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.

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.

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.

After recieving a couple requests to push the full text of articles I have made the switch. Happy feed reading!

Hello mobile web junkies! After the labor day hiatus, mobilewebsitewatch is back on the case.

Happy reading!

The Smithsonian, while housing all that is old antique, is going new age in its push to attract tourists to its doors. AP reports:

The Smithsonian Institution will try luring tourists into an upcoming art exhibit by sending advertisements to visitors’ cell phones.

The Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are trying out a system that sends messages to cell phones with Bluetooth technology. The messages will be sent from bus shelters in Washington’s pedestrian-heavy areas.

A message from the Smithsonian will appear on screen, and those who accept it will receive a free image similar to ads posted at the bus stops.

Mobile ads are used widely in Europe and Asia, but are a first for the Smithsonian. Museum spokeswoman Amanda Williams says they want to target younger audiences.

The museums are promoting the Asian art exhibit “Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur,” which opens Oct. 11 and runs to early January.

This is really a bold move in the right direction for an organization like the Smithsonian. Furthermore, the tactic of keeping it niched and allowing people at bus stops to opt in is appropriately niched. This is a very clever and targeted area where the visitors they are likely looking for probably are. However, it has to be asked, why offer a “free image”? A free image is a nice plus, but couldn’t that be offered on a mobile Web site as well? What if the person is interested in the museum, but not that exhibition? Without a fully optimized mobile Web site, that could easily be offered up in the content served to the phone via Bluetooth, the user cannot be engaged very fully. After checking out the Smithsonian’s Web site, it is clear that there are a lot of really great areas that should be made available to tourists looking for attractions and tethered to their mobile phones for internet access as they are on the go. Furthermore, this would seem like a logical next step as the campagn is currently limited to phones with Bluetooth capability, which tend to be more sophisticated devices and, if the user is sophisticated enough to be using the Bluetooth features of this phone, there are probably also accustomed to using the mobile web browser as well.