You have the greatest app in the world. You have optimized your site with a perfect adaptive design layer to cover iPad and Android tablets, as well as all the smart phones and screen sizes that you can think of. You are ready for the flood gates to open when your new mobile channel goes live.
The app is accepted into the iTunes app store. You have launched on the Amazon marketplace. The adaptive stylesheets are live. And, nothing. You have built, but they did not come.
Can you stand out from the crowd?
This is a common problem. Discoverability is a major issue in the mobile space. There are currently around 650 apps released every day to the apple app store. Over half a million apps are active (app store metrics). This does not include android or windows apps either. Unless you are lucky enough to be featured it is very difficult to stand out from the crowd. Non of the app stores or marketplaces make it easy to find new submissions. In all likelihood nobody is going to just stumble upon your new mobile wonder.
Websites are different. After all, we have google (bing, yahoo, etc). Launch a new site, do some SEO, give it a while and you are discoverable. The interesting thing here is that, while this is true for desktop users of the web, it does not seem to be true of mobile users.
Looking at the stats of our own site show that 14% of all users on desktops accessed the site directly. All of the rest found us via search engines or referrals. Compare this to our mobile users and 47% of them found us directly. This requires some further research but, at first glance, it seems that mobile users are much less likely to find us online unless they know who we are.
This has major implications for the services that you provide. If it is impossible to discover new apps, and users just don’t bother to search for mobile sites, then we need to find more creative ways to drive users to these channels of engagement. Our mobile strategy needs to reflect this mobile user behavior.
No surprises.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. Looking at my own online behavior it is very rare for me to spend time searching and browsing on my phone. I tend to know what I want before I pick the device up. This is a contributing factor to the recent numbers published for iPad conversion rates. Conversion rates are higher on mobile devices because the key decisions that lead to a conversion have already been made, before the device was turned on. The user may have researched on their desktop or they may have used other information but the key point is that they came to their mobile device only when they were ready to complete the transaction.
There are not any easy answers to this problem but it is something that needs to be thought about when putting together a mobile strategy. It is not enough to spend your budget on a shiny new app. How are you going to get the word out? How are you going to market it?
It may be that you will use existing online channels. Maybe an off line campaign is what is needed. Text or email marketing, as well as social media, are all worth considering. The answer will be different in each situation. The point is that marketing your mobile presence needs to be considered as part of the project. Do not allocate all of your budget to development costs.
Can you help?
Do you have any stats that can shed light on how mobile users are finding your website or other services?
