Balanced Communication

Balanced Communication

In this age of communication and with the ease of multimedia, it is tempting for markets to get in touch with their customers on every occasion an opportunity to do so arises. But what most marketers fail to realize is that with so many companies wooing for customer attention, and with everyone communicating and communicating at every available chance, it is like a big noisy jungle out there.

Over-communication Kills

If social media, smart phones and tens of communication channels have brought in new opportunities for marketers to get in touch with the customer, these new opportunities also pose a serious threat of negative publicity. One customer gets ticked off, she is likely to influence tens others that are further likely to influence more and the viral publicity has affected your brand even before you know it. Thanks to social media! Therefore it is very important for companies to understand and respect the fine line between informing the customer and loading her with over information, personalizing marketing and intruding privacy and most important aptly using technology to woo customers' attention and abusing the privilege.

One-To-One Marketing

Markets have changed. The 'one-size-fits-all' marketing strategy is no longer applicable. Retailers need to understand their customer and personalize marketing for each customer keeping their convenience in mind. If Miss Mayers is a working professional and prefers shopping (even if it's online shopping) only on the weekends, sending her weekend offers would draw her to see the offers. If Mrs. Hopkins is a housewife and prefers shopping in the store at leisure on weekdays, then sending her weekday offers and updates will make sense. Similarly if a man's profile data shows he's traveling and while traveling he's surfing the store's site, a sudden push notification with a great offer may most likely result into a sale.

To achieve this, retailers need to create customer profiles and build upon the profile with each interaction. As the profile gets richer with more and more data, better-personalized experiences and richer interactions can be designed for each customer. This will not only improve ROI and value of marketing spend but will also give a much coveted loyal customer base.

Mobile Commerce Jargon Every Company Must Know

Mobile Commerce Jargon Every Company Must Know

Mobile commerce is not just a new platform but is actually a survival resort for most companies in the digital age especially retail. Before you take your big leap, here is some basic mobile-commerce jargon that you need to know to become an insider in the industry.

Experience-Driven Commerce

Experience-driven commerce is a wide term covering the whole spectrum of a customer’s journey along the sale cycle and beyond. In simple terms, it means optimizing resources, channel integrity, connectivity and communication across channels to provide a seamlessly integrated, intuitive and hassle free shopping experience to the customer.

While experience-driven commerce seems like a concept businesses have been already working on, the implementation of the technology and intertwining it with business strategy is the challenge. To take a use case for instance, Nina, a snowboarding enthusiast updates her FaceBook page with pictures of her latest snowboarding trip. A friend sends across a video of snowboarding champion doing some real tough snowboarding. While Nina checks out the video she checks out the gear used by the champion, checks out their price, variations and finally orders the pair of shoes that she’s always wanted. Nina is able to do all this without leaving her Facebook Page even for adding things to the cart or making the payment, thanks to experience-driven commerce. There can many manifestations of the concept and the best part is that there is no restriction to how innovative a marketer can get.

Serve Your Customers

There are three words that can determine a business' success – service, service and service. With technology helping crease out operational issues, business houses can utilize the extra time and resources into servicing their existing customers and building up a loyalty base. With social media being such an integral platform, every well-serviced customer automatically becomes a brand ambassador and vice versa.

Application Programming Interface (API)
Application Programming Interface or API is seamless integration of all customer touch-points.

With the advent of smart phones and mobile devices, there are multiple platforms or touch-points wherein the customer comes in contact with the brand. For instance a working professional Zach surfs the Internet for a backpack from his work desktop computer. Later while traveling home from work, Zach checks out retail app for backpacks. He stops over for some food wherein the app sends a special backpack deal along with the location of the store closest to his current location. Across platforms and customer touch-points there is a seamless integration and communication, which facilitates flow of information making each channel both complimentary and complementary to each other.

Mobile mind shift

Mobile mind-shift pretty much is the fact that mobiles have changed the way customers shop – MY PLACE, MY TIME, MY PRICE, MY TERMS shopping. This essentially means that companies not only need to gear up to mobile commerce but to the mobile-first approach. It requires technological changes along with business strategy re-design.

Omnichannel

To begin with omnichannel is not the same as multi channel. Omni channel refers to the brand being omnipresent; on multiple channels but with seamless integration and backend connectivity of all the channels or customer touch-points. Unlike the common misconception, mobile commerce, e-commerce and in-store are not individual profit centers but are all integrated and one-brand experience.

Personalization

This is perhaps the most commonly used buzzword in the industry. Personalization includes collecting customer information from every customer touch-point and building a customer profile that includes information like likes, dislikes, preferences, social profile and all. With this information in hand a company needs to personalize the offer to the customer according to her tastes, her shopping preferences, at a time she is willing to shop from wherever she prefers to shop.

Optimizing Your App Search

How To Optimize Your App Search?

How To Optimize Your App Search

So you've chalked out your comprehensive mobile strategy, defined the app value preposition and also created your app. So much of detailing and yet it is just the beginning. The real task starts with the marketing of the app.

One obvious way is to directly tell the consumers about your app through advertising, online advertising, social media publicity, word of mouth etc. Another important way would be to rise the listings in Apple's App Store and Anroid's Google Play. This would require systematic optimization of App Store and Google Play similar to search engine optimization (SEO) for web.

What to do and how?

Keywords: Carefully choose your keywords. Think of logical keywords that can be associated with your app. Also take help from Google Ad-words Keywords Planner. Spying on competition's keywords can also give you a fair idea of the exact keywords you want for your app.

App Description: The description of your app should be carefully scripted to add all the strategically important keywords and still be convincing enough for a potential user.

Encourage Reviews: Reviews, especially good reviews, can play a major role in app search optimization. If there are bad reviews, address them in the same forum. This will create goodwill amongst users and potential users.

App Usage: The more your users use the app, the better the ranking that you'll get in app stores. Send coupons, notifications and incentives to encourage app usage, which will improve your ranking on the app store.

On a macro level these points will help you in your App Search Optimization (ASO) both on App Store and Google Play. At the micro level there can be some fine differences on specific points but overall for both the platforms any feature that helps the user is considered great ASO.

App: To Fee Or Not To Fee

Which is better for business in the long run: free app or paid app?

While businesses have come to terms with the fact that apps are fundamental to business success, the next big question remains – What kind of an app?

App strategy has to be woven around consumer interests – what will give value to the end user? Or, why would the consumer use this app? App strategy would be a fine balance in value derived, both to the consumer and the company. And while putting the value component on paper the dilemma most businesses face is whether to make the app free or chargeable.

There is no absolute answer to the question above. Although a paid app can seem like a huge monetizing opportunity, but what if consumers do not find value and abandon the app. On the other hand what if there are many downloads, wouldn’t that be like an opportunity lost? The only way to an answer to this is by doing an in-depth analysis of the marketplace, user base and company requirements and then arrive at a logical solution that balances all three.

Understanding Trends

The app landscape has drastically changed. To begin with, most apps were paid apps. There were just a handful of apps that came free. In most case there used to be a limited version of the app that was free, the full-feature version was often charged for. But this has changed over the years. The market is now flooded with free apps. There are different revenue models these apps follow. Some apps encourage in-app purchases, some cash on ads and some on both.

Free Apps

Free apps are the most popular style of app marketing. With growing market clutter consumers would rather have it free than pay for it. With free apps though, companies present the consumer with numerous opportunities to make in-app purchases or flood the consumer with advertisements throughout the app usage time. Companies need to be sensitive while making aggressive sales calls with both the methods mentioned. Although free apps can be a great boon to retailers as more the app usage, more the revenue.

Paid Apps

It is indeed amazing how premium or paid apps make a significant chunk in the app market despite of the market being flooded with free apps. Here are a few points to consider before you decide to make your app paid.

• The app is marketed by a premium vendor.
• Consumers get value that outweighs the burden of price.
• The app falls short of supply as compared to the demand in the market.

The Takeaway

The key to a successful strategy is one that provides value to the consumer. So if a paid app can justify the value preposition, it makes sense to have a paid app. Similarly if a free app can successfully monetize though ads or in-app purchases without putting the user, having a free app would be preferable.

Deeplinks

Understanding & Implementing Deeplinks.

The Issue

There’s an app installed on your mobile phone. While checking your email you notice that there’s an email from the service provider of that app. You click on the link in the email and the browser opens a login page. If the app already exists on your mobile phone, shouldn’t the link connect you to the app instead of taking you through the login process again?

The Reason

Although everything Internet might seem pretty much the same but mobile web and mobile apps are worlds apart. The HTML/HTTP URL does not work on the apps. Because apps are dedicated independent programs, the web links cannot communicate from inside of the program.

The solution

Deep Linking is a technology that links the two worlds, mobile app and mobile web, allowing standard web links (HTTP) to open specific sections in the app. Deep Linking allows enriched app experiences. Deep Linking links all digital marketing with the app, app to app, ad to app, SMS to app, QR to app, Email to app, web to app and social media to app.

Deep Linking opens doors to a whole world of digital marketing opportunities. This also opens a whole new world of personalized customer service. It becomes easier to tap surfing pattern and consumer behavior across platforms.

Do or Die

Mobile Friendly Website: Do or Die.

here's good news and there's bad news. Good news – Google's new algorithm loudly applauds websites that are mobile friendly and gives them search preference over other sites that are not. Bad news – if your website is in the 'others' category, that is its not mobile friendly, you have a lot of fire fighting to do, especially with your SEO.

Google has given many pointers at several occasions hinting that mobile browsing is the future. Industry analysts, market trend watchers, reports, infographics, web marketing blogs, tech bloggers and all others have been factually explaining it too. For companies that caught on the trend, they'll get the advantage of Googlebot crawling their site, identifying it's mobile friendly and giving it preference on the search results. For website owners who were still looking for compelling reasons to go mobile friendly, well here one – you don't have an option. Google's new algorithm and the track set for further updates make it very clear, any website that does not acknowledge mobile browsing will eventually be dead on the internet.

Understanding Google's new algorithm

Google's new algorithm is actually pretty simple. When Googlebot crawls the website, it will identify whether the website is mobile friendly or not. This essentially means that all the assets of our website need to be crawlable, the website's Javascript, CSS and image files, all need to be crawlable. The robots.txt file should not block search engine's access to critical files that help in rendering pages of your website. So in many cases if the Googlebot is not able to crawl the website properly, it might not identify correctly if your website is mobile friendly or not. In certain cases, in spite of the website actually being mobile friendly, Googlebot might not acknowledge it causing search engine listing loss to the website directly affecting the search engine traffic.

To see if your website is mobile click on the link below. Just key in your website's URL and click 'Analyze': Mobile Friendly Testing Tool This will help you understand if your mobile web is good or it needs tweaking.

Mobile Friendly Website

There are three ways to go mobile friendly:
Responsive Website
Dynamic Serving Website
Mobile Specific Website

Responsive Website

Responsive website is one that responds to a particular device's make and screen size and intelligently adapts to the same. So basically it's the same website with one URL that responds to different devices. Since the website is same, the content all across remains the same.

Responsive websites are the most promising ones when it comes to SEO value. Googlebot will have to crawl one site only. Link building is easier for a single URL. On the flip side, user experience is not that great since mobile website will be as elaborate as the desktop website which can be exhaustive for a mobile screen. For websites that use 'Flash' for animation, mobile website can be quiet a pain since mobile web takes time to upload and usually Flash sites fail to upload on mobile browsers.

Too many intrusive ads

Completely understood that 'ads' is your app's revenue model. But again that does not mean that the ad would interrupt the functioning of the app to show an ad. There can be subtle non-intrusive ads too. And even these ads are clicked upon if the ads are presented well. Read 'Effective Advertising Techniques' for better understanding the concept.

Dynamic Serving Website

Dynamic serving website identifies the user's browsing device and serves content accordingly. So typically a desktop website would have elaborate content while the same website when opened on a mobile device, will serve content tweaked for mobile.

This option is great for user experience but has some downside when it comes to SEO value. Number of pages that need to be crawled will definitely increase. The designer will have to specifically mention in the code that which pages to render and crawl. Sometimes the Googlebot might not crawl the mobile web pages again confusing it as a website that is not mobile friendly. However, this can be handled by appropriate coding that allows search engine crawling throughout the website, on each page.

Mobile Specific Website

A mobile specific website has a different URL for the mobile web. For instance your website name is www.example.com, the mobile URL becomes www.m.example.com. While this serves very high on user experience, it is a challenge from the SEO point of view. The two URLs are practically two different websites, which would essentially mean SEO promotion for two websites, crawling pages for two different websites and moreover managing and maintaining two websites. But if you have already have a website and shifting to a responsive website would be challenge, a mobile specific URL would serve the purpose right.

To Sum Up

While a mobile friendly website is inevitable, companies can choose, depending on their specific needs, which solution to implement. The key to understanding Google's algorithm updates is that Google invariably looks for enhanced user experience. The updates catch on with surfing trends, social and professional aspects influencing user behavior and essentially aims at providing an enriched experience to the end user. Any website that honestly aims at enriching user experience will organically go up in Google searches.

Mobile App Versus Responsive Website

Mobile App Versus Responsive Website

While going mobile has become inevitable for businesses, the big question remains HOW. Does a business need a mobile website or a native app? The answer to this question is more complicated than most marketers think. To begin with, there is no generic answer that can straighten out the dilemma. The answer is actually based on an extreme balancing act of a company's strategic goals, business needs, industry type, customer requirements, brand awareness and a whole lot of factors that influence business directly and indirectly.

So, before we get to a solution, it's important to understand the functionality and purpose of both, responsive website and mobile app.

What is a Responsive Website?

Responsive website is website that can identify the user's device and intelligently adapt to the device's screen size. A responsive website can be accessed on a laptop, smart phone or a tablet, with the same functionality and features across devices. A responsive website can be great option for companies that use their website majorly for showing company information, a digital brochure of sorts.

Another alternative to a responsive website is mobile web. Mobile web is also a website, but it is designed specifically for mobile or handheld devices. Companies that use mobile web usually fine-tune content for mobile web. The content becomes lesser yet richer. Usually websites that interact and demand customer interaction in one way or the other, say making a sale, or registering for something or making bookings, or any other call for action from the user, choose to mobile web over a responsive website, such that the call for action part is highlighted given the smaller window.

What is a Mobile App?

Mobile app is a dedicated program that can be downloaded on a mobile device. This program then becomes the link between the user and the brand. Since the app resides in the user's mobile device, it becomes easier for the brand to be in constant touch with the user, collect demographics and statistics, build user profiles and engage customers with the brand. For instance if a pizza place has an app that users have downloaded, the app (or the program) can use native functions of the mobile device to track the user's location and accordingly suggest a great dinner deal at a pizza place close to the user's current location.

Which is the best option?

There is no best option. It is a business call based on business needs. The answer of what to choose would depend on various factors as discussed below:

1. Brand awareness:

This is the age of information. And information is the first thing a potential customer would seek, to understand if she wants to be associated with the brand or not. There are some brands that have reached the zenith of awareness. People don't check their websites to find out about them (well almost). How many of us recall logging into a Pepsi website to know about Pepsi. We already know Pepsi. But for a brand that's not as blessed, potential customers would want to find out, research and then take a call. And if the chain of seamless information is broken because your website did not respond to the mobile device the customer's using, you've (in most cases) lost one. Because so many people are using mobile devices and the number is growing exponentially, it's just common sense to have a website that responds to a mobile device. Now whether it should be a responsive website or mobile web, this call would need to be taken by individual businesses since it would largely depend on particular business requirements.

2. Customer requirements

Does your customer use the website to check out information about your company or is there a call for action or some sort of user engagement involved? Because if there is customer engagement involved, then perhaps an app would make sense. For instance retail industry has seen a tremendous boom with retail apps becoming popular amongst customers. So has the gaming industry transformed with the advent of mobile devices and apps.

3. Value add

You've decided to have an app, great. But you need to work out on how does the app provide value to the customer and only then will the app make sense. What's in it for them? Once this question is answered a lot of confusion over having or not having a mobile app, deliverables of the app and purpose of the app, gets straightened out and the mobile strategy falls into place.

Also, since these two are different platforms meant to solve different purposes, there can be no choice between the two. But thanks to marketers who present a biased opinion, you are most likely to get caught in the dilemma. So here's a quick chart for you to understand the two platforms and (maybe) compare the deliverables.

FEATURE	MOBILE WEB	MOBILE APP
Accessibility	Mobile Website is accessible by everyone as long as the mobile device has a browser and an internet connection	Mobile app is accessible by those who have downloaded it. Once downloaded, mobile app can be accessed with an internet connection as well
Speed	Mobile websites can be slow and shallow as compared to apps	Apps are fast, intriguing and engaging for consumers
Changes / Updates	Making changes in the website is relatively easier	Any changes in the app need to go through Google Play Store and The App Store guidelines
Cost	Mobile website's cost would vary depending on if you want a separate mobile version or want a new unified website in responsive design	An app's cost would depend on the scope of the app. The more you want your app to perform, the more you'd invest in it
Development / Maintenance	If there is a single website across platforms, then it can be maintained with the same code. But if the mobile website is different, it would require up gradation/ separately	An app would need separate maintenance and up gradation
User Experience	Mobile websites can be good if the purpose of the website is information	Apps are perfect when customer's interaction and automation is required, e.g. Retail, ecommerce, employee interaction etc.
Loyalty Rewards	A website, be it mobile website or of the web, it cannot track repeat visitors and keep track of their usage as smartly as an app can do	Apps are downloaded on the user's mobile device. It means app can interact with the user, provide loyalty incentives and even send gentle reminders to dormant customers
Check Out	The check out process for online buying can be a tedious affair	App stores important information (of course securely) and makes the whole buying process a breeze.
Personalized	A website experience is for masses, it cannot be personalized	Apps take personalization to a whole new level; customers see the products they like, get discounts when they want, get alerts relevant to them and get an individualistic experience rather than one designed for masses
SEO	A mobile website would assist SEO initiatives by adding searchable content on the web	Apps are not directly beneficial for SEO initiatives, but again if a user has already downloaded the app, web search would not make any difference
Customer Data	Website does not help gathering data about visitors except counting numbers on a superficial level	Apps become a part of the consumer's mobile hence can gather data for personal profiling, social profiling and accordingly personalization
Social Media	A website can enable limited sharing on social media	Apps enable sharing and connecting on social media. Moreover apps can have a viral effect if the app provides a service/feature that appeals to people

If there are still any questions that remain unanswered or any concern that needs to be addressed regarding your mobile strategy, reach us on 415-504-1516, and we'd be happy to help.