Partner Views Blog

This blog will be short because it’s Friday and I know you will want to spend all your time testing out your mobile website. One of the best tools for testing your website is Google’s How to GOMO Test Your Site tool. It could not be simpler to use. Just put your URL in and press the “test” button, choose your business category and answer a few simple questions about the site. In a few seconds you will get an analysis based on the 10 best practices I covered in my last blog.

In my last blog I gave some statistics for why your business should have web pages optimized for mobile. When you are building your web page you need to pay attention to some best practices for mobile web sites otherwise your customers will have a poor experience and probably abandon your site.

2013 should be time to take the plunge and optimize your web site for mobile, especially if you sell products online, you have information that people want to access through their mobile device or if you have any type of local business. It is not that you are preparing for the next phase of internet marketing; your customers are already there. Consider these statistics from Google:

Last week I wrote about 20 Tips for Using Google AdWords Effectively for the Holidays and today HubSpot came up with a great infographic for the Top Marketing Techniques for the 2012 Holiday Season. What are the big marketing trends?

I have often blogged about the importance of mobile marketing and optimizing your websites for mobile and smartphones. When you consider that over 50% of the US population has a smartphone and only 33% of online advertisers have a mobile optimized website you realize that there is a disconnect between what consumers are doing and how marketers are reaching them. If you need more information here are 25 facts about smartphones and how they are used in the US.

Last month Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider presented The Future of Mobile at their IGNITION WEST conference in San Francisco. In a nutshell mobile is taking off in a big way. Last year the number of smartphones sold exceeded the number of PCs sold. Readers of this blog know that we have been anticipating this for some time. The other piece of information that should be of interest for anyone with a restaurant, bar, pub or tavern is outlined in the Infographic below from lab42’s blog MarketResearch 2.0 Smartphone Foodies. (see below)

According to Nielsen’s latest figures on smart phone purchases by US Consumers, Apple’s iPhone 4S is closing the gap on Android. Overall Apple’s operating system now accounts for 30% of all smartphone users as opposed to Android’s 46.3%. The operating system that has been losing ground is the RIM Blackberry with only 14.9% of the market share. This is interesting in itself but I think that the bigger news from Nielsen is, “As of Q42011, 46 percent of US mobile consumers had smartphones, and that figure is growing quickly.” Another more revealing study shows that 62% of Mobile Users 25-34 own Smartphones. With the number of people owning smartphones growing and the market pretty much split between Apple and Android there are five very important things you need to do to make your website accessible to mobile smartphones. 

A recent study Nielsen did for Women of Tomorrow highlighted the growing influence women have on purchasing decisions. The fact that women control the majority of purchasing decisions in a household is not surprising to anyone who has ever been married but online marketers should pay close attention to this group’s online and social media habits. Nielsen defines a “Social Mom” as females with at least one child who actively participates in social networking, and they are quite influential.

One of the frustrations that often come up concerning QR Codes is after someone scans the code the link does not lead to a useful page. Many people will link their code to their website, often their home page, while others will link to their personal contact information or to a social media page like Facebook. This strategy can be a bit limiting. For example, if the code only links to your Facebook page the QR Code serves no purpose after the person has scanned the code and “liked” you on Facebook. If the QR Code is linked to your home page what do you want people to do when they get there? Is your home page optimized for a mobile device? Even if it looked great on a mobile device it may not be an effective landing page.

Since I started blogging about QR Codes I am often asked how long will QR Codes last? This is usually followed by what will replace QR Codes? What the person usually wants to know is should they invest any effort in QR Codes? Why don’t they wait for the replacement for QR Codes? I don’t pretend to be a fortune teller and predicting the future of any technology is usually a risky business. Take for example IBM Chairman Tomas Watson’s famous missed prediction when he said in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” There are however, ways to look at a technology’s life cycles and make an educated guess on the potential of a new technology.