MobileWebsiteWatch

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.

Papa John’s Pizza, the country’s #3 pizza chain reported that its mobile web pizza ordering service had boosted sales by a staggering $1,000,000 since its launch only a half a year ago! Considering that its online sales have grown in total 75% over year end 2007, it is not surprising that mobile is such a big boost and that it is growing fast. Just another example of how mobile web is paramount to contining sales growth in a shrinking economy. Your customers are already mobile, if you cannot serve them in that space, a competitor will.

From MocoNews via BBC: the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK has ruled that original Apple iPhone television advertisement is misleading for consumers BBC reports. The ad, which says that “all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone”, omits the fact that the iPhone does not support Flash or Java - two programs that “form part of many online sites”, the authority says. Apple, while not issuing an official statement in its defense, claims that the ad referred to the availability of Web pages, rather than their specific appearance.

The ASA said the ad “gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone”, and should not be aired again.

The ruling states: “We noted Apples argument that the ad was about site availability rather than technical detail, but considered that the claims “You’ll never know which part of the internet youll need” and “all parts of the internet are on the iPhone” implied users would be able to access all websites and see them in their entirety. We considered that, because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a website normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the Web site.”

This turn of event really goes to back up many of the points brought up in one of my earlier posts: “iPhone Proves Bigger Not Always Better.” All of the companies that are featured in the ad now have mobile Web sites and/or iPhone optimized sites. This is about all the proof you need to see that even with the newest technology both network and hardware, the desktop Internet as we know it is never coming to mobile. Even as this technology improves, the public demand for optimized and streamlined content is not going away but rather growing. The screen is just not big enough to hope to avoid mobile view optimization.

All retailers take note: Ralph Lauren is leading the way in innovation of more than just clothes. The visionary luxury brand has taken some big and bold steps into the mobile realm, including a new mobile e-commerce site. The site, (http://m.ralphlauren.com or just ralphlauren.com if you’re on a mobile device) allows you to do a number of things including shop for, and buy apparel right from your phone. There are also sections about tennis and style and about the brand in general.

One oddity that was noted was the rendering of different site sections. The home pages and informational pages about tennis and other stuff seem to just be plain old CSS and, although heavily designed a and well put together still a little dumb. When the home page renders on a hi res screen (like an iPhone) the entire site is crammed into the upper left-hand corner of the screen, forcing the user to zoom and peck and basically defeating the purpose of the mobile site.

The shopping area, on the other hand, has a much more robust interface. We tested it on 3 different devices and it resizes for all of them perfectly with zero distortion. On an iPhone, the pictures even resize when you rotate the view. Strange why they didn’t do this for the rest of the site.

Another big move is the major push for the QR code campaign. MobileWebsiteWatch caught this clip on Good Morning America on Wednesday. In the video you can see how easy it is to get to a product right from the camera on the phone. While this application is not yet widespread here in the US, the idea is very solid and it seems that Polo is making big strides to get out in front of the market which I expect will pay off pretty big. According to a Reuters interview with David Lauren, SVP of Advertising:

The apparel maker will begin placing special codes in print ads, mailings and store windows along with its sponsorship of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which begins later this month.

Shoppers can download special software to camera-phones to scan the codes and be directed to a phone-friendly version of a Ralph Lauren website, where they can shop, watch tennis videos and read company content…

Cell phones with preinstalled code-readers should come to market within a year, Lauren said.

Full back cover ad of "New York Magazine" this month

Polo Ralph Lauren is a sponsor of the US Tennis Open Tennis Championship and is expected to release the marketing blitz with the commencement of the tournament on August 25th, 2008. Lots of print material is already floating around, like the full back cover of New York Magazine this month (the issue with “Race” on the front)

The phone carrier cash cow that is SMS is still booming reports ABI Research. What’s more, the uses of SMS to increase the marketing and transactional reach of companies is going right through the roof with it. According to the study:

• SMS will continue to maintain its lead as the highest revenue generator across all messaging categories, providing global service revenues of $177 billion in 2013(projection)
• SMS to garner 83% of All Mobile Messaging Revenues through 2013(projection)

“Innovative companies are exploring opportunities for expanding mobile messaging access to Web sites as well as targeting customers with content and ads,” says principal analyst Dan Shey.

With more than half the world using mobile phones, mobile messaging is growing at an explosive pace and will continue to do so in the near future. Both entrenched companies and new entrants are providing applications that blur the lines between the traditional mobile messaging applications. New and improved hardware, software, and services are increasing customer choices while bringing down costs. Players in this market are constantly challenged to evolve and look for new revenue streams. The ABI study explores both supply and demand drivers pushing the use and functionality of mobile messaging applications . It examines demographic-specific drivers, and delves into the rising use of social networking sites, blogs, and Web 2.0 applications that are expanding to mobile phones.

Of course, SMS and the mobile web are heavily intertwined, and in a world of ever increasing customer mobility, overall productivity and sales boosts to companies will be achieved best by allowing the customer to interact with the service in anyway that suits them.

Nielsen Mobile reported today that the expected mobile traffic generated by the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is forecast to break records of its own and be a “watershed moment” for the mobile media world.

According to their data, about 45% of U.S. mobile video users and 31% of U.K. cell phone viewers will tune in for the Olympic Games on their phones or PDAs.

“In general, the event-driven and around-the-clock nature of the Olympics make the next few weeks a really important testing ground for the state of mobile media,” said Nicholas Covey, director of insights for Nielsen Mobile, in the report.

NBC is leading mobile Olympics coverage with a range of offerings—although, strangely, there’s no mention of this on NBC’s mobile home page or on the NBC Mobile site. Instead, for the lowdown, go to www.nbcolympics.com/mobile on your desktop computer, or text OLYMPICS to 51515 with your cell phone. The actual mobile Web portal, accessible by cell phones, is at mobile.nbcolympics.com. More after the jump.

AT&T Wireless also has NBC Olympics 2Go, a mobile TV channel with live event coverage from NBC, the USA Network, MSNBC and CNBC. And NBC is distributing Olympics content through Helio, Verizon Wireless, Alltel, T-Mobile, and MobiTV.Certain events particularly lend themselves to mobile viewing. “Consumers are especially looking forward to the high-profile, short events such as track and field and gymnastics on their phone,” said Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen Mobile, in a statement. “Longer team sports, such as soccer and volleyball, are less conducive to mobile viewing, but mobile users will still follow the scores closely on their devices.”

Nothing has generated more buzz around mobile access than this event to date, and hopefully, but with such a large audience tuning in, it should be apparent that these 1st time mobile users will now join the rapidly growing ranks of sophisticated consumers expecting more and more information they can access right from their phones.

In a report from the Associated Press recently, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has struck a deal with a for-profit financial company to bring mobile banking to rural and impoverished regions of India and the Middle East. This seems like an amazing idea and I would not at all be surprised to see most major US banks start to offer similar services to cash in on migrant workers sending money to families back home and extending ther deposit bases to swaths of new account-holders.

The payoff could be big for companies providing these services. People who are now “unbanked” in China, India and Brazil alone could generate $85 billion in banking revenue by 2015, according to an estimate by the Boston Consulting Group. In January, India’s ICICI Bank Ltd., the nation’s second-largest bank, launched a mobile banking system. The State Bank of India, which has more than 100 million customers, many without Internet access

This to me really highlights how having a mobile optimized experience is an extremely effective way for companies to open up there brand to people on a mind-numbing scale. People in developing nations who are rapidly gaining wealth and will soon be buying up goods and services, cars and clothes and drugs and detergent, etc. The article points out:

Mobile banking could be another area in which the developing world leapfrogs the developed world, which is often constrained by expensive, pre-existing infrastructure. For example, countries like India and Cambodia have often skipped land lines in favor of installing mobile phone technology only…

“Today, it’s difficult to reach these people,” Obopay India Executive Director Aditya Menon said at a news conference in India’s financial capital, Mumbai. “If you solve that problem, you are enabling them to enter the economy.”

It just goes to show that the payoff and applications for mobile web technology today has barely scratched the surface.

Jack in the Box and BART along with Sprint announced an incredibly complicated trial system for making mobile payments from smart phones for BART transit fares and Jack food.

“The strategy for Jack in the Box was to drive sales in-store and at the same time track those sales,”

The way that it works is like this: first, participants with special RFID enabled Sprint phones only had to download a BART application onto the device, then use it to buy a BART card and with that comes a “Jack Ca$h” gift card account that can be filled from the from your credit card. Then, once you enter the subway system you have to go find a special in will advertisement and wave your phone in front of it. This will download special coupons and directions to the nearest Jack in the Box restaurant, where you can use the money in the account (which has to be bought on the BART website) to pay for you food. Simple, right?

I see where Jack in the Box is going with this and it is ultimately the right direction. However, in general, the best solution is the simplest on and this seems like a lot of steps. Wouldn’t it be better if Jack just had a mobile website? If I’m looking for the nearest location, I may use a maps application, or thier store locator from my mobile browser. Once there why not just buy my gift cards and see coupons there. Why do I need to find a special wall somewhere in the city in order to give you money?

Seems to me that the best way to track sales would be to boost traffic directly to your mobile website and get people into your loyalty programs that way.

Kroger is experimenting with offering coupons on mobile phones, MobileMarketingWatch reports in a renewed effort to get customers into the aisles. As far as best practices are concerned, offing the coupons before having a mobile site to root them in is putting the cart before the horse.

It’s always interesting in the realm of mobile marketing to watch trends advance, retreat for retooling, and then advance again.

For a time, mobile coupons in the grocery market were among the biggest - not to mention only - forms of mobile marketing employed by supermarket chains and franchises large and small. Although this practice quickly became old hat (at least to mobile marketing junkies like me who consistently want to see what’s next), mobile marketing is returning in force to the grocery market sector…

Customers can sign up for the service by linking their mobile number to their Kroger Plus savings card. This development is among the first for a grocery chain to tie their mobile marketing to a store-based membership or credit card and not rely solely on massive text messages or digital coupon distribution. To use the service, customers must link their mobile number to their Kroger Plus savings card.

Based out of Cincinnati, Ohio, Kroger is one of the nation’s largest standalone grocery store chains. For now, however, Kroger will test their new mobile marketing endeavors only in Georgia, South Carolina, eastern Tennessee and Alabama. So far, major consumer brands working with Kroger on special discounts, card redemption points, and mobile coupons include Clorox, ConAgra, Del Monte, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark and Unilever.