MobileWebsiteWatch

Domino’s is enhancing it’s mobile offerings by providing online ordering and mobile couponing.  According to this article on Mobile Marketer, Domino’s sees a 5-15% redemption rate in mobile couponing, much higher than traditional coupons, which have seen a 40% decline in usage.

If you’re hungry and on the way home, you can visit http://mobile.dominos.com and order directly from your mobile phone, or if you just want to find your local Domino’s location, you can do that also from your mobile phone.

As more and more people turn to their phones as their primary “screen” we’ll see more and more delivery chains offering up mobile ordering and couponing solutions.

Below is a short list of some ROI and usage data that has been floating around lately.  Even though we all know the opportunity is huge, it can sometimes be hard to quantify:

· Over 100,000,000 cell phone users pay for mobile web in the US today. Up 28% year over year as of July 2008 (CTIA)

· Roughly half of those report using mobile web at least 3x per week. (Nielsen: Mobile Web Reaches Critical Mass)

· As of June 2008 - A YEAR AGO – 9,000,000+ people used mobile web for ecommerce purchases (Nielsen: Mobile Insights Survey June 08 – n = 30,000)

o 50% of all data users (50,000,000) report planning to participate in mobile commerce in the future (ibid)

o Of the 9M who made purchases as of June 2008 – 4.9 million men made a purchase vs. 4.3 million women did. (ibid)

o 5.4% of adults aged 25-34 have made a mobile purchase as of June 2008 (ibid)

o 3.6% of all mobile subscribers made a purchase. (ibid)

o Mobile access to mobile shopping sites increased 73% between April 2007 and April 2008. (ibid)

· Mobile has much better conversion rates than regular web site (Usablenet)

o Omni Hotels (Usablenet client) reports that its mobile web traffic has grown 86% in the past 6 months.

o Kerry Kennedy, Omni’s e-commerce director reported that mobile had a 25% conversion rate (compared to 3.5 – 7%) on the web site. (AdAge – 2/19/09)

· Marriott Mobile (Usablenet) generated $2,000,000 in additional bookings between its launch in August 2008 and Dec 2008. No additional advertising was done to promote the site.

· Since offering ecommerce with Usablenet – Hilton Hotels has realized a 22% ROI without any special promotions for mobile.

Discover® Card today announced the launch of a mobile solution for its cardmembers, Discover.com Mobile. This mobile version of the Discover Card Web site will allow cardmembers to manage their credit card account directly from their mobile phone’s browser.The new mobile Web site offers a simplified version of the Discover.com account summary interface and includes the following functionality:

• Make a payment

• View recent transactions

• View recent and pending payments

• View rewards activity

• Enroll in the 5% Cashback Bonus® program

While there are a few banks out there that offer mobile services, such as Chase (SMS only) and services like Paypal, for the most part this major function of that people need access to in their everyday lives and consistently report having a desire to do via mobile in surveys, is sadly underserved. Discover is making some great headway ion this space and clearly has a solid understanding of the market and its customer base.

“At Discover, we know that busy consumers are constantly looking for more convenient ways to stay in control of their finances,” said Sarah Alter, vice president of e-business and new markets at Discover Financial Services. “Discover.com Mobile provides a new service channel that allows cardmembers to have access to their account information right at their fingertips. Whether by telephone, Internet or now mobile phone, Discover Card is committed to providing cardmembers with the services they need at the time, place and method they choose.”

As more and more companies turn to using the booming mobile web channel to provide serives to thier cusometers, streamlined and mobile optimized products like this will continue to grow rapidly in importance use and payoff.

While the race to serve customers on mobile has been fierce in may areas, real estate seems to have been left behind, perhaps due to its recent economic bad rap. Although some applications, such as Trulia’s iPhone app are available for home buyers, compared to the number of sports sites, travel services, and useless iFart-esque downloadable apps–it pales.

Recently, we heard about a service called Smarter Agent that can be downloaded to a variety of smartphones and then uses location aware technology to display location-based listings with a variety of search criteria. This is a great tool for home shoppers who may be patrolling an area or school district and looking for homes to give the pass by. However, the question remains, ‘why aren’t top brokerages doing this themselves?’ Aren’t they leaving money on the table by not offering a mobile optimized view of listings on their web sites? How is it possible that they would allow a service like Smarter Agent to serve buyers in a better way than they can?

Ultimately, a better and more seamless view of real estate sites on mobile web would be a more unbiquitous solution. While Smater Agent offeres a lot of good features, it is still limited to those who

1. Know about it
2. Have a supported device
3. have downloaded and properly installed the application

Smart money to recapture this market for major brokers like Century 21 would be to allow customers to simply access their web site via mobile web with ease and success–much like many airlines and hotels do today.

Mobile Marketer put out their “Classic Guide to Mobile Commerce” in November, filled wtih 30 articles from key players in the mobile web and commerce space. The articles range from mobile marketing, mobile payments, and mobile web design.

Too much to sum up here, but there are two articles that I found very pertinent to the importance of mobile web.

The first is on page 9, “Mobile Commerce: Leverage the targed impulse purchase opportunity.” The key to this article is the discussion of how retailers can engage customers more meaningfully, and as a result increase sales. But, more importantly, the graphic in the article shows how all of the various mobile marketing initiatives all point back to your “mobile marketing presence” or your mobile website. Text messages, online advertising, SEM, mobile couponing, store displays, rewards programs all need to be tied together with an enjoyable mobile user experience.

The second is on page 26, “So, you have a mobile site. What’s next?”. I like this article because it assumes you’ve taken the right initiative to develop your mobile site and discusses how to promote that site to maximize it’s effectiveness. I think this is where many organizations get stuck. Let’s not forget that your customers are already going to your existing site, mobile or not, on mobile devices, so it is safe to assume that you will see traffic on mobile with the proper analytics tools, but your traffic will increase once you have optimized the mobile site for mobile. But, once you’ve made the investment in time and money to optimize your site for the mobile device, this article discusses how to promote the site further.

Opera Software’s report, “State of the Mobile Web, November 2008″ is a fascinating, quick read.

A couple of key points I think the report makes:

1. 2008 isn’t the year that mobile web went mainstream, but instead the year that we realize that we utilize “one web” on a multitude of devices.

2. The US moved from 7th position to 3rd position in the top ten list of Opera Mini using countries.

3. Page views increased 303% year over year, with 5.7 billion pages viewed in November 2008.

4. Portals, social networking sites and informational sites dominate the top 10 sites for most geographic areas.

I’m glad to hear that the major mobile players are in agreement that mobile web should not be seen as a “different web” but instead just a way that users are accessing existing websites from mobile devices.

ESPN is taking mobile web seriously. During the 2008 college football season, ESPN saw 59.9 million visits, a 185%.

Not bad, you say? How about an average of 7 minutes looking at content? How about the fact that visitors spent 2 more minutes on the mobile website on average than the wired website?

Maybe that’s because the mobile site is made “little” and gives users the info they need without a massive information overload? I’m speculating here.

Naturally, peak mobile traffic occurred during the SEC Championship game and the Texas vs. Texas Tech rivalry.

Click here to read more.

Earlier this year, Mobile Marketer reported that Dolce & Gabbana’s mobile advertising campaign saw a 10% click-through. The campaign focused on the brand’s teen focused catalog but also had an impact on the Men’s fashion show in Milan.

Tom Henriksson of Nokia, who handled the advertising campaign for Dolce & Gabbana, discusses how mobile speaks to the “language of youth in a metropolitan world without borders.” He then goes on to talk about how mobile advertising is a great way to target both loyal customers and reach new ones.

“The strategy was to reach young consumers on the medium they bring almost everywhere, almost all the time – their mobile handset,” Mr. Henrilsson said. “D&G wanted to create a fun campaign that would encourage consumers to spend time with the brand, as well as forward it on to their friends.”

According to this article, the standard CTR is 2-4% on mobile, and 10% was achieved based on the placement on the Nokia Media Network.

I think this really enforces the concept that your mobile presence and customer experience is crucial to your brand image, and no one knows about brand image like Dolce & Gabbana.

Mobile Marketer reports in this article that Marriott International claims more than $1.25M in gross revenues in the first 100 days of introducing mobile booking on it’s 3 year old mobile website. Their site also allows users to view or cancel reservations or click to call an operator.

The business traveler is clearly a huge mobile web user and many travel companies have adopted mobile websites. Another interesting fact from this article is that almost a third of the mobile bookings were done the same day.

In addition to this additional revenue channel, the article goes on to say that Marriott Mobile plays a key role in customer relationship marketing.

I expect to see even more companies launching mobile websites in 2009 than ever before. For retailers and travel related businesses, the chance to improve the customer experience and brand image while also collecting sales that might have otherwise gone to a competitor is a win-win.

This great article appeared a few weeks back in the WSJ about retailers making it easier for customers to shop on their mobile devices and also in brick and mortar stores.

“Connecting with busy shoppers through their mobile phones “is even more important right now” for retailers, given the tough economic climate, says Brad Beasley, president of CrossLink Media, a mobile-marketing firm.”

Amazon, Target and Gap have released various iPhone apps of differing capabilities. Amazon’s is one of the most robust shopping apps for iPhone. The Gap application lets users mix and match clothing to create an outfit.

Other retailers like Sears have launched mobile e-commerce solutions from multiple devices, while Buy.com is sending out daily specials using Twitter.