And so it’s spring, with all its rains and its warmth. We’ve been waiting some time for it and for that that undefined yet powerful feeling.
Something within arm’s reach.
Something blooming everywhere.
What’s the word?
Possibilities.
You took stock of 2012. You made your New Year’s resolutions. You want this year to be the best you ever had. And with that subtle feeling of spring, possibilities seem more alive than ever.
You feel like you’re going to grow 3 inches tall and you want your career and your business to grow alongside you.
And you want as many clients and customers to know about you.
You most likely have a website, some deals with ad platforms, people know about you and your social media status is faring well. But enough is never enough and you want to deliver what you have to as many people as possible.
The buzzword to that visibility is a mobile presence.
Why?
How come?
Ever since ol’ Steve Jobs pulled the ,,we reinvented the phone” rabbit out of the hat, the world’s been going mobile like there’s no tomorrow and it’s not stopping anytime soon.
So it shouldn’t so surprising that one fourth of internet traffic is now coming from mobile devices, with Apple leading the way.
Sounds good right?
But as we wrote in our previous article, don’t be hasty when jumping into mobile.
Before we go into how you can get some of that huge share of mobile users into your business, a mobile presence is not what you may think it is.
Most people define a mobile presence by making an app, cross their fingers for its success and hope for the best.
Making an app is a good start, but a mobile presence is about something bigger.
It’s about cross-linking your existing strategy with mobility, it’s about delivering the same user experience quality on the channels you are targeting.
Possibilities.
Fret not, it’s much easier than it seems.
Step 1 – Thou shall not make thy mobile user zoom x10
The first thing you should do is to make sure your website is optimized for mobile.
When you see a site on your desktop, your eyes are bombarded with dozens of buttons, scroll options, links, calls to action, ads, descriptions and everything that can fit on a big screen.
A mobile website functions in another realm of user experience and other rules.
A mobile website should have : simple buttons, as little scrolling as possible, readable big text, enlarged interface elements, short one-liners that describe what you offer, what’s your service and product and how you fast you can deliver them.
And one of the most overlooked aspects of a mobile website.
Your call to action is a stealth ninja.
Either the button is hard to find, too small, or it takes me 5 minutes to register, subscribe, buy your product, purchase content, etc.
Bad call to action, bad.
Despite the necessity and benefits of a mobile website, a lot of companies haven’t invested in mobile website optimization and some of them have abandoned mobile altogether.
Take for example a survey from two years ago. According to Jesse Haines, group marketing manager for Google Mobile Ads, the company canvassed its large advertisers early in 2011 and found only 21% have launched a mobile site.
And it doesn’t stop in 2011. A mashable article revealed some interesting insights that mirrored the lack of mobile optimized sites in 2012 as well.
,, A 2012 L2 study of the top 100 fashion, beauty, retail, hospitality, and watch and jewelry brands found that only two-thirds had mobile-optimized sites, and yet a third of those did not allow consumers to shop from their sites.”- Lauren Indvik
Take heart, optimizing your site isn’t such a challenge as you might think and it will pay off in the long run.
There are also a lot of nice tools and companies out there that can optimize your site for mobile or even do it yourself in a couple of minutes such as bMobilized.
The key benefits is that a mobile optimized website paves the way for user awareness and gaining overall visibility and brings you more customers and clients.
Possibilities.
Which brings up the next step towards establishing a mobile presence.
Step 2 – To app or not to app?
As one of the fastest growing and profitable technologies in the world, mobile apps are a must to empower your business.
The question now heavily relies on what kind of an app and what functionality should it provide.
Which brings that beautiful term of native apps.
One of the main advantages of native apps is that they embrace the wide world of device APIs, for example camera, gps, accelerometer and so on.
As mobile devices are inherently on the move, contextualized content and data is precious to users and implicitly engaging your customers.
Do you want to send targeted and smart push alerts to your app’s users based on age, gender or other traits? A native app can do that and more.
Do you want to create a seamless user experience when a user views your product or service? A native app can do that.
Jakob Nielsen, also called “the next best thing to a true time machine” (USA Today), said it best.
,,An app can target the specific limitations and abilities of each individual device much better than a website can while running inside a browser.”
Another, but more obscure advantage of mobile apps is if you couple it with bandwidth growth.
Without getting technical, there are some laws out there such as Moore’s law of bandwidth which basically states that in the next decade internet bandwidth will become 50-60 times faster.
In other words, the relative advantage of running native coded apps instead of downloading stuff over the Internet will be twice as big in 10 years. One more cookie in favor of mobile apps.
Everyday native apps are becoming better and faster while web apps (or sites optimized for mobile) hit a barrier where you just can’t optimize them anymore for mobile devices.
Step 3 – Make your app famous
Your app is done, but just putting it in an app store won’t cut it anymore.
We’re going to work on the assumption that you don’t want to create a viral youtube video with your pants down to get people to know you.
Altough a YouTube video wouldn’t hurt, just not in the way you think.
Read on, you’ll see.
There are ways to get your app known and having people tweeting their thumbs out about you.
The first deterrent for users when they react to your app is if it’s free or not. Freemium apps have a higher download rate and are much more profitable than paid apps. The basic reason for this is that the pay-up-front approach doesn’t work so well with apps.
The next are marketing tools.
Marketing tools include cross-promotion networks (e.g.AppCircle, Chartboost), incentivised downloads (e.g. TapJoy), vertical/specialist app stores (e.g. Happtique), reviewer networks (e.g. AppFriday), ad-networks, deals of the day services (e.g. AppGratis), recommendation services (e.g.Hooked), review sites (AppAdvice), non-native marketplaces (e.g. GetJar and carrier app stores) to name just a few.
Another, less used tactic is actually making a video showing how your app works and functions.
A quick search on YouTube should give you about 1 in 100 apps that are accompanied by a video demo.
And this is where a great short video will speak volumes more than a 2000 word description of your app.
Apps are visual in nature so why force people to go through a lot of text?
Let’s not forget the most powerful force that leads to app discoverability: Social-sharing.
Social friendly apps get countless more likes and more users when you clearly have a Facebook or a Twitter button integrated in your app. It’s a no-brainer yet many apps still miss this opportunity.
Easily to share apps also get more reviews and downloads = rank up in app stores to be found more easily.
Other ways to get more social juice to your app(s) is to make one time promotions, offer more content or special deals in a short window. Take for example a Distimo study, which revealed when the price drops for iPhone apps, on average, cumulative downloads grow by 1,665 percent for five days following the decrease.
Also, don’t forget about media releases, social media and social networks exposure.
Possibilities everywhere.
Step 4 – Crosslinking makes an awesome strategy
Crosslinking is about reiterating your mobile strategy as an overarching voice in your business.
As a basic example, crosslinking starts by offering a clear link from your full site to your mobile site, and then towards your app(s) and vice versa.
Once you provide quick accessibility from app-site, you set the stage for the likeability of linkability factor. Yeah, it’s a mouthful but it works.
As you present your key content, your mobile presence will be visible over your entire business structure.
Now, you’re wondering how you’re going to get all of this done.
Beyond all the tools and helpers we’ve mentioned, both in marketing and tech aspects, one key differentiator is choosing a mobile app development platform to help grow your vision and empower you to go mobile.
So what is a mobile presence all about?
Possibilities. You name them, but they’re there and growing with mobile the app market.
New revenue streams, visibility, increased customer base, expanded product channels, increased social media awareness, all there, waiting.
Possibilities, spring and a mobile presence, within an app’s reach.
Stay tuned, share a like and our newsletter is brewing coffee for you as we speak.
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