mobile
Are investors wising up about platform-specific startups?
Sep 8th
But are platform-specific startups all they’re cracked up to be? While some have achieved wild levels of success, there’s a lot to dislike about trying to building a business on top of somebody else’s platform. For one, the ease with which one can usually develop on these platforms means that there’s a lot of competition. That makes building a viable business a bit tougher. But even more important is the fact that being dependent on a third party’s platform is an inherently risky business proposition.
It appears that investors may increasingly be less willing to turn a blind eye to the negatives of platform-specific startups. According to CB Insights, investments in ‘pure-play‘ Twitter startups have dropped by 50% in a year’s time. From June 2008 to May 2009, investors poured nearly $22m in “companies whose product or platform is predicated wholly on the Twitter platform.” From June 2009 to May 2010, that amount was cut to just under $10.5m.
CB Insights notes that the decrease in investment might have something to do with the uncertainty about Twitter’s changing approach vis-à-vis developers and the role they’ll play in Twitter’s future. It might also have something to do with the fact that building a viable business around Twitter looks a lot tougher than building a cool startup around Twitter.
Is the reduced investment in pure-play Twitter startups indicative of a broader trend affecting all platform-specific startups? Perhaps not. According to CB Insights, investments in companies focused on the iPhone and iPad rose 220% in the period June 2009 to May 2010 from the same period a year earlier. Obviously, when it comes to the bottom line, the iPhone/iPad ecosystem arguably has a much more compelling profile for investors.
But increased investment in iPhone/iPad startups over the past year doesn’t mean that the reduced appetite for Twitter-focused startups should be ignored. While this may partially be the result of trends specific to the Twitter platform, there is some common wisdom in the notion that building a business that is wholly dependent on another company’s platform isn’t the best pathway to long-term success. Platforms come and go, and the best still evolve and devolve. Even the slower investors will eventually recognize that. And the smartest will understand this: savvy entrepreneurs think multi-platform. In other words, they know how to tap into powerful platforms, but they don’t necessarily want those platforms to serve as the foundation for their entire business.
Fight club! Sainsbury’s vs Waitrose: iPhone app battle
Sep 8th
Special offers
Both apps feature a special offers section, showcasing the latest deals in stores. On the Sainsbury’s app, as well as listing money off washing up liquid, it provides offers for Nectar card users:
Once you have registered your Nectar card on the app, which is a relatively simple process, you can view your Nectar balance, and access latest bonus point offers. By selecting an offer via the app, you can then redeem it by using your clubcard in store.
The special offers section on the Waitrose app doesn’t link up with any kind of clubcard, and simply displays the latest deals, though users can add them to their shopping list:
Store locator
Store locators are on both apps, and are easy enough to use. Both make use of the iPhone’s GPS to list the nearest stores, and both offer the option of searching by postcode or town as an alternative.
By plotting the results on Google Maps as a default, the Sainsbury’s tool makes users work a little harder, as they then have to scroll around and click on the red pin before they can view store details.
It would be more usable to list the nearest stores first, then provide the options to view the location on the map, as the Waitrose app does:
Recipes
This feature is exclusive to the Waitrose app, and is something that potentially makes it a much more valuable app for users.
It ties in with the TV ads featuring Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal, and features the latest recipes from the two celebrity chefs, as well as previous editions, and suggestions for weekend eating.
This is a very useful resource for the amateur cook; as well as an ingredients list, it provides step by step instructions, nutritional information, and even suggests a wine to accompany the finished dish.
It drives customers in store by offering to create a shopping list direct from the recipe page. Users of the app can then tick off the ingredients they already have, or as they are shopping, while multiple recipes can be added to the list:
This is an excellent way to drive customers in store, though the link to create the shopping list could be more obvious. Also, an option for people to add the list to their online Waitrose account would be a useful alternative.
In addition to the recipes, there are some other useful resources for chefs, including how-to videos and guides on cooking times.
Conclusion
The winner of this app comparison has to be Waitrose, simply because it offers a more compelling app that is likely to attract repeat usage from customers and also drive offline sales. It also works well as part of a joined up marketing effort from the supermarket.
Both apps are user friendly, and have some features that could drive customers into stores, but Waitrose’s app is a more useful to shoppers.
Just by adding the shopping list function to its app, Sainsbury’s could make it a more useful resource, or it could have followed Tesco’s lead by making the app scannable so users could use it as a Nectar card.
Of course, what is missing is the ability to view and buy groceries through the app. In the case of Waitrose, it already offers mobile commerce to customers via Ocado, an iPhone app which has been very successful so far, so this app offers something different, and ties in nicely with its other marketing efforts.
With its major rival Tesco already having introduced mobile grocery shopping via Nokia’s Ovi app store, and with an iPhone shopping app imminent, Sainsbury’s may need to think about offering more for mobile users.
Is the tablet computing era about to begin?
Sep 6th
The truth is that Apple can’t answer all the questions about tablet
computing. After all, while there is no doubt that the iPad has proven
to be quite popular, it’s a young product and the overall market for
tablet devices is still relatively small.
Much will depend on how the market responds to the tablet devices
launched by companies hoping to get a piece of the tablet computing pie
Apple has baked. Those devices are nearly here, and some have been on
display at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin.
Two of the tablets making their debut at IFA are two Android-based
devices: the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Toshiba Folio 100. Both
demonstrate that the competition has taken a look at the iPad and what
it lacks. Samsung, for instance, has included a 1.3MP camera on the
Galaxy Tab, and thanks to its use of Android 2.2, the Galaxy Tab
supports Flash.
Are the Galaxy Tab and Folio 100 iPad killers? Perhaps not, but that
doesn’t mean that they and other tablet devices which will soon be
available for sale aren’t important products. They are for one reason:
they should help us discover whether or not there’s a broader market for
tablet devices.
Even if Apple dominates tablet devices with the iPad the same way it has
dominated, say, MP3 players with the iPod, major brands pushing
competing products with different prices, hardware specs, operating
systems and software packages will help expose more consumers to tablet
devices. How many will buy? There’s no doubt about the hype and
anticipation of the tablet’s impact on the world of computing, but only
the answer to that will determine whether or not tablet computing
remains a small niche or becomes a mainstream phenomenon affecting
everyone from content producers to software developers.
The good news is that we probably won’t have to wait long to have our answer.
VeryFashion: iPad app review
Sep 3rd
Navigating through the app
The navigation menu for the app only appears when you click on the link in the top left, otherwise all you see is a photo of various items, none of which can be clicked on.
The various options are displayed in a list, which is basically the iPhone app’s navigation placed over the image:
The navigation on this app is nowhere near as usable as it needs to be, and users need to be prepared for plenty of scrolling if they want to browse and find anything on the app.
If I select football shirts, I have a long list of 60+ shirts, displayed in no particular order. If you are looking for a particular team, then at least an alphabetical list would have been useful, but this is just a random jumble:
This is where some filtering options would be useful to help users narrow their search. There are more than 60 football shirts, and this means a lot of scrolling down a list; the fact that you have to select ‘more’ to see the next ten items on the list makes it even more annoying.
For football shirts, you can sort by long or short sleeved, brand, or customer rating, something which is pretty useless when it comes to football shirts:
The main Very site (also viewed on an iPad) has a far better range of filters. You can sort by which league a team plays in, by colour, and by team, saving a lot of work for users. Some of these options would make the app for more usable.
This lack of filtering is even more apparent for other product categories. If you select shirts, there are are more than 400 to choose from, yet the only way to narrow down this selection is by sleeve length, brand or customer rating, which is nowhere near enough.
This lack of filtered navigation is a major problem for the usability of the app, and since the main site has some excellent options for narrowing users’ searches, iPad users would do better to ignore the app and head straight to the desktop version of the site, which works well enough on the iPad.
Product pages
The product pages are too basic, with no information on delivery charges or returns policies. There are also a number of basic usability flaws which are liable to irritate shoppers.
For example, if you want to buy a Newcastle United home shirt, you have to select the colour before you can add to the basket, even though there is only one option:
Checkout process
Customers need to have an account to shop on this app, something which Very fails to explain clearly at any point during the purchase process. This makes the whole checkout very irritating for those without a Very account, or who would just like to pay by card.
On the desktop site, you can either shop via account and buy now, pay later, or just pay by credit or debit card, but the latter option is not available through the app, which eliminates a number of potential customers.
So, the unsuspecting user who just wants to buy a jumper ends up entering into an application for credit without a clear warning of what is happening; the word ‘account’ being the only vague clue. Well, that and questions about the length of time at your current address:
Perhaps this is all there in the T&Cs, if you can read them. If not, the unsuspecting shopper is put through a credit check without being fully aware of it. This should be made very clear to customers.
This insistence on either having an account already or creating one renders the app almost entirely useless to the shopper who has seen it via the App Store and decided to download it.
Conclusion
This app is not a great example of e-commerce on the iPad, and is so full of usability errors that any iPad users wanting to shop with Very would be better advised to ditch the app and head for the main Very website.
Very seems to have simply adapted its iPhone app for the iPad, instead of treating it as a unique device to be designed for separately. As a result, Very’s app looks very basic compared to those from Net A Porter and Gap.
Google expands sponsored map icons experiment
Sep 2nd
As the name suggests, sponsored map icons are icons that appear on a Google Map that are enhanced with a sponsor’s logo. Example: with sponsored map icons, a Target logo would appear as the icon for a Target store denoted on a map, as opposed to a generic icon.
Matthew Leske, a Google Product Manager, told AdAge that Google’s sponsored map icons experiment is coming to the United States and it brings with it a number of high-profile brands, including Target, HSBC and Bank of America. He also explained that as sponsored icons are designed to help customers of these brands more easily identify nearby locations, Google charges sponsored map icon advertisers on a CPM basis, not a CPC basis.
Recently, Google announced that more than 100m people access Google Maps from their phones each month, so it’s likely major brands with physical locations will be interested in Google’s experiment just by virtue of size of the Google Maps audience. But despite the interest, in true Google fashion, nothing is being rushed, and Google isn’t bending over backwards to plaster Google Maps with sponsored map icons. To the contrary: Leske made it clear to AdAge that Google isn’t interested in turning Google Maps into a hodgepodge of logos. When it comes to how and when sponsored icons are displayed, user experience is key. “Advertisers can’t pay to increase their prominence or whether or not they appear
on the map. We look at the way people search for that business online and we look at what
area people are looking at and what zoom level,” he stated.
Obviously, revenue of sponsored map icons will almost certainly never rival that derived from AdWords. But they do highlight the fact that Google does have a lot of advertising-based monetization opportunities sitting under its nose. Advertising is its bread and butter and even though it’s clear that Google’s ambitions will continue to extend beyond advertising, it can’t hurt to exploit some of these opportunities.
Photo credit: Hallicious via Flickr.
Twitter: iPad app review
Sep 2nd
The new app interface is a series of panes that can be expanded and retracted, and opened easily without the need to click on any fiddly buttons. Simple navigation options down the left of the app allow you to flick between your timeline, mentions, DMs, or searches:
The size of the iPad screen means you can read articles, or view photos and videos while still keeping the rest of the app’s functions in view. In fact, you can look through your timeline while you wait for a video to load and head back to it when it’s ready.
There are some neat touches that allow you to view information quickly. For example, if you want to view the full conversation around a tweet, putting two fingers together and pulling down brings up all the replies.
Also, if a particular tweet uses a hashtag, then clicking on it will bring up that tweet and others underneath that use the same tag.
Follower suggestions are another useful feature. If you select a user’s profile it suggests similar users to follow further down the page, a good way to find interesting people to follow.
Having played with the app for half an hour this morning, I’m impressed so far. As shown in the screenshot below you have a few panes open, then select new tweet, the screen gets a bit cluttered, but it is easy enough to switch between panes and hide the ones you aren’t using.
I have been using Tweetdeck on the iPad so far, as I also use it on desktop and mobile, mainly because i like to be able to view several columns at once.
However, this new Twitter app makes it much easier to read tweets, get at the content contained within, and to see user’s details and the flow of conversations. Since Tweetdeck on iPad can also be a little slow and buggy, this new Twitter app looks a better bet at the moment.
Apple is about to teach telecoms to fear free with FaceTime on iPod Touch
Sep 2nd
Today in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced some updates to Apple’s iPod Touch:
“The iPod touch has been a remarkable product for
us. It has become the most popular product for us — it used to be the
nano. A lot of people call it the iPhone without a phone. But it’s also
an iPhone without the contract!”
That’s because iPhones and iPod touches can now video chat one another through FaceTime. Apple is selling three iPod Touch models: 8GB for
$229, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399.”
Considering that the iPod has all of the features of an iPhone without the steeper price tag, it could catch on as a communication device.
Apple also isn’t the only one working on digital calling alternatives. Skype’s internet calling options are far cheaper than terrestrial phone lines. Meanwhile, Google just undercut Skype with the launch of Voice Calls from Gmail, a service that allows Gmail users to call landlines for free.
Right now, those aren’t major options for mobile calling, but it’s not hard to imagine mobile implementations of those services taking off.
The major benefit that telecoms have right now stems from the enormous data load that most smartphones require. For occasional calling, iPod Touch users can plug in to a home wifi network. But for frequent usage, consumers still need phone companies to communicate through voice and audio calls.
However, phone companies are going to have to do a lot better if they don’t want some tech company to sweep in and eat their lunch over the next few years.
Many of the telcos are lacking when it comes to customer service, and with consumers, a little more effort could go a long way. Also, telcos can provide a level of consistency in calling that new video and audio tech features can’t maintain right now.
It will be especially interesting to see if monthly charges from the telcos drop over the next few months. It’s
expensive to provide the data capabilities many mobile users eat
up on a daily basis. But when the competition offers a similar (if less reliable) service for free, it’s time to start reassessing your cost structure
Images: gdgt, Apple
Study: Be prepared for the smartphone takeover
Sep 1st
B.L. Ochman,
Burson-Marsteller and Proof Integrated Communications’ managing
director of emerging media, calls this study “be mobile or be dust.” That’s because the mobile adoption numbers it cites are pretty staggering.
According to the study, 80% of the US population will have a mobile phone by 2010. That number alone may not be of note, but cell users are using their phones less for making phone calls and more for digital activities. According to the report, the average iPhone user only spends 45% of on-device time making phone calls. The majority of their time in mobile is spent browsing the web or using applications.
That number has grown 110% in the last year. By 2011, 99% of mobile phones will be data-capable devices (though that number includes phones that can send and receive SMS texts, not necessarily smartphones).
However, by 2012, smartphone shipments will exceed shipments of PCs. Already 40% of iPhone and iPod Touch users go to the internet more via mobile than they do on a computer.
According to the study:
“The speed of mobile adoption growth is far outpacing that of prior technologies, and using mobile to access data and to make transactions is nearing the tipping point. Mobile will soon be the primary digital means that consumers use to interact with brands, friends, retailers and other businesses.”
Smart brands should take note. Mobile devices are pretty amazing purchasing tools. As
Burson-Marsteller points out, mobile users are searching for products,
reading reviews, comparing prices, locating items in stores and making
purchases from their phones.
Mobile users also tend to be more social. Of Facebook’s 500
million users, 100 million of them access the site through their mobile
phones. Those users are twice as active on the social network as non-mobile
users. Also, 25% of mobile users access Twitter, compared to only 8% of
respondents who access the internet only from a PC.
The mobile phone more seemlessly connects the digital and real worlds. It is uniquely positioned to aid in the handling of impulse activities and on demand services.
Most especially, as brands are learning, mobile phone adopters aren’t only young, tech savvy people. A whopping 82% of seniors use their mobile phones to get information and learn.
But
businesses aren’t quite up to speed yet. 80% of US multichannel retailers
don’t have m-commerce capabilities. Furthermore, 42% of those
respondents don’t have plans to launch a mobile site within the next two years.
Only 12% of the top 500 internet retailers have sites optimized for
mobile phones, and only 7% have downloadable mobile applications.
Mobile
phone users are often at the most desirable point of the purchasing
funnel when they’re looking for information with their devices. The
quicker businesses take to mobile, the better off they will be.
Whether it be coupons or ads or location based services, brands that want to reach customers (ie: all brands) should seriously pay attention to this space.
Engagement: why social media numbers don’t matter
Aug 26th
Let’s examine the phrase ‘online engagement’ for a moment and I’ll show you what I mean.
Plenty of reports show increasing engagement across multiple channels. Picking one at random, we know that the number of users browsing from mobile devices has greatly increased in the last two years. A number of factors have enabled this:
Smarter, faster phones, cheaper data packages, more brands offering mobile browser-friendly sites, and general convenience.
Here’s the thing though. Those extra visitors are users.
Use is different from engagement
Extra visits are great, but a lot of the time these would-be customers are using their browsers to…well…browse.
They’re the online equivalent of the people creasing the magazines in the newsagent while they wait for a train. There’s no real attribution of mental resources to their actions. They aren’t really interested in your CTAs, they’re just flicking through and then they’re gone.
This group represents a huge proportion of web traffic.
Have a look at some high ranking entertainment sites – something like humour site Cracked.com for example (may be NSFW). Here’s a site running articles on Zombie outbreak management, girls in bikinis and annoying movie trends. Some of them are very funny, and Cracked boasts traffic to match its content.
How much of that traffic can be described as ‘actively engaged’?
I’m betting it’s a fairly low figure. If you are checking out Zombie outbreaks, the chances are you really aren’t that interested in the onsite ads. Even if you are, how interested exactly?
There are different levels of engagement, and there’s no clear method for identifying it.
Certainly we can track how many people are on the site, where they came from, how long they stayed and where they exited. All these are useful metrics. If a lot of people are arriving through a specific doorway, then it makes sense to concentrate on that area.
But do these numbers really show how engaged a customer is with your brand?
Who is more engaged?
Imagine you have two visitors to your site: one stays for three minutes, one stays for 20. Which is more engaged?
Unless you are actively mapping the IP addresses of all new visitors and non-subscribers, it’s impossible to tell.
Customer A might know exactly what they’re looking for, may have previously done all their price comparison research, and is ready to pop in, purchase their item and leave.
Customer B is just wandering around. Maybe they’re doing some research, maybe they’re a competitor checking your site out, or maybe they’re just bored and filling time (assuming you don’t sell specific engineering components).
Customer A is technically more valuable in this instance, but can either of these two really be counted as ‘engaged’? Is either of them likely to return regularly? Customer A is a conversion, so it’s slightly more probable they’ll be receptive to future campaigns, but there’s no guarantee.
If someone comments on a blog are they regular readers who are genuinely involved in the site community, or did you just appear in search with an article that got their blood up?
Just because they’re on your site, and even if they fleetingly participate, it’s hard to say they are actively engaged, or that they represent a more valuable interaction than someone who regularly reads the comments but doesn’t join in.
Rather than being a measurable, predictable metric, engagement is more often a method.
It’s about individuals
Social media isn’t about groups of people, or market segments, or demographics, it’s about taking the time to really get to know your customers, about taking time to review individual cases and respond accordingly.
You can measure a thousand different metrics and still fail at social media, because you’re ignoring the hundreds of different methods involved. If you want to create true engagement, then you’ll need to drop any preconceptions you might have about market behaviour and take time to speak personally to each customer.
Sounds like a lot of work right?
Yep.
But if I buy a product and get a ‘thank you’ tweet then I’m highly likely to remember you. If I have a problem and you solve it for me directly, I probably won’t mind that the problem existed in the first place.
Rather than monitoring how many customers you have, watch what they are saying, don’t measure sentiment as a broad metric. Instead, get your social media team drilling down into that information and picking up on individual conversations.
Monitor mentions by all means, but make sure you don’t forget to act on them. Quick, useful responses represent methods rather than pure numbers, but are far more likely to engender repeat business than simply increasing your visibility.
Don’t pigeonhole your customers
Take the time to allow customers to engage on their own terms.
Almost everyone will have their own take on how and why they’re using a site, and this could change every time they visit; the important thing is that they know you’re there when they need you to be. Don’t force feed them content or you’ll be construed as a spammer.
In the multichannel era we’re constantly concerned with avoiding funnels, make sure your customers don’t go into one either.
Six key tactics for a successful viral video
Aug 25th
Part of viral marketing may be pure luck, but that doesn’t mean you can’t optimise your existing and upcoming video for maximum links and viral spread.
There are any number of reasons that certain video content catches the wider public’s imagination and experiences rocketing traffic, but by and large successful viral videos conform to a few set criteria.
Be relevant
If you want to grab a few extra hits, then you need to be fast on your feet. If you have the capability to produce video quickly, then you can certainly hop on board with current trends or relevant news.
Just remember that this option needs to be quick-in, quick-out. Nothing dates faster than pop culture, so while it’s fine to reference and riff on what’s going on, remember that timing is of the essence.
Don’t leap on a bandwagon too late or overstay your welcome.
Be entertaining
Just because online video is a relatively new medium, that doesn’t mean you should disregard the rules of cinema. As with any other marketing stream, people want engaging and relevant content.
If you’re making a video, that means you need to add drama, tension or big laughs. It’s easy to create a video about your product, but if you go for the straight sell you’ll end up with the online equivalent of a 1950′s TV commercial.
Instead, take the reality TV route. Create a story and utilise product placement throughout.
Sell the situation and the characters, not just the product.
Be concise
YouTube recently announced plans to increase video length to fifteen minutes, but that doesn’t mean you have to fill that time. A 90 second video can be more effective than a ten minute epic so make sure you start editing even before you start rolling.
Put together a concise script and really think about the visual medium. A picture paints a thousand words, so you have an opportunity to convey your ideas quickly.
Generally speaking a viewer will start to lose interest around the three minute mark, so ditch any filler.
Be progressive
Something else to think about early on is the possibility of a sequel. Just because you won’t be vying with Spielberg come Oscar season, there’s no reason you can’t have a successful franchise (If you need proof, look at Jerry Bruckheimer…).
If you plan things properly and work with a decent director then there’s no reason you can’t film several short episodes in a single sitting, maximising cost efficiency and giving you the chance to progress and develop your ideas and your brand identity, creating anticipation rather than trying an audience’s patience.
A successful series will add up to more views and a longer lasting return on your investment, so plan ahead.
Be searchable
Whenever you right copy or put together a campaign, you’ll be thinking about key words and compelling headlines and you should keep that in mind with video as well. A good title should be catchy and concise.
Video is often ranked highly by search engines as well, so make sure you frontload those key-words and offer value, consider using a question as a title. Overall, make sure you keep one eye on your customer research and target video accordingly.
Be clear
Finally, remember your CTAs.
Whatever you’re selling, make sure you emphasise it in the final frame, otherwise you could be left with a clever, shareable video that fails when it comes to sales.
You should brand your videos throughout with an on-screen bug, add calls to action whenever possible and make sure you optimise SEO in descriptions and tags when you upload your content.
Remember to make it easy for customers to click through to your site.
Above all, video is a creative medium.
Whatever your product, it’s usually best to keep a friendly tone of voice that isn’t too formal, and don’t be afraid to experiment or change your branding to suit the medium.
If you can present your product in a unique or amusing way then it will have a far greater chance of going viral.