Tag: #Mobilemarketing

Every year, there is an increased number of searches and use of mobile devices.  Search engines are updating methods to optimize content for mobile devices.

Mobile Campaign – Google Best Practices

Just because you can see your desktop website on a mobile phone doesn’t mean that it’s mobile-friendly. People who use high-end mobile devices, like iPhones or Android phones, can see standard AdWords ads and standard websites. But other possible customers use WAP mobile phones, which can only view specially designed mobile websites.

To reach the most mobile customers, it helps to create a mobile website that’s tailored to the small screen and makes it easy for people to make a purchase or take other action on your site.

When designing your site, keep in mind mobile best practices, like simple navigation and highlighting local options of your business. If you’d like to reach customers with WAP phones, you’ll also need to use mobile-friendly code to create your site.

Reaching mobile customers using a normal (HTML) website

Regardless of whether you have a mobile website, AdWords will let you show text ads to customers using Google Search on a high-end mobile device, like an iPhone or Android phone. These “smart phones” have a full Internet browser (like a desktop computer), so a customer who clicks your standard-sized text ad from the search results page can visit your standard website written with HTML.

By default, AdWords opts your new campaigns into “all available devices,” which includes these “mobile devices with full browsers.” You can opt in or out of showing ads on “Mobile devices with full browsers” from each campaign’s Settings tab.

Keep in mind…

If you opt in, make sure that your landing page doesn’t contain Flash content. Flash is currently not supported on iPhones or iPads, and has only limited support on Android and other high-end mobile devices. If our system detects that your landing page has lots of Flash content, we’ll automatically limit your ads from running on high-end mobile devices.

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Target a device

Nowadays, many mobile devices have standard browsers, but some feature phones lack a full browser and can only view mobile-specific webpages. To reach customers on these devices, you’ll need to create a WAP [mobile ad] and a WAP-friendly mobile website, which we’ll talk about more below.

Best practices for designing a mobile site

When creating a mobile website, you’ll want to keep in mind a few strategies that best take advantage of the small size of mobile screens and the behavior of mobile users. These strategies can help make sure your mobile site is a great experience for customers and direct them to take the desired actions on your site.

Keep it quick

  1. Reduce large blocks of text and use bullet points.
  2. Compress images to keep them small for faster site loading.

Make it easy to buy something or contact you.

  1. Reduce the number of steps needed to complete a transaction.
  2. Keep forms short, with the fewest number of fields possible.
  3. Use check boxes, lists, and scroll menus to make data entry easier.
  4. Use click-to-call functionality for all phone numbers.

Simplify navigation

  1. Minimize scrolling and keep it vertical only.
  2. Use a clear hierarchy in menus and avoid rollovers.
  3. Help customers navigate between levels with clear back and home buttons.
  4. Use seven links or fewer per page of navigation.

Help people find and get to your local sites

  1. Have your address or store locator on the landing page.
  2. Include maps and directions. Use GPS to personalize when possible.
  3. Allow customers to check stock at nearby stores.

https://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2549057

The Curious Case of Website or Webapps or Both?

The question facing all web content developers is simple, Website or Webapp?

And the answer, who knows?

So far the jury is out on which way is the right way, but one thing is clear, there is no single silver bullet in this game.  Websites and Webapps both need to be part of the integrated game plan.  You simply cannot afford to be without one or the other.

And it will ultimately depend on the kind of market place you are in.  There will be instances where website optimized for smartphones, tablets and desktops makes most sense.  Webapps simply will not be cost effective.

Consider this:

  • Today, most people read news and features on publishers’ websites using mobile devices.
  • Most news websites detect and adapt themselves to smaller screens or offer via Webapps.
  • Amazon Kindle, Google Reader, Flipboard dominate the market.
  • Nielsen study reported that while 33 percent of tablet and smart-phone users had downloaded news apps in the previous 30 days, only 19 percent of users had actually paid.
  • Financial Times dropped their iPad and iPhone app from iTunes.  They have now launched a new website, developed under the new HTML5 standards, allowing any device to access the content with single development model.

On the other hand, if you have a need for repeat orders from the same customer, again and again, it will make sense to develop Webapp which can be customized for each customer’s needs and has profile information stored locally in the device.

Net benefit, you get the order for widgets and your customer is not filling his or her name again and again!

So, weigh your options!  There is no cookie cutter formula here.

 

Mobile Devices Search Grow Google Bing Yahoo

Mobile devices are changing the way the Internet searches are being done on Google, Bing and Yahoo.  Now, there are more searches taking place on smart phones and mobile devices than ever before.

Most of these searches are considered local search for products and services with local business establishments.

2021 Trends

Google My Business and Bing Places for Business are growing in popularity.

Mobile search engine marketing can do wonders for driving brand value and demand for your products or services by leveraging mobile devices to connect with more consumers in real time at any point in the customer life cycle.

Statistics are staggering

  • Today, there are more mobile devices in the world (8.7 billion) than people (7.1 billion), due largely in part to our voracious appetite for new technology.
  • Overall, 82 percent of U.S…… shoppers who used their smartphone to help them shop had used “near me” searches on their mobile device. The most popular categories of local search lookups via mobile were food and entertainment.
  • For the few past years, mobile device usage has grown at an astronomical pace, with over 2.5 billion smartphone users worldwide in 2018 and a forecasted growth to a whopping 2.8 billion in 2020.
  • Based on the latest data reported by Laptop Discovery (“Mobile vs desktop,” 2020), social media accounts for 25% of all digital media consumption and is primarily accessed via mobile devices.
  • Over 52% of website traffic is coming from mobile devices, compared to just under 44% from desktop computers.
  • Nearly 63% of all the searches on Google were from mobile devices in the United States in Q2 2019.
  • Fashion retailers also convert a higher percentage of mobile traffic into sales (89.3%).
  • 70% of the time spent on YouTube is through users’ mobile devices.
  • More than half of the internet traffic worldwide is driven through mobile devices, with current trends indicating mobile share to further increase to as high as 80%.
  • 46% of adults prefer to use their mobile devices to search for items before purchasing them over their desktop or laptops.

Mobile Revolution

Smartphones and mobile devices are revolutionizing the way people communicate with one another and the way businesses connect with their target markets.

Against this backdrop, mobile search rises as a promising field, with users’ ability to quickly obtain relevant results SERP based on their location as one of its most attractive features.

A small business looking for growth can take advantage of this massive number of potential clients by creating digital marketing platforms that are mobile friendly and suit the needs of these users.

Even in the business-to-business world, about 50 percent of inquiries come from mobile devices, and the source seems to indicate that the percentage is rising.

More people are owning more mobile devices as well, with an example being one or two-family computers but everyone owning a smartphone.

The interaction of these variables means that search engine crawling, indexing, and ranking processes differ between devices.

Optimizing for mobile devices requires many of the same best practices of desktop SEO.

People spend more and more time on their mobile devices, interacting with the web in a variety of ways.

Before you can optimize your website for mobile devices, it’s necessary to understand what mobile local search engine optimization is.

However, even though mobile device use is growing quickly, these devices are not pushing computers out of the picture.

After all, whether you’re talking about desktops or mobile devices, content is one of Google’s top three search ranking factors.

In a nutshell, mobile search engine optimization is a process that ensures people who visit your website are delighted by an experience that’s designed for the mobile device they’re using.

Historical Benchmarks

  • Through 2016 and early 2017, the retail conversion rate for desktops was around 3.7 to 4% while the conversion rate for smartphones was around 1.25 to 1.34%.
  • Global internet usage through mobile devices (not including tablets) was nearly 8.5% in January 2012, StatCounter reported, using stats aggregated from 3 million sites.
  • Almost half (49.7%) of U.S…… mobile subscribers now own smartphones, as of February 2012, according to Nielsen.
  • Furthermore, Android leads the U.S…… smartphone market with 48%, while iPhone follows with 32%, and Blackberry is third with slightly under 12%.
  • Mobile devices are estimated to account for 25% of all paid search ad clicks in Google’s network by December 2012.
  • Click-through-rates on mobile phones are as much as 72% higher than on desktops.
  • In many developing nations, the majority of web users are mobile-only: highest are Egypt at 70% and India at 59%.
  • Even in developed nations, including the U.S…… and UK at 25%, a large minority of web users are mobile-only.