Mobile site vs. Mobile App? (via Jon’s PR 1.5)

Image via Wikipedia

I came across this post today and it reminded me of past discussions.  I am a bit nostalgic today, perhaps, so I decided to dig back a few months.  I argued last April that you MUST develop for the mobile web first, applications second.  While mobile statistics have changed a great deal in the last 17 months the arguments still make sense.  Give that post a read, if you have time, and check out this one from today too.

 This post was fueled as many these days are by two things, a conversation with a client and our soon-to-be-announced new company. The client conversation was focused on her initial interest in creating a mobile app (iPhone, Droid, etc.) to help promote her organization, what it does, etc.  Using this app would also help her consumers navigate her business.  After doing a great deal of research in her industry, the client and her team decided not … Read More

via Jon’s PR 1.5

Success being demonstrated by going local with mobile

Image via CrunchBase

I came across two great articles today that give interesting statistics about the growth of mobile-delivered-value at the local level.  I would urge you to check them both out.

• Local Ad Revenues Showing 19.6% CAGR Through 2014
  • Traditional advertising continues to stagnate while online advertising continues to increase.  By 2014 the expectation is that 25% of ad spending at the local level will be digital.
  • 55% of all ad spending is with local media.
  • At the local level online spending has increased from 10% of the overall spend to 15% this year.
• 10% of consumers driven in-store by mobile coupons
  • According to this study people prefer (45% of respondents) to receive these coupons via text messages (SMS). 
  • However, when the study looked at just the male population that found that “51 percent said they would prefer to find coupons themselves via an application (28 percent of the general pop.) ”  Similar to driving men want to find it themselves as opposed to asking for directions.

Local businesses, chambers of commerce, and local governments need to stay on top of these trends and understand the need to shift from traditional to online means.  Services such as Google Places, GoWalla, and Foursquare will play a large role, helping businesses deliver mobile coupons to people in the area,or better yet, checked into their stores.

John

Juniper’s Mobile Community demonstrating great early results

You may recall that I chatted with Juniper Networks back in April to learn more about the new mobile community they had just launched.

Also, if you were at my presentation at Parafest ’10 you may recall that I shared stats similar to those above.  This report, run on the NetMarketShare web site, shows the devices people are using to browse the web.  As you can see,  mobile browsing continues to rise in terms of the overall percentage of web browsing, nearly doubling from October of last year (82% for the math gurus in the room).

How does Juniper compare to the rest of the world over the same period?

Well, mobile traffic to Juniper has climbed from 0.5% of all traffic to 1.5% of all traffic, 300% increase in terms of its part of overall traffic.  Even more impressive, the other major metrics have taken off since they deployed their mobile community.  These comparisons are against last October’s traffic numbers.

• The average mobile visitor now spends 121 seconds, an 86% increase.
• The average mobile visitor views 2.9 pages per visit, an increase of 81%.
• Bounce rate showed a decrease of 22%. 

Juniper’s mobile visitors are clearly finding tremendous value in this new offering.

I am going to stay in touch with Juniper as they continue to measure and tweak their mobile community.  In the mean time, step back and ask yourself if your community can benefit by providing robust mobile solutions to your customers.

John

Reno shows local government how to go mobile

Mobile web browsing stats

While most people understand the need to offer mobile support for their applications I wanted to briefly share a few statistics that I hope will help all of us better understand why this is important.

Worldwide Usage

Mobile web browsing has increased by more than 240% since March of 2009.  While worldwide mobile web browsing is only 1.70% of all web browsing it is rising quickly.

You’re probably wondering, how does this compare to the mobile browsing habits on one of our favorite social media sites?

Facebook Usage

The current Facebook statistics, as of this time, show that about 25% of all active Facebook users access the platform through a mobile device.  25% comes to more than 100 million users.

Okay, but how active are they?

Facebook users that access the platform through mobile devices are twice as active as non-mobile users.  That’s right, twice as active.

Still unsure about support mobile applications and mobile web browsing?

Is your organization supporting mobile access?

While mobile web browsing is far from the mainstream there is no denying that it has finally turned a corner.  According to data on NetMarketShare, mobile web viewing has increased from 0.69% of all traffic in May of 2009 to 1.7% in March of 2010.  While these numbers are small they represent an increase of nearly 250% in less than one year.

eMarketer estimates that mobile web browsing will be 40% of all web browsing by 2013.  While I have doubts, 20 – 25% is not without question.  Are you doing enough to prepare for this reality?

Since you’re already here, take a second and answer this poll.

I’ll share the results soon, thanks.

John

 

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Windows Phone 7, a compelling mobile platform?

Windows Phone 7 is nearly a year from being reality but Steve Balmer announced the new platform (software and hardware) at the Mobile World Congress  in Barcelona today.  If you have not yet watched the announcement, and have some time on your hands, it is worth watching.

In my opinion, Windows Phone 7 represents a dramatic change, potentially unifying your various personas (work, personal, etc) into one interface that looks to be a nice evolution of the iPhone interface.  It is part Social CRM, providing you with a 360 degree view of your contacts.  If Microsoft is smart they will weave both Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Mirosoft SharePoint throughout the experience.  Both software platforms, delivered from semi-private clouds, would give them a strong edge with business users and the Enterprises they work within.

Windows Phone 7 should be available on phones by the holiday 2010 season.  In the mean time, check out the pros and cons from Eric Zeman at InformationWeek.  He nails the pros and cons well and I recommend giving it a read.

John

Are you about to invest in Mobile Enterprise product development? You need to develop on the web first, here’s why

This has recently been a topic that I have been discussing with a lot of different people. In general, people tend to disagree with me until we talk it out.  Their argument is that the performance and the functionality available on each device is superior to what you can create with a web application. They are right on this front, but are still wrong in choosing to develop device-specific solutions first.

Here is why you MUST develop your mobile application as a web-based solution prior to considering device-specific alternatives.

• In the past, you could count on the majority of your mobile users (generally the sales team) to be utilizing Blackberry phones only. While there are incompatibilities between versions, for the most-part a Blackberry application for a lower version will work for higher versions(again, for the most part).  However, if you look at a recent article from Fast Company you will see that times have changed.  The data is for the United State only and will vary elsewhere. However, take a look at the numbers:
  • Nearly 50% of the users have iPhones with the remaining 50% fragmented between versions of the Blackberry, Palm, Samsung, etc.. I agree that many Enterprises reflect differing percentages, but the iPhone is gaining market share, you cannot count on selling mobile solutions that only target the Blackberry.
  • The data is also clear about the fact that Palm and Windows Mobile solutions are losing market share.  They are good platforms but users are choosing other devices.
• Engineers are expensive.  I know, I am one and I manage a team of engineers. With finite budgets you must maximize your investment to achieve the greatest revenues possible. Development of a web-based mobile solution will enable you to deliver an application that will work across the majority of devices used within the Enterprise today. There are small differences (don’t use JavaScript, for example, as it’s only available on the iphone and is limited there) but these differences will not prevent you from building a great solution.
• It is much easier to up-sell customers with web-based applications. You do not have to convince them to go back to your web site, buy, and download. They already go to your site to use the application and there is nothing to download. If they buy a new feature, it’s there, no hassle.

There are countless other benefits as well, ranging from control over sensitive data to detailed logging that you can use to determine which features are being used, and which are not, so that you can determine where you should continue investing your resources.

Now, I know I’ve convinced you, so now what? You will probably reach a point where you want to extend your application’s capabilities and need to deliver a device-specific solution. You need to carefully consider your current user base, of course, but be careful not to overlook where they are going. I’m currently using a Motorola Q with Windows Mobile. I love it and it solves all of my problems. When my contract comes up later this year, logic would dictate that I would  either remain with the current phone or purchase a new Windows Mobile device. It works, I like it. Guess what, I’m going to buy an iPhone and I know I’m not alone.

Have I convinced you? Do you see other benefits of building a web-based mobile solution first? Do you have reasons why you should build a device-specific solution first?

John
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A great team delivers again: anywhere for InterAction 3.01

This post is purely a congratulations to my team and a small bit of boasting about our great mobile CRM solution.  If you’re not interested in either feel free to skip the post.

I wanted to thank the entire Swimfish team for doing a great job delivering anywhere for InterAction 3.01. A lot of hard work went into the release and for those of you are interested in reading a short PDF, you can find it here.

Great job everyone.

John

Are you getting what you need from your CRM system?

As I have noted in earlier posts I have seen too many companies invest a lot of money into CRM systems without getting the return on investment they were expecting.  Often times it’s because of personnel changes (project sponsor moving on without someone else picking up the torch), but it can also be due to lack of training or processes to support effectively utilization of the system.

Here are a few thoughts on what you should be looking at to ensure that your getting the right return on your investment.

• Have you defined metrics for success?  As with all projects, define requirements including the metrics that you will use to see if you are on track.  Execute, measure, repeat.
• Do you have a project plan which includes regular check-ins to ensure you are on track with the metrics you defined above?
• Here are some key metrics, with regard to the CRM system utilization, that you should be looking at: 
  • Use of product.  How many users are logging in per day?
  • Are users adding new contacts/connections to the system?
  • Are users adding their activities, opportunities, deals?
• Have you defined a sales pipeline and are you measuring how you’re doing against it?  Can you answer questions like “How many cold calls does my sales team have to make to close a new deal”?
• Do you have targets set for lead generation, numbers of calls per day/week?  Are you measuring?
• [3/19/2009:  I received a good question on how this post applies to the legal market.  I've included the core points of my comments within this bullet].  The sales and marketing processes and metrics above can apply to larger legal organizations but most have not yet reached a point where they have the need to track those metrics. Every industry, however, does have the metrics that should be established and measured, ranging from # of leads generated to utilization %s to billed hours. Define goals, measure them, then your CRM system can help support your business needs.
  • Legal customers need a CRM system that excels at relationship management.  I work at Swimfish and we’re resellers of Microsoft and Lexis Nexis products. I know that the Lexis Nexis InterAction CRM system does an outstanding job of relationship management and Microsoft Dynamics is also on the right track to meet this need.
• Do you have someone in charge of keeping your data “clean”, accurate and up to date?  Your data can get stale quickly and you need someone who takes ownership for this task. 
• If you have a mobile workforce, do you have a mobile CRM solution?
• Do you have the knowledge in-house to be successful with your CRM system?  If not, find help.

What’s missing?  Are you getting all that you should be from your CRM system?

John