve real time data based on what’s being captured with an input device, like a camera or a microphone, and display the information layer over the input one.

The video gaming industry seems to be definitely going towards that direction. First, Sony released the PlaystationEye, but the titles released until now didn’t seem to achieve great popularity. I believe they hope to change it with EyePet. Microsoft, in its turn, is now investing on Project Natal, which uses the same movement recognition principle. The gaming industry will probably be a huge factor for the popularization of augmented reality. You can read a bit more about the two systems here.

Outside the entertainment industry, applications based on this technology start to pop. The GR Smart Grid seems to be one of the most popular at this point. Recently, I came across the USPS shipment box simulator which “project box holograms onto the image from your [webcam]. Then, compare the size of the real stuff you want to ship to size of the virtual box on your screen,” according to the USPS Priority Mail website.
When we see the current state of the interaction between real and computer data (how things take a while to follow the path and their movements are not that natural), we realize that there’s still a lot to improve, like Total Immersion did, and we start thinking what’s the real value of augmented reality aside seeing cool 3D graphics that react to your movements on a screen. How can this technology help the development of better user experience?

 

So you may be able to come to a CD store, point your cell phone camera to a CD cover and check listeners’ reviews from amazon.com, or even compare prices with other stores. The same kind of thing you do while browsing the Internet today, but adapted to what you have in sight, anytime, anywhere. While grocery shopping, you may be able to check available recipes, nutritional information or even the availability of that item on your freezer. I really dream about the day when the front windshield of my car will be GPS-driven and I won’t even make a mistake on a bifurcation again, because that coloured lane will be shown no more on a GPS device screen, but over the actual road.

I’ve seen complicated devices like head-mounted displays, which involve helmets, goggles, tracking systems and mobile computer units, but I don’t believe many people without a really specific application field will want to use them. They will probably wait until Oakley engineer all that machinery to work inside a Juliet model.

The fact is the use of this technology, in the next few years, will be much more simple and easy. And that’s why we can believe it will be successful. In this context, the role of agencies will be to identify opportunities to create interesting applications and interactions and plan interfaces that will make the experience desirable. This technology is promising, but, as any other, only the development of good applications can create public interest to make this field develop.
ent of better user experience?

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“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

- John Wanamaker

I can’t stand that quotation.

Even today, it is bandied about as though it has any meaning in the current world of (online) marketing. It contained some truth when it was first said, but today it just identifies the lazy marketers in our midst.

Why the vitriol? It’s because almost everything is becoming measurable. Now, there is no reason to claim ignorance to analytics – we are swimming in data.

But that might be the problem. As the recession continue to apply pressure to all industries (and on advertising and marketing more than most I would venture) there is a redoubled focus on return on investment (ROI).

And this is wonderful. The online channel is made to justify advertiser’s investments. But the advent of social media has thrown a monkey wrench of sorts into the works. How do we define ROI in a web 2.0 world? How has the landscape changed and how can we plan for tomorrow?

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In the last week of April, I attended the “MTV Jackass on AIR” presentation on the FITC Toronto and I found the technology aspect and the marketing idea behind it both very interesting.

The creators describe the application as a “Casual Social Game”, in which users send “virtual pranks” to their friends. The characters of Jackass then invade the victim’s desktop and mess with it in several ways (most of them result in the desktop virtually dirty with some disgusting fluid). There’s also integration with Facebook.

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