Now that’s a headline you don’t see too often these days.
The opportunities afforded by the revolution in mobile phones are perhaps the most exciting since the birth of the internet itself.
And yet, for those of us who’ve frequently been sent ‘over the top’ on the digital front, there is a sense of weariness when confronted with agencies and suppliers pitching mobile applications as a ‘must-have’ tool.
So before rushing headlong into taking on Angry Birds, here are my 5 golden rules for Mobile:
1 – Optimise your website for mobile devices before you do anything else.
There is a world of difference between accessing your website via a 15 inch desktop computer screen and accessing it through a 4.5 inch handheld device. I call this ‘The immutable law of Fat Fingers”.
For evidence of this, ask your team to provide some analytics on how people are accessing your website via mobile devices. Recently I’ve seen ‘un-optimised sites’ with a bounce rate of between 60-80% against a site average of 30%. That’s a lot of lost custom.
2 – You already know more than you may think
Your analytics package will be recording a wealth of information about how visitors from mobile devices are using your website. Ask your web team to create an analytics filter for mobile devices and examine the differences in behaviour between mobile usage and desktop usage.
For example, if you are an eCommerce website you may find that the user accessing by mobile devices use the website more for store locations than browsing product.
3 – Think about what makes an APP great before you decide to create a great app
I recently sat through an agency pitch that highlighted the potential of mobile for retail: Augmented reality, timed sales, ‘bump’ group discounts, barcode scanning, GPS location mapping, push notifications etc etc – all of which were jaw dropping but none of which were relevant to where the client was at this moment in time.
As with your website. Start with something that your customers need now and, crucially, what your company is able to deliver now. Then monitor and iterate – testing and assessing the market as you go.
4 – Re-think you’re email marketing approach
Mobile drop off is especially noticeable for those businesses that rely on email to communicate to customers. More and more of us use mobile devices to access our email – its not just a business tool anymore – so the effectiveness of your carefully crafted creative execution will suffer if users link through to a site that’s not optimised for the device
5 – Understand what the customer needs
Any nascent technology has it’s fair share of hyperbole hanging off it’s coat-tails. Choosing the right partner and correct strategy is as important in this sector as it is in any other.
A recent example of a beauty brand comes to mind. The company put all it’s efforts into creating an app for the iPhone and iPad. Upon launch they found that no-one wanted it. Those who did download it didn’t come back and the few reviews it received on itunes were negative.
Why? Because they didn’t ask the customers whether there was a need for it and they didn’t have a content or engagement strategy to make people want to come back. Result? Delete from home screen.
They’ve now gone back to focusing on the mobile version of their website.
And there we are – back to the beginning of the 5 Golden Rules.
