Well, awesome. Because there’s no time slotted between the sessions, I’ve stumbled into this as it’s already started and I’m sitting where I can’t see the screen. So, I mean, there’s that. Maybe if I’m lucky someone will come put their hands over my ears so I can’t HEAR the actual session either. Yes. I’m done whining now. Onto the sessions. Up on stage we have Kurt Noer, Nathan Mellor, and Michael Martin. Up first is Kurt. Actually, he’s already speaking.
Kurt’s kicking things off talking about the evolution of the mobile phone. There’s some sort of Dick Tracy reference that I don’t understand. Apparently that’s another movie everyone else has seen that I haven’t. Sort of like The Christmas Story. What’s next for mobile phones? He thinks we’re going to see huge advancements in the industry. He says maybe we’ll see holograms in our brands. That’s scary. Either way, the future is here. Cell phones are being used tremendously. Eighty-two percent of Americans now own a cell phone and carry it around like a newborn child. Only 20 percent of phones have Internet access, but that’s growing rapidly.
History of Smart Phones
- 1992: The first smartphone was called Simon by RM
- 2022: RIM came out with the Blackberry. It was the first device to offer email.
- 2007: Apple introduced the iPhone
- 2008: Google releases Android.
- 2009: 60 percent of all phones have some form of Internet access
- 2001: …this will increase to 85 percent
Why is this so? Because in 2009, cell phones that did not have Internet access dropped in sales. Meanwhile, smart phone sales increased by 24 percent. People want their Internets.
More Mobile Stats!
- The iPhone and Android phones account for 75 percent of mobile traffic
- Shopping on a mobile phone is predicted to reach $119 billion by 2010
- Text messaging remains the second most popular function on a cell phone [Is the first actually calling someone? Because the only person I call is my mother. Everyone else I text.]
- It’s estimated 6.1 trillion text messages will be sent this year alone. That’s 3x the amount sent in 2007. That’s roughly 200k text messages sent every second.
- There are over 250,000 iPhone apps to choice from. The avg iPhone users has 37 apps on their phone.
Challenges to mobile
- small screen size
- awkward input
- slow load times
- cumbersome navigation
- flash, Javascript, CSS
The average success rate in completed tasks on a mobile device is 59 percent. It’s 80 percent on a desktop computer. The solution? Build a mobile-friendly version of your Web site. Kurt shows a bunch of mobile-friendly Web sites and compares them to their desktop counterparts. He says the cost for a mobile site is a tiny fraction of what you spend on your traditional Web site. So basically, you have no excuse. Just do it.
Next up is Mike Martin. ANDROID! Sorry. I’ll wait for him to bring it up. :)
Mobile search has increased 500 percent in two years in large part due to Android. He shares a quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
The evidence we have is that people who use Android search twice as much as everything else” Google CEO Eric Schmidt Oct 15th, 2010
Mike says the reason Android users search more is because the devices are browser-centric. Nearly 50 percent of online search has a location intent, especially on mobile devices. It’s really important that your local listings are set up with all these new users searching on mobile devices. This is increasingly more important in the world of Google Places. He named drops GetListed as a great service to help you see where your company is listed and which ones you still need to pick up. GetListed rocks.
In mobile, the top three results are all you have.
Proper Rendering for Mobile Search
There are six things to worry about in designing your site for mobile:
- User Agent Detection: You can render a different version of your site based on how someone is accessing you. Google says this is totally okay.
- Speed
- Doc Type
- Touch-friendly: Yes, now you have to worry about people’s fat fingers. :)
- Mobile siitemap XML
- Rel: Alternate
Microformats: These are already giving you an advantage with rich snippers in regular search. In mobile, it’s helping you delineate all your important information like address, phone number, latitude/longitude.
Next up is Nathan. He’s going to talk about mobile analytics, which basically means if you’re quiet you can hear my head explode.
Why worry about analytics for mobile apps?
- Track conversions goals for various business models: Paid apps, ads, subscriptions, affiliate programs, traffic to Web site.
- Check usability
- Track discovery of apps
- Great ideas for more content, features and future applications
What can mobile analytics track?
- Track page views
- Track tag referrals through the Android Market
- Track events and event data
- Can track map overlay, languages and networks
What can’t be tracked?
- Doesn’t allow customer user attributes
- Referrals from your own website are often untracked
- No search keywords from Android Market (without additional work)
Nathan says you can track your mobile app like you can a Web site. You decide what your pages are – if it’s a screen of your application, a menu, etc. You can decide what your virtual site structure is. Page views are chosen in the code.
Using Events: Event category, label, and actions are chosen in code just as in Javascript. Important: urlencode event labels.
Android App Discovery
Tagged URLs are encouraged. He gives us a really long URL which will take us directly to the Android Marketing Listing, but ONLY if clicked on an Android device. Same URL will give you an “OOPS! This link appears to be broken if used on your PC.” These can be encoded in a bar code. Am I totally sure what means? Not even a little bit. Holla!
Paid Campaign Option 1: Adwords Ad New Features
- AdWords on Android can change referral link to Downloaded Android App
- Potential to stand out from others.
- Users can take immediate action
- But AdWords Approval team seems unaware of this feature
Paid Campaign Option 2:
Referral information needs to be passed on to Android Market (cross domain)
Android App Referral Tracking
- Direct request dominates.
- These are referrals from the Android market
- Search terms not available without workaround.
- Numbers indicate that many/most visitors to the Website will just search the market rather than follow a link.
- Referrer is contact once app is installed.
Android App Referral Tracking
- Android market device is a campaign source
- Keywords from market source
- Some keywords indicate previous exposure to brand
- Most developers don’t have this sort of information
Android Market Keywords
- Combine keywords with conversion data
- Choose which words are most valuable for your huge (sarcastic) 325 character app description
- use the keywords in content creation for your site
- with a keywords solution, you can judge the relative value of keywords from the Android market and market accordingly.
Android App Conclusions
- With standard installation, Android Apps Analytics is efficient for conversions.
- You can also track referrals from a Web page or paid campaign
Aaand we’re done. I don’t even know what happened. These sessions are being jumbled too close to one another. This blogger needs a break. See you after lunch.
