New research from Demandforce indicates that by the end of 2013, more people will use a mobile device to access the Internet than will use their PCs. Oddly enough, despite mobile’s rocket like trajectory, a very surprising 90% of websites are not optimized for mobile.
In order to understand what features are important for a mobile site, DemandForce has some great insight as part of their research. Most importantly, 78% desire a quick way to get to the information they are looking for with convenient navigation that requires the lowest number of clicks possible. This is closely followed by 76% who want the web site to fit their smartphone screen better and 74% who want a clean and efficient look and feel. Following just behind that in terms of importance to users, 73% want the ability to save information for future reference. Further down the list they found that 69% want to limit fat finger syndrome by being offered bigger buttons to use.
The problems of not having a mobile-optimized site are quite obvious. Your customers will go elsewhere, feeling frustrated, or feel that your company is not interested in their business. These are all things that can be easily rectified by offering your customers a site optimized for mobile devices. In fact, recent research from Google that states that when mobile users visit a non-optimized website from a mobile device, whether it’s a preferred brand or not, 50% will abandon it. So, by not adopting a mobile web presence, you’re not just turning away new customers, you’re also turning away part of your existing customer base. To make matters worse, 67% are likely to go on to buy from a site that is optimized for mobile devices.
Mobile optimized web sites currently present a terrific opportunity to increase market share over you competitors that are not taking advantage of the opportunity.
The latest data from Canalys shows that mobile app downloads climbed 11% in the first quarter of 2013 (over the previous quarter). Mobile apps continue to present an amazing growth market that keeps right on growing at a furious pace.
According to Canalys report, the world’s big four app stores generated a whopping $2.2 billion in revenue from 13.4 billion mobile application downloads in the first quarter of 2013.
While Google and Apple dominate the mobile market in terms of devices, Apple’s iTunes App Store has the largest percentage of revenue, 74%, when looking at the numbers for the first quarter of this year. On the other side of the coin, Google Play, was able to generate a majority, 51%, of all mobile app downloads.
App Interrogator dug into these numbers a bit more and found that Apple’s iTunes App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store and BlackBerry World enjoyed a 9% increase in revenue from paid applications, in-app purchases and paid subscriptions when compared to the previous quarter.
According to research, native mobile apps are set to become the focus of mobile marketing efforts for retail businesses.
According to recent research by Flurry, users are spending a great deal more of their time with mobile devices interacting with apps than with the mobile web (by a 4 to 1 margin). This study was closely followed by a second study with research by Artisan that indicates that retail executives have put a priority on investing in native mobile apps as a top item for 2013.
Artisan’s survey of 200 retail marketing execs found that almost 75% strongly agree or agree that investing in a native mobile apps is one of their top three priorities for this year. Additionally, about 66% of these execs believe that investment in native apps is a better bet than investment in mobile web sites and 71% believe that native mobile apps will become the number 1 consumer touch point during the upcoming years.
Clearly native mobile apps are poised to step even more into the spotlight than they have already been in the past few years and we are seeing the market develop in productive ways as the industry matures.