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
Preface: This article is written by and addressed to marketers. While it certainly addresses very serious questions in the publishing industry, many pieces of this puzzle are left out as they pertain less to the advertising industry.
The concept of “Separation of Church and State” has long been the model of publishers who generate the majority of their revenue from advertising. They have been two separate departments that have had little influence on each other. But given the current economy, bankruptcy of publishers, and the now prevalent move to online-only editions, should (or rather, is it necessary for) professional content producers and their promotional counterparts to start working a lot more closely? If so, how does this effect advertiser? Consumers?
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The tag line of the 2010 Mercedes-Benz GLK is “Great engineering is great engineering at any size.” With the goal of capturing this concept and providing the audience with information relevant to their lifestyle, the “GLK Live-Well Dashboard” was born.
Critical Mass partnered with Conde Nast Digital to create an experience that leveraged the power of 18 trusted magazine properties and fused then with the matching attributes of the 2010 GLK. The Dashboard, a first of its kind roll-over rich-media unit within Conde Nast, mashes-up Video, Editorial, Voting, Sharing, and of course, Mercedes-Benz content into one centralized location that follows Conde Nast readers across their network. Every week for the next 10 weeks, new content will be added to the unit to keep each of the lifestyle pillars (Personal Style, Wellness, etc) fresh for readers who frequent the various Conde Nast properties. For those interested in returning to the GLK experience, the banner can be bookmarked and reopened as a standalone page.
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