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3FER: 6 December 2013

#1: Black Friday Review

The results from our annual Thanksgiving Weekend shopping binge disappointed retailers. Sales were down 2.9% from 2012. Mobile shined last weekend, and those who used it wisely bucked the weekend trend.

Per IBM, mobile sales jumped 63% and accounted for 32% of online traffic and 13% of everything purchased. According to Adobe, 18.3% of online sales across 2,000 retailers came from mobile on Cyber Monday, an 80% increase. And those smart enough to optimize their web site saw sales leap over 180% for top retailers. (Mobile also saved shoppers from bodily harm: http://bit.ly/1gblP9V).

Review the full reports below:

IBM: http://bit.ly/1cdFtLd
Adobe: http://bit.ly/18c7F5C
Branding Brand: http://bit.ly/1cdFBdL

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#2: Mobilizing Dining

Growing up, there’s was a local restaurant that had telephones in every booth to call in your order. What was an odd novelty decades ago has now come full circle. Following a similar move by Chilli’s Grill & Bar, Applebee’s will install over 100,000 tablets nationwide. These low-end Android devices that are secured to the table will order up you food, offer games and allow you to pay your bill.

Most important, these tablets will minimize your engagement with manically-happy servers–a very welcomed innovation IMHO.

Read more on this in Business Week: http://bit.ly/1iIs3gH

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#3: Heckle Me

On Tuesday, December 17th @ 7PM, I’ll be presenting at Mobile Twin Cities. We’ll cover how connected devices are driving the evolution of mobile and how to prepare for it. Join me for this free event (with pizza) in downtown Minneapolis.

Details & RSVP: http://bit.ly/1bNgj5S

3FER: 25 November 2013

Black Friday Preview:

Last year, mobile influenced over 25% of online sales on this busy weekend. As retailers are preparing for this weekend’s buying binge, you’ll see mobile taking a greater role. Here are three stories to prep you for the weekend bonanza:

#1: Retailers ‘discover’ SMS.

Text messaging has taken a backseat to other mobile efforts over the last few years, and retailers have been slow to adopt. Fortunately, many have awoken to SMS’ many strengths–95%+ open rates, double digit click-throughs and ease of adoption. Here are stories on four retailers who get it, and are using it to drive holiday shoppers:

Best Buy: http://bit.ly/1bGOcqG
Build-A-Bear: http://bit.ly/1bNmyGW
HSN: http://bit.ly/1bNmBm6
Tangier Outlets: http://bit.ly/1bNmIy9

#2: Black Friday in Real Time

While Black Friday might officially begin on Thursday for some, not too many in retail corporate management will be sleeping this weekend, thanks to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark campaign. IBM will be culling real-time data from millions of transaction from over 800 retailers. When mobile showed an unanticipated spike in traffic in 2012, retailers reallocated more dollars to mobile to maximize revenue in real time. Print-n-pray strategies no longer fly on Black Friday.

Read more on this in Forbes: http://bit.ly/1iIs3gH

#3. mCommerce Infographic Overload

Blue Chip Marketing was kind enough to assemble an infographic that’s chock full of holiday shopper data. 55% of smartphone users use a retail/coupon app weekly; coupon & big box retailers lead the pack and 53% said to offer them a coupon if you want their purchase.

Review it in AdWeek: http://bit.ly/1bNnziq

BONUS: Moms & Mobile Webinar

Moms are the most sought-after mobile users. If you’re hunting for them, you won’t want to miss next Wednesday’s Heartland Mobile Council MobileU Webinar. (Full disclosure, I’m a council member).

Topic Q&A:  http://bit.ly/1iIxlsF
RSVP Here:  http://bit.ly/1bNgj5S

3FER: 16 November 2013

#1: Teen smartphone use now at 70%.

Youth are always more technically savvy. A new report from Nielsen shows that over 70% of teens (aged 13-17) and 79% of young adults (18-24) are smartphone users.  That’s noticeable higher than the over 64% of Americans now on smartphones.  Details: http://bit.ly/1e6wnDr

#2: The doctor will text you now. 

Diabetes hits poorer communities harder, and those patients find themselves in emergency rooms more frequently. A new trial at USC Medical Center aims to change this problem. After an ER visit, patients who opt in will receive SMS reminders for six months to help them better manage their disease. Read the full story at Healthcare Informatics: http://bit.ly/1e6z2wZ

#3: Emergency Aid: Food, Water & Mobile?

In the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan, mobile phones access is now a necessity as families reconnect with loved ones abroad. Money quote: “The world is a place where everyone has a computer in their pocket, and that changes our ability to provide them with aid,” Paul Margie, the US representative for TSF. Check out this great article in Quartz: http://bit.ly/1e6A0t2

The Unkindest Cut

I’ve run a nonprofit–resources are tight and cash is tighter. That’s why when I see nonprofits like the @KindestCutMN push QR code scanners to homepages, I get murphed. Here’s why:

  1. Per Google, over 65% of people who visited a mobile-unfriendly site will never return to it.
  2. The next 34.5% will likely never go deeper than 1-2 pages.
  3. And the remaining 0.5% are still unlikely to convert because there’s never a clear call to action–to donate, volunteer or snip your poor pooch.

So here’s what you need you need to do:

  1. If you can’t make your entire site mobile-optimized (due to politics or $$$), you can easily setup a 2-3 page microsite.
  2. Create a landing page tied to each campaign. It makes it easier to track the effectiveness of your efforts…and you want to do track them.
  3. Tell visitors what you want them to do. We’re damn indecisive and easily distracted–especially on our phones. You spent $$$ to bring us here, so tell us why and make it easy.

(And if you work for @KindestCutMN, contact me. I’m happy to help good causes.)

[Cross-posted from QR Code Critic.]

The Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming!

paul-revere-by-wyeth
Paul Revere’s Ride by N.C. Wyeth (1922)

On Monday, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer ZTE announced it will release its ZTE Open, a smartphone based off Mozilla’s FireFox OS (FxOS). Starting Friday, eBay will sell them exclusively in the US for $80, unlocked.

Few paid attention to this critical notice–a search on Google yielded only 39,600 results that day. By comparison, Apple also announced on Monday that it will be announcing its iPhone 5s on September 10–the web went wild with over 3,900,000 results.

If I had a horse in Silicon Valley, I would have recreated Paul Revere’s Ride down Sand Hill Road though I doubt that anyone would’ve noticed.

It’s a pity considering this: the ZTE Open is to the iPhone as the Chromebook is to the MacBook.

Here are a some more reasons why you need to pay attention:

  1. Laptop sales are crashing while smartphone sales are skyrocketing. Kudos to the Chinese for nailing the timing just right. Only 56% of Americans own a smartphone. The other 44% of Americans will within the next five years. An $80 contract-free smartphone will look far more appealing than an $800 iPhone for many late adopters and lower-income users.
  2. It’s the first smartphone developed for the developing world. Do the math. Only 1.5 billion of the 6.9 billion mobile phones in the world are smartphones. At $80 each, the ZTE Open is within reach of millions today and 100s of millions more as that price drops.
    zte_open
  3. The ZTE Open is ‘open.’ For you non-techies, the phone runs on Mozilla’s FireFox OS (FxOS), which is a lean, Linux-based platform. It’s truly an open standard. FxOS remains free of the Draconian developer restrictions of Apple, and similar, if more relaxed, requirements of Google. While this might expose phones to issues like malware, app developers have long complained about the high commissions paid and software review delays often tied to app stores.
  4. FxOS apps are limited, but lean: Unlike their Android and iOS relatives, these apps are strictly HTML5-based and have limited capabilities–no heavy data crunching or extreme graphics. That said, they also don’t require high-end processors. Since most people aren’t hardcore gamers and don’t manage servers from their phones, this isn’t an issue. FXOS app development is far easier and less complex as these are basically web applications. Many popular apps are already FxOS-ready: Angry Birds, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
  5. And it’s a mobile web world after all: The ZTE Open offers what few feature phones provide–access to the Internet as well as access Google Maps, news content and even email from an $80 (unlocked) smartphone.

Considering these points, how else will the ZTE Open impact our mobile world?