Tag Archives: mobile devices
Cindy Nelson | Critical Mass Executive
Last Thursday I attended the WWD Forum on Mastering Mobile Marketing, part three of WWD’s series on digital media http://www.wwd.com/wwd-summits/wwd-series-on-digital-media-2443804/. Over the course of the day, I listened to marketers from across the retail sector share how mobile fits into their marketing strategies, and how they’re integrating mobile into their overall marketing mix. The key takeaways for me were: 1) Mobile is truly changing the way that brands interact with consumers, and this change is largely being driven from the bottom up (consumers are challenging brands to evolve, not the other way around), and 2) The success of any mobile brand initiative can often be boiled down to a single, simple (yet all too frequently overlooked) principle: “know thy customer”.
Consumers are challenging brands to evolve
Consumers are using their phone as a device to gain confirmation from peers prior to purchase. I recently learned that today’s “second opinion” involves taking pictures in the dressing room, sending the photos to a friend, and if the response from that “trusted personal stylist” is positive, then (and only then) the credit card comes out. Smart brands are recognizing this trend towards buddy-shopping and co-browsing, and building parts of the shopping experience (both in-store, and online) around this new set of digitally-enabled social behaviors; they’re using their mobile initiatives to connect prospects and customers with their brands and with each other. But are they doing enough?
Ever heard of GotryIton.com? http://www.gotryiton.com/ An Accelerator Finalist at this year’s SXSW, Gotryiton is an online community that allows users to upload digital photos of themselves wearing outfits they’re thinking about buying. So the next time you buy an expensive pair of jeans, you have someone to blame!
Panelists agreed that as consumer needs evolve, so too must brand experiences. This is especially true of mobile. And especially now. At Critical Mass, we’ve become adept at recognizing the types of bottom-up changes that force evolution, and turning observations into insights that lead to extraordinary work for our clients.
Know thy customer
Deep knowledge of the customer was a consistent theme throughout the day. These marketers understand their customers! They understand the purchase process their customer segments go through and they’re using this knowledge to find unique opportunities for engagement. They’re monitoring usage of their mobile sites to understand changing behaviors. They’re building apps and developing content, and watching where and when the content is consumed.
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
