If this leak is to be believed, one of the most customer centric companies in the world is changing their website design to optimize for a tablet browsing experience. If true, we may not be in the post-PC era quite yet but the writing is on the wall. Multiple screens and form factors rule and will need to be thoughtfully embraced quickly in your online business.
Posts Tagged ‘web-design’
Amazon.com’s New Tablet-Centric Web Design
Friday, September 9th, 2011You Had Me At “Hello”: Making Mobile Marketing Count – Part 3
Friday, July 8th, 2011Mobile devices are not only here to stay, they are increasingly becoming the central device in someone’s life – to keep in touch with friends & family, to stay up on news, make purchases, play games, listen to music, control Blu-ray players, you name it!
What are the next steps to take advantage of the mobile momentum? Are you a search expert, digital marketer, and / or client? Resultrix is a digital marketing agency that provides in depth strategies and approaches on how to create mobile search marketing campaigns that yield great results and coverage.
Based on mobile campaigns we have run for our clients, we’ve seen mobile CPCs (cost per click) less than 40% than those on the desktop, with a CTR that is higher by 35%. Mobile campaigns are a necessary compliment to your regular desktop campaigns, can provide great bang-for-the-buck and deliver increased relevancy for your customers.
What can you do? Begin with:
- Make your website mobile friendly – have a consistent, compelling experience across multiple screens. As an example, check out the work we did for Edifecs (and Resultrix) using HTML 5, providing a seamless mobile experience
- Ensure your client (or organization) have mobile landing pages with specific call-to-actions and mirror the landing page with specific ad copy themes (i.e. if your ad wants the user to download a trial, ensure your landing page make it easy for the user to do so)
- Create mobile-specific campaigns (including mobile phones & tablets)
- Figure out what your users would be searching for on their mobile devices & tablets and tailor campaigns to highlight those scenarios and needs (i.e. perhaps someone searching for a news item on iPad may want to see videos or pictures vs. only read an article). This will help you build the right keyword lists and landing pages.
- Make the mobile ad copy intriguing, but short and sweet. Mention a specific all to action or phone number to drive an immediate conversion
- It’s ok to have some aggressive bidding strategy initially, to ensure you establish a strong quality score and have a good Share of Voice.
To Summarize:
- Mobile is here to stay
- Mobile is about phones and now, tablets
- Mobile phones are used to get information about anything and everything, anywhere and everywhere
- Drive awareness of your brand and products across multiple screens (helps brand recall and user action)
- Develop an integrated mobile digital strategy spanning web design to search marketing
- Good bang for the buck and increased relevancy (if you do your mobile search marketing right)
- It’s not too late to start
Want to kick start your efforts or amp your existing ones? Contact Resultrix – we love mobile and we love search: http://www.resultrix.com/contact/
This is part 3 of a 3 part blog…catch up on the previous two here:
You Had Me At Hello Pt. 1
You Had Me At Hello Pt. 2
You Had Me At “Hello”: Making Mobile Marketing Count – Part 2
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011Now that I’ve given glimpses of the overall opportunity that exists for mobile (and tablet) devices, I should mention that there is proof in the pudding. Based on some studies by comScore.com, search engine land, Google, and Resultrix experience, mobile is definitely here to stay. Check out some of the trends and stats:
There are over 1.9 billion people worldwide on the wired web and over 5 billion phones. Much of these phones have online capabilities and many are beginning to use the mobile phone as their primary search device.
As of February 2011, there were over 234 million mobile phone users (age 13+) in the US. Of these, there were nearly 50 percent searching on their mobile devices.
Over 30 percent of the total US mobile market is smartphones, with 50% of new mobile phone purchases being smart phones! Mobile searching is especially prevalent in the smart phone segment.
Add another 10 million iPad / Tablet users that are equipped with fantastic browsing experiences and my head begins to spin at the exciting opportunities that lie in front of us!
- According to a Google smart phone user study, over 93% of smart phone users use their phone within the home
- Of these users, 39% said they used their smart phone “while going to the bathroom”
- What’s even more interesting is that 72% of smart phone owners use their devices “while consuming other media,” a one-third while they are watching the TV. That means, that the mobile phone continues to be a central device that user uses to for a variety of activities, some that can be based on what they have viewed on TV (news, product information, purchases, etc.)
Mobile searchers are looking for a range of topics, but Google’s survey confirms that the mobile is a critical platform for news delivery.
Some other interesting search categories (not exhaustive) include:
- 57% do news searches
- 51% search for Dining related information
- 49% for Entertainment
- 47% do shopping related searches
Shopping is a key scenario for mobile smart phone searches, which is why it’s critical to ensure your digital campaigns include mobile device targeting and specific strategies.
- 79% said they use their smartphones to help with shopping
- 70% use their smartphones while in a store (perhaps to get product details, compare prices and competitor products)
- 74% of the smartphone shoppers make a purchase!
- eBay has shared that 1 transaction / second on their mobile service
- Pandora has been downloaded on over half the US mobile handsets
- Google also mentioned that 9 out of 10 mobile search users have “taken action as a result of a mobile search, with over half leading to a purchase.” The eventual purchase will be made through a variety of channels (online, in-store, phone), but that’s a great assist point for Mobile!
So now that you have the data, what does this mean for your business? How can you capitalize on these trends? How should your digital marketing campaigns be tailored to include mobile devices? Stay tuned for Part III…
This is part 2 of a 3 part blog… check out the other two here:
You Had Me At Hello Pt. 1
You Had Me At Hello Pt. 3
You Had Me At “Hello”: Making Mobile Marketing Count – Part 1
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011An interesting thing happened the other day, I was searching for a new 3D Blu-ray player and came across a player that had the ability for users to download a media app so that the user could control their DVD player from their iPhone or iPad. I thought it was a fun, nice-to-have feature, but then I started thinking more and realized – wow, the mobile phone is being used as a remote control! The remote control? Isn’t the remote the central device that most family members fight to control, because they ultimately become in charge of the family’s entertainment destiny? Ok, perhaps that’s taking it a bit too far, but what it told me was how pervasive mobile phones continue to become.
It’s great to see how far mobile usage scenarios have come, which is why it has been on my mind to write a blog about the importance of targeting mobile phones. So, here goes…
As a part of the original Windows CE 1.0 team (Microsoft’s first entry into the mobile / PDA / embedded devices market), we used to talk a lot about the future of mobile, the ability to deliver locally relevant offers and content, share information anytime and anywhere, conduct meaningful transactions, and create stored values. I kept waiting to see when the inflection point would finally happen, and so finally over a decade later, we have started seeing a huge adoption of smartphones (thanks Apple). The trend continues to increase in a staggering way, especially with the more recent acceleration of the tablet market (thanks iPad). With devices seeding the market and extensive content ecosystems being available (thanks AppStore), users finally have compelling content choices that were highly relevant and contextual, including having apps that would satisfy even some of the most obscure interests. Smartphone users could finally demand a comprehensive experience that provided a holistic set of services ranging from getting the daily dose of news, shopping, entertainment, among others.
So why am I recapping the obvious? Well, agencies and in-house search teams driving web design & digital campaigns, should ensure their web experiences and campaigns are optimized for mobile. Mobile is the +1 that is here to stay. I’d even venture out to say that for many users, they would say that their mobile phone completes them. 
So why not have websites and search campaigns grab the attention of the user when they are on their most beloved device (in a recent Google study, 20% of smartphone users said they would give up cable TV before their smart phones!)? The answer is that websites need to be mobile (and tablet) ready, and search marketing campaigns should include differentiated approaches for mobile phones and tablets (cutting and pasting from regular desktop search efforts don’t usually work).
Now that I may have your attention, you may be wondering – is there data to back up all of this? Stay tuned for Part II…
This is part 1 of a 3 part blog… check out the next two in the series here:
You Had Me At Hello Pt. 2
You Had Me At Hello Pt. 3
SEO Complimented with Usability Personifies Performance Marketing
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010SEO is one of the most cost effective methods that marketers/ businessmen use to promote their products in Search Engine listings. The success criteria lay in the fact that your website/ page should appear in the results page when a related product or service was searched for in the Search Engine. This ensured traffic, but did it really guarantee conversion??. Well no if the content wasn’t genuine, the navigation improper & if the visual appeal was missing the user was left guessing for what we actually visited the site for. To put it in leyman’s terms Internet marketing consists of simple basic marketing strategies that is implemented over the web. Ever since their inception the major Search Engines have always tried promoting pages that would satisfy the user. The logic was purely business; get more user to use their Search Function.
The Search Engines job is easily cut out. Promote pages that are user friendly. In order to be relevant to the object being searched for you must first be relevant to a user of your Website. Usability answers to major questions traffic & conversions. This also helps to brand build your website. Usability strikes a balance between satisfying users and meeting business goals. Information architecture precedes building the interface of a web site. Interface architecture consists of linking & navigation which encourages more site usage & lower bounce rates. This is backed up by a design that is visually appealing followed up by relevant content. An HTML sitemap is of high importance. Incase of a user gets stuck while navigating through a large website he/she could refer to the sitemap to jump to a page that was actually being searched for.
URL structure is part of the interface. Hyphens are better than an underscore. URL structure does not affect ranking, but it does affect accessibility. A website should be accessible to any body through any browser. Moving on to major landing pages that define your business, should provide exactly what the consumer is looking for. SEO is still in its nascent stages (An average professional must have 5 years of experience at most), and with passing time as ranking criteria’s start evolving usability will become even more important & the most complete websites will be rewarded by ranking high in the listings. Proper SEO gets you listed & brings in traffic. Complement this with good usability & you start getting conversions at no costs.
