No One Can Afford to Rest on Their Laurels When It Comes to Mobile in 2012
Voupons Comment: “It is with great interest that we read this article. In short, the key word here is arbitrage. And it will not last, as it is becoming very clear the consumer is shifting their habits, and shifting fast.
Businesses risk losing up to 30% of the potential customers that utilise mobile devices to browse. It definitely raises concerns for the micro and SME businesses operators, and let’s face it, modern technology is moving too fast for some.
We here at Voupons believe and urge all business operators to constantly review new mobile marketing technologies, and specifically, increasing sales with mobile marketing. Integrate different technologies to not only service and communicate with your existing client base, but also grow your client base.
Technology is getting cheaper, and it is also paving the way for low cost communications. It is the rare business that can afford to look the other way.”
No One Can Afford to Rest on Their Laurels When It Comes to Mobile in 2012
New Mobile Age recently caught up with Latitude CEO Alex Hoye to get his thoughts on the future of Mobile Marketing.
There’s been a lot of talk about mobile. For once, even that amount of talk isn’t “too much talk” – it’s not enough. At current growth rates, smartphones and tablets will account for over 25% of click traffic by the end of 2012. That’s four Yahoo and Bings combined. And growing. Yes, soon the majority of internet use will be via mobile.
But there’s more – those growth rates will accelerate with more killer apps and Android pricing.Consider as well the launch of 4G networks in 2013 offering mobile connection speeds that are the same as ADSL broadband.
An Ofcom report highlighted that 27% of all UK adults and 47% of teenagers now own a smartphone, with 59% having purchased their first smartphone within the past year.
The phones aren’t just being used for non-revenue social networking and email either. Ben Wightman here at Latitude analysed terabytes of our client traffic for our new Mobile Report to find that smartphones are responsible for 9% of all paid clicks in December 2011, with 4.4% coming via tablets.
So, what to do? The first, most essential point is that if you don’t have a mobile-optimised website, get one. There is no option of giving mobile visitors the poor experience of having to pinch, zoom and scroll in order to read a desktop site on the smaller screen. An IAB study revealed that if a retailer’s website didn’t work on their mobile, 20% of customers would buy from a competitor’s mobile site instead, 8% wouldn’t bother and 2% replied “other”. That’s a 30% loss of mobile-driven business. So, it’s an arbitrage, there’s a mini-gold rush on and it won’t last. If you are an incumbent, time to defend. If you are a challenger – get in and steal share while you can.
