I’ve listed below some of the more mobile related insights but it is worth taking the time to flick through the slidedeck when you have more than a few minutes!

It is easy to forget that not everyone has a smartphone but penetration is still only 17% on a global basis.  You’d be forgiven for having a distorted view in the UK when adoption is at 45% of total subscribers and grew at 31% in the last 12 months.  France stands at 38% and Germany at 23%.

One of the stats that I’ve seen a few times in the last couple of months is the astonishing rate at which tablets are being adopted.  Comparing unit sales of the iPad since launch with the same launch period for iPhones, Apple is shipping 3x as many iPads as it did iPhones.  The stats showed that 29% of adults in the US now have either a tablet or an e-reader.  48% of US children between the age of 6-12 stated the iPad as number one in their Christmas list.  This was higher than any other tech product!

The growth of tablets and smartphone explains why 13% of all internet traffic is from a mobile device.  As devices get cheaper, connectivity easier and 4G becomes a reality this is only going to accelerate particularly when you consider that the smartphone installed base will over take the PC base in 2013.

The growth of the Andriod platform is incredible.  Looking at the comparable launch periods Andriod has out sold the iPhone 6:1.  That said with 24% of US Black Friday online sales coming from mobile devices iOS is still top for shopping, out performing Andriod devices with more than 4x as many transactions.

One area that shows growth but not to the rate I’d expect is mobile advertising revenues.  There is no doubt this is still in it’s infancy and the metrics show there is huge potential.  For me the success of this aligns to one of the points highlighting the huge rate of change.  In particular looking at consumers expectation of beautiful, relevant, peronalised and curated experiences.  When mobile marketing meets this expectation then it will be huge.

Here is a link to the full slide deck: : http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/2012-kpcb-internet-trends-yearend-update

Adrian

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Does this shopping experience remind you of anything?

Common user experience annoyances when buying online, whether through mobile or PC are:

• Need to register on every single retailer’s site;
• Long registration process;
• Customers can’t remember their  username or password;
• Hidden policies and extra charges;
• Capcha verification tests;
• Check out time expiry;
• Difficult to find the checkout button on site;
• Need to pay by credit card only;
• The list goes on…

… and these come even before the costs of items, costs and times of delivery. Make it easy for your customers to buy, give yourself a chance.

The post Checkout from Hell – Why Customers Abandon Online Shopping Carts (Video) appeared first on Cogenta.

17 million

iPads sold just in the third quarter of 2012. A 84% unit increase year on year, according to Apple.

69%

Apple’s tablet market share. Apple’s domination in the mobile device market is no surprise, however even with the growing influence of Android, Apple maintains a tight grip of the mobile tablet sales.

3

According to Ofcom’s Communications Market Research 2012, an average UK household own 3 internet connected devices. The same study suggests that 4 out of 10 respondents consider their smartphone to be the most important device for internet browsing.

52%

Percentage of shoppers with smartphones, who use price comparison sites to check prices while browsing products in-store tops over half of all footfall according to GfK. An excellent aid for consumers and sometimes a frightening non beneficial tool for retailers having to price match in order to make a sale.

£25,000 – £29,999

£25,000-£29,999 is the household income of the biggest demographic group who use voucher codes for online shopping in the UK. 66% percent of respondents in this Forrester survey claim they’re planning on researching discount codes in the next year to come.

18-34 year olds

Age group most likely to make product purchases using their smartphones, says Econsultancy and TolunaQuick’s joint UK and US consumer survey.

3 out of 4

Three quarters of UK shoppers who visited a retailer’s app or their mobile site during a shopping trip have made a purchase, says Deloitte. In parallel, only 4 out of 10 top UK brands have a mobile optimised site.  A classic case of supply lagging behind the demand.

2

Using two screens  is the only way how majority of UK tablet owners watch television. A staggering 80% of UK tablet owners use their tablets during a session in front of the blue screen.

9 pm

9 pm is the peak time when the iPad users hit retailers’ sites for a spot of shopping.

$15-$25 million

The above figures are only lower end estimated costs to each side in a typical patents case in the US. In the case of Apple vs Motorola Mobility, Apple was set back $32 million, which is equal to 6 hours of iPhone sales, claims Bloomberg.

2013

2013 is said to be the year that 4G networks should become widely available in the UK.

The post The Connected Life – Facts and Figures for Mobile Marketers appeared first on Cogenta.

We are definite advocates of serving relevant content not only when marketing on mobile, but in marketing as a whole. With the volume of channels that consumers are bombarded each day, it is the personalised messages that grab the attention and stand a solid chance of leading to a conversion. Perhaps streaming mass ad campaigns to countless databases creates brand awareness, but gone are the days when the we had time to pay attention and react to each one of them.

And we are not the only advocates in the field.  Just this week Campaign magazine published an article reviewing one of the key presentations at the Spikes Asia 2012 forum focusing on the influence that mobile has on shopping. It is a significant recognition and an important educational task as many business still treat the mobile channel as an extension to others. While it is an additional means to communicate with consumers, the key here is convenience. Mobile user search and web browsing habits are significantly different on this platform, not least because of the screen size. So serving them non-targeted advertising messages is a short way to being blacklisted.

At this point, you may think it’s a theory without proof. In which case we need to discuss a few good industry examples in search for evidence.

Take Amazon for example. Always competitive on price, with a huge online presence, product availability as well as other great features that keep shoppers coming back for more. However, if you have ever shopped with Amazon, you will have noticed how your the use of your shopping history leads to you buying more related products. For instance, if you are an avid cyclist looking for spare parts for your road racer and having browsed and bought some of these goods at Amazon, next time you visit, you are most likely to find cycling related products suggested to you: from accessories, to clothing to lightning deals so you can expand your cycling ammunition and perhaps take advantage of current deals that encourage you to buy more. Same goes for marketing, brand awareness is good, but businesses are there to make sales.

We don’t need to go this far to find examples from our own practice. Just last we have sent a targeted mobile offer to our mobile users who looked at computing products and tablets regardless of the brand, promoting Asus Google Nexus 7in tablet. The results were staggering: 70% of users viewed the push offer on their mobile screen and out of these users, 82% opened the offer to read all the details. Ok. So tablets is something everyone is currently talking about. Let’s take another example of an alternative offer sent just recently. If you dont have kids, you probably wont know the Moshi crowd. It is a Nintendo DS game, currently selling at most UK entertainment and toys retailers’. We sent a product promotion to all users who looked at Nintendo games which saw the campaign result in 100% push notification view rate, out of which  61% open the product offer delivered to their smartphone.

We hope the examples discussed in today’ blog got you thinking about making shopping experiences more relevant and personalised to your customers. If you would like more information about the above campaigns, feel free to contact us today.

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The largest discount store in South Korea, which is trading since 1993 and has already taken over Walmart in Korea, has identified a week spot in its trading times. E-mart’s sales would drop dramatically during lunch, from noon until 1pm in the afternoon and to overcome this weakness and boost sales activity E-mart launched a mobile marketing campaign that has exceeded any expectations of its predicted success.

Mobile marketing campaign goals

Having identified the goals the mobile marketing campaign needed to achieve, the retailer decided to bridge the gap between a familiar mobile technology – QR codes and instead of driving the footfall to its shops, instead the retailers strategically placed mobile artefacts around town to best target the lunchtime shoppers flooding the streets from noon, all of them geared with the latest smartphones.

Campaign execution

The company distributed a number of 3D QR codes around Seoul, which would be shadow activated between noon and 1pm each day. Shoppers on the street would then scan the 3D QR code directing them to a dedicated mobile commerce page revealing a new sale and presenting them with a $12 voucher to start spending with the retailer online. Ordering goods via a smartphone meant that people could shop on the go without the need to visit the retailer and to make matters even better, the retailers would deliver the goods to the customers chosen address.

Results

The mobile marketing campaign started with 13 3D shadow QR codes dotted around Seoul growing to 36. The customer membership has grown by 58% and lunch time sales increased by 25% compared with the previous month.

Not only did the campaign raise brand awareness, social engagement, but it also boosted mobile shopping and most importantly for any retailer, it increased sales. The novelty in using QR codes, meant that consumers were already aware of the technology and since it was only activated for one our a day, the most important time period, when Seoul’s streets flood with lunch time shoppers, raised the anticipation of the unknown.

You can view the QR Code Mobile Marketing – Emart’s Sunny Sale live in action here:

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“In the battle to first survive, and then thrive on the High Street, retailers will naturally use every weapon at their disposal, and now well into its second decade as a marketing channel, mobile is emerging as potentially one of the most powerful.

Take a shopping centre with an average weekly footfall of half a million people, invite these shoppers to register their mobile phone number with you and opt into marketing communications, then send them SMS alerts when they come within striking distance of the shopping centre, with offers from selected retailers. Would it surprise you to know that this is what a UK startup called ZagMe was doing at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent in 2000?

ZagMe failed, partly because the investors lost confidence in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy – the company was in the last throes of securing funding from US investors the day it happened – and partly because it was so far ahead of its time.

But in the 12 years since, retailers have opened their eyes to the potential of mCommerce. The unlikely leader of the mCommerce revolution was Marks & Spencer, which became the first UK retailer to launch a transactional, mobile-optimised website on 12 May 2010.

By the end of September that year, the site had attracted 1.2 million unique visitors, generating more than 10 million page views. It had also taken more than 13,000 orders, for goods ranging from clothes to sofas and TVs. The largest single order was for £3,280, for two sofas, a figure that was trumped in June 2011, when a customer placed a £5,156 order for its Sonoma Light freestanding kitchen units on the mobile site.

Commenting on the order, the then-head of new technology business development at M&S, Sienne Veit, toldMobile Marketing magazine: “We don’t know where the journey started, but we do know that it was completed on the mobile web, using an iPhone.”

M&S’s decision to go mobile was driven by an analysis of its web traffic, and the realisation that a growing number of visitors were accessing its full website from mobile devices. If you’ve ever tried to access a full website from a mobile device – try Apple.com as an example – you can see what an unsatisfying experience it is.

When M&S launched its mobile site, the proportion of consumers trying to access its website via mobile devices was around five percent. As other retailers saw this figure steadily rising, they fell into line and started launching mobile sites and transactional mobile apps of their own.

That said, an eConsultancy survey of the top 20 online retailers, carried out in May 2012, found that only 12 had a mobile-optimised site. This despite the fact that in June this year, Debenhams revealed that 20 percent of its web traffic was coming from mobile devices, including not just smartphones, of course, but tablets too.

Yet as James Maxwell, national sales executive, digital solutions, at Prinovis, a European communications group points out, the bottom line impact of this is still not clear. He says: “Retailers are understandably focusing on recent innovations – for example geolocation, cross-platform app development, and HTML5. This makes sense because for many it will mean reaching new audiences, and delighting some previously frustrated customers.

“However, we always remind our clients that for their shoppers much of this is simply expected, rather than appreciated. And although worthwhile, a lot of this development will build brand more than it will drive purchase intent. It is important that marketers don’t forget mobile basics – high-penetration, low cost direct marketing options such as SMS and mobile-optimised email can deliver a very direct impact on purchase behaviour, in addition to the richer media experiences afforded by smartphones.”

Adrian Hobbs, CEO of Cogenta, says that when talking to mobile-savvy shoppers in user forums, one message comes across loud and clear: people want to shop from their favourite retailers through whichever channel suits them best.

“Many female shoppers told us that browsing their favourite shops in store, online or on mobile, is as much a leisure activity as it is a function of buying a product,” says Hobbs. “When it comes to mobile, if they can’t have a mobile relationship with their favourite retailer, they’ll find another retailer that fills that gap. This will undoubtedly lead to increased loyalty with the mobile retailer, so having a decent experience with transactional capability is essential. Indeed, the deeper their engagement the more open they were to offers and other forms of communication from that brand.”

It seems hard to believe that the retailers who have not yet gone mobile in some way are not making plans to do so. And as Prinovis’s Maxwell notes, it’s not all about mobile sites and apps. Forward-thinking retailers are using location-based mobile advertising and mobile messaging to encourage consumers into their stores, and offering free wi-fi and iPad kiosks to enable consumers to shop online from inside the store if they can’t find what they want on the shelves.

The next few years don’t look like being any less challenging for the retail industry. It might seem like a time to batten down the hatches, rather than to invest. The stark reality is, however, that those who don’t invest in the future may find they don’t have one.

You can meet David Murphy from Mobile Marketing Magazine, Adrian Hobbs from Cogenta and James Maxwell from Prinovis at Mobile Marketing Live on 1-2 October, in London. Seee www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/live for more information.”

If you are planning to attend the top event in the mobile marketing industry, the exhibition and conference takes place on the 1st and 2nd October at London’s Business Design Centre. Find us on stand 22. Hope to see you there.

The post Why Mobile is Key to Retail’s Future by David Murphy appeared first on Cogenta.

Let’s begin with the buzz word itself. What does ‘multi-channel’ actually mean? Well, the Business Dictionary defines it as: “The use of a wide variety of marketing methods as well as a variety of ways for consumers to purchase the particular product or service that is being offered. Typically each of the channels that are chosen by the marketer will help to reinforce the other channels in the mix”. Pretty accurate we thought. In short it an interlinked network of places where your product/service can be purchased. Seems to be apparent that selling via different means is key to success, but is that all?

There is little doubt that customer user journey online is paramount to it converting to sales, and if you do need more convincing, read our blog about the challenges of the mobile commerce industry. However the perception that retailers and consumers have about multi-channel retailing is different.

We are all consumers, right? Which would mean that we as businesses also know what other consumers want. Well, not exactly. Consumers do not think about ‘multi-channel’, they think of convenience. Convenience to make a purchase via means that are most relevant to that particular person, be it in a traditional shop looking through the rails or browsing websites.

Also let’s not forget the brand values. How are you different from your competitors? Excellent customer service, highest possible quality of goods, ultra trendy looking shops, the list goes on. Whatever makes you tick and keeps your customer coming back needs to be reflected in all the spaces that you choose to be in, whether physical or digital, and expect your customers to communicate with you. Basically, your customer sees you as the same unit and expects the experience to be fluid.

However this is not all, the technological evolution and other industry changes spoiled consumers even further. With so much information available on the internet, traditional means of advertising is suffering: print is struggling, the amount of people using mailbox filters is growing, record now, watch later TV only enables us to ignore advertising that brands invest so heavily in. Hence why consumers trust their friends’ advice on what to buy next, and if there are no friends who can advice, then surely there will be a review of a previous buyers. 77% online shoppers use reviews to make purchasing decisions and 89% in-store shoppers do their research online first before stepping out to the high street. 51% of online shoppers want to receive their purchase… tomorrow and 18% believe it is easier to return goods if they were bought online.

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The rise of digital

Think of technology in the hands of a business. Traditional retailers are often threatened by the aggressive strategy from their digital competitios. It’s no surprise then that Clifton Cards have gone into administration. Although brands, such as Moonpig and Funkypidgeon.com found their success long before Clifton Cards started balancing on a … cliff (excuse the pun). Another good example is video rental retailer Blockbusters only attracting a fraction of its customers due to rapid growth of LoveFilm and competition created by the content streaming technology.

Changes in consumer behaviour

Consumers are much more tech savvy too and are only becoming more demanding of businesses to meet their needs in the smallest possible space of time. They are also growing more avert to traditional means of advertising in print and television, with the publishing industry in decline and ability to record and watch TV on demand, brands find it increasingly difficult to drive sales thought these means. More customers than ever trust product recommendations from their friends that what they saw on the side of the bus. Influencing these customers has never been a more challenging task.

Changes in industry behaviour

Traditional brick and mortar stores are embracing the online world and mobile. Driven by consumer demands, they build e-commerce sites to monetise online traffic. Brands and retailers and expanding their categories to penetrate against different markets. Take, for instance, HMV that put its faith into the gadget market and started selling headphones several years ago.

Consumer insight is one of the major pillars that drives many strategic decisions. From adapting shops sizes,  spying how customers shop and what they like, to must-have loyalty schemes and hunting for celebrities who can endorse your brand, for instance, Roger Federer and Nike.

Social trends

Technological evolution in the last decade considerably altered the way retailers and brands communicate with their customers. Communication has moved into digital space and consuming information is now an integral part of any social network. It has become a norm to instantly tell a broad reach of people about one’s likes and dislikes, thus making it extremely difficult for brands to manage their reputation and sweep any negative PR under the carpet. Instead brands must be vigilant about selling good product and services supported by excellent  customer services, otherwise brand reputation suffers.

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So far February 2012 was the pinnacle month for announcements from the mobile and banking industry. To start, Barclays announced its Pingit service. Pingit is a free mobile smartphone app that allows Barclays customers to link their UK bank accounts with their mobile phone number and send/receive cash transfers up to £300 to/from other Pingit registered service users. The app has gone live in March and we are due to learn about its success.

Furthermore, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was rich in announcements regarding transacting via mobile:

• Orange and Vodafone partnership with Visa to enable mobile payments.

Visa, the credit card business, is focusing its business progression on what is evidently mobile commerce. The deal with Orange is the extension of Orange Money. Mobile payment app will be offered to the emerging markets (Africa and Middle East). The service will enable Orange Money subscribers, who are Visa account holders, to make peer-to-peer payments, buy in-store and online as well as withdraw cash from Visa-backed ATMs. The service is said to become accessible by the end of 2012.

However Vodaphone’s and Visa’s partnership goes even further, it is said to span throughout the whole network. This year it will be pioneered in Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and the US, while other countries will follow in time. The Vodafone-branded Wallet app, will allow customers from developed countries in Europe, North America and Australia to make NFC payments (i.e. wireless technology that enables payments between a smartphone and a payment terminal or a checkout). A simple tap for low-value purchases or a passcode being used for higher value ones. The Partnership is welcoming all product and service suppliers to join the Wallet app to build an extensive portfolio.

• Isis announced multiple partnerships in order to launch the mobile payment app.

Isis is a mobile payment app that will enable NFC payments in the US market. It is a joint venture between the leading US mobile operators (AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA) and its latest financial partners, including: Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard. These additional partners joined an already strong alliance between Isis, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express which was announced in 2011. With plans to launch in mid-2012 in Austin, Salt Lake City, Texas and Utah, Isis is building strong bonds with influential market players to overcome some currently existing logistical challenges in the m-payments industry. In short, the biggest issues with NFC payments to date is the lack of mobile phones that would support these transactions, as well as the lack of infrastructure in the retail environment. Isis, however is addressing these issues at its roots and has recently announced signing four major POS vendors in the US:  VeriFone, Ingenico, Vivotech and Equinox Payments.

Strong alliances are being formed, perhaps in response to Google Wallet’s  US launch last year. The app enabled NFC payments via PayPass-backed terminals and checkouts. Although Google Wallet service works with MarsterCard and Visa, however the only smartphone that the app is compatible with is Nexus S 4G from Sprint. Rather limited for such an influential and dominant technology business as Google.

It is evident from the examples listed above, that both the banks and their network partners are taking consistent steps into firstly building a solid infrastructure to enable mobile transactions and then launching the apps into the market.

What’s next? Well, besides the already mentioned, quite a lot! Not only are Orange and Vodafone, are due to launch their mobile payments services, among the major network providers, but on the 8^th of March their giant rival O2 has gone live with its £12 million advertising campaign to promote its soon to-be-live O2 Wallet app. A mobile app that will allow secure mobile payments to any smartphone users, regardless of whether they are an O2 network customer. Technology is indeed changing peoples’ lives. No surprise then, that shopping on mobile devices is set to increase by 53% this year in the UK.

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To begin with, it is no news that traffic from mobile devices is rapidly growing. The Cisco Visual Networking Index  shows that global mobile traffic grew 131% in 2011 having doubled four years in a row, with iOS (Apple iPhones and iPads in particular) and Android devices among the most popular devices. The Report also forecasts the number of mobile devices in 2016 to be higher than the world’s population in 2012 which will result in extreme growth of mobile traffic.

Furthermore,  IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index shows that shopping via mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) has grown 254% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2012 alone with the average consumer spending £114 in March.

The adoption of mobile optimized websites however is slow. Retailers, among many other businesses are no exception. Sadly consumers can be very unforgiving to brands for not providing an issue-free shopping experience. To illustrate this, research, commissioned by TeaLeaf,showed that out of 10 million UK consumers using mobile commerce, 83% have experienced difficulties while conducting mobile transactions and 66% would be less likely to buy from a brand following inadequate mobile experience.

It is evident that mobile commerce offers significant advantages over e-commerce. Ability to engage the consumer via mobile, enhance the shopping experience and boost spending are among many advantages offered by m-commerce. Taking this into consideration, more and more retailers are creating mobile destinations for their customers. Consequently this creates additional challenges for many businesses: how to effectively manage new and rapidly evolving mobile channel, do it effectively and better than your competitors?

The answer must lie in the question itself. Seems to be that early adoption of evolving technologies gives businesses that all important head start and depending on its execution - a competitive edge too. However the dynamic nature of it requires businesses to adapt and learn fast. Rest assured, mobile commerce growth is inevitable and as technology evolves, so will do the world of business. Well, at least businesses that want to remain that way will learn to be flexible.

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