Posts Tagged ‘Web Design’
February 1st, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
It may not be a surprise, but Gen Y is leading the way when it comes to adoption of smartphones and smartphone and tablet apps, eMarketer reports. A study by Forrester, cited in eMarketer, found that consumers aged 24 to 32 are the most likely to own smartphones. Ninety-seven percent of Gen Y consumers have a mobile phone, and 72 percent have smartphones, higher than any other age group.
Overall, 93 percent of Americans owned mobile phones; however, only 50% have smartphones. Gen Z (age 18-23) was the second most likely group to own a smartphone, at 64 percent, followed by Gen X at 61 percent. After that, smartphone use declines rather drastically, with just 39 percent of younger boomers (47-56) owning them, 28 percent of older boomers (57-67) owning them, and 16 percent of those over 68 owning them.
Gen Y consumers are also more likely than any other age group to use smartphone and tablet apps, a different study by Flurry found. (This study defined Gen Y as 25 to 34.) Of the Gen Y users surveyed, 33 percent used smartphone apps and 26 percent used tablet apps. The 35-to-54 age group was next most likely to use apps.
You might be surprised that Gen Y are bigger users of smartphones than the younger generations, but eMarketer notes this group is in the “sweet spot” in terms of being old enough that they can afford more expensive smartphones, but young enough to want them and know how to make the most of them. In fact, the biggest reason younger customers cited for not having a smartphone was that they couldn’t afford it, while the top reason cited by older consumers was that they didn’t think it was useful or necessary for their lives.
What do these stats mean to you?
- If your target market falls in the younger end of the spectrum, you’ll want to make sure your business website is mobile-friendly.
- You’ll also want to consider developing useful, relevant and/or fun apps for your business that encourage sharing with friends.
- Keep in mind that Gen Y is most likely to own iPhones, while in other age groups and overall, Samsung phones dominate.
- Finally, keep in mind that Gen Y’s smartphone-dependency isn’t going away. As these customers move into their prime buying years, they’ll rely on their devices even more—so be ready to grow with them.
Image by Flickr user milesopie (Creative Commons)
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Tags: Generational Marketing, mobile marketing, small business, Technology, Web Design
Posted in Generational Marketing, Marketing, sales process, Small Business, small business, Technology, Web Design | No Comments »
January 30th, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By RIeva Lesonsky
Are your email marketing messages optimized for mobile? They’d better be. According to the latest Return Path global bi-annual mobile email report, 37 percent of U.S. respondents surveyed now open their email on mobile devices, compared with the 30 percent opening them through webmail in a browser. The percentage of emails opened on mobile devices has increased 300 percent since 2010 and shows no sign of slowing down, says the report. Here’s some more of what you need to know:
Platform matters: While Android mobile phones still dominate in the U.S., Apple device users are more likely to open and read email on a mobile device than any other group. Although Windows Mobile saw an 85 percent increase in email opens since April 2012, it still accounts for just 0.3 percent of total email opens on smartphones.
Industry variation: Certain industries’ emails are more likely to get opened on a mobile device than others. The retail (40 percent), consumer product (40 percent) and real estate (38 percent) industries lead the way.
Is it safe? The information being sent via email is also a concern. For example, banking-related emails were less likely to be opened on mobile devices due to security worries.
Desktops aren’t obsolete…yet: Users check email more often on a desktop than on a mobile device during the day. I’d surmise that’s probably because they are sitting in front of their computers at work, but as more workplaces incorporate tablets into the work day, the desktop is likely to become less and less dominant.
Mobile sitting still: It’s a myth that mobile purchasing is taking place out of home. Just 22 percent of mobile purchases take place on the go; 18 percent occur at work and more than half (51 percent) take place at home. Your customers are more likely to be opening that email in bed or on the couch than in the car, so keep that in mind when designing your message.
If you doubt optimizing email for mobile matters, keep these facts in mind: Return Path found that email marketing messages drive twice as many conversions as social media or search. In addition, the average order value is higher on mobile devices, whether tablet or smartphone. However, since even those who open their emails on mobile devices still make most of their purchases on the desktop, you need to make sure your emails are optimized for both platforms.
Image by Flickr user Brad Flickinger (Creative Commons)
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Tags: Email marketing, Marketing, small business, Technology, Web Design
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January 24th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
Heyo
Want a better Facebook page? How about a mobile app for your business? Heyo is a social marketing tool that lets businesses do all that and more–all with easy drag-and-drop steps that don’t take a lot of time. If you’ve ever run across a Facebook fan page you admire and wish you could create one, too, Heyo can help with attractive templates or custom design tools. You can choose from over 30 widgets ranging from coupons and “Buy” buttons to contest and email opt-ins. Then Heyo takes your fan page and creates a mobile app based on your social data complete with photos and fan page tabs so your customers can see your page on their smartphones or mobile devices.
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Tags: Facebook, mobile apps, small business resources, social media, Web Design
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January 15th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
Screencast-o-matic
According to Internet Retailer, 52 percent of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in their online purchase decisions. So how can you capture video for your website or promote your business by video on YouTube? Screencast-o-matic can help you create a “screencast” video of the activity on your computer screen and then upload it to the video channel of your choice or just save it as a video file to use on your website. With editing tools such as zoom, voice recording and text overlays, you can show consumers how to order, how to use a product or whatever information you feel needs a video to portray.
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Tags: Marketing, Resources, small business, social media, Technology, Videos, Web Design
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January 8th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
Clipix
Black Friday online sales numbers prove ecommerce is alive and thriving, but why would consumers pick your website over a competitor’s? Clipix can help consumers remember your site and keep them coming back to shop again. For consumers, Clipix is a private bookmarking tool that lets consumers set Price Drop Alerts, an innovative feature that monitors real-time discounts on the items sold on your website. By adding the Clipix icon to your site, you’re encouraging shoppers to bookmark your page to their personal shopping lists. And if a Price Drop Alert is received, the customer is linked directly to your checkout page at no cost to you (the online retailer).
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Tags: ecommerce, Marketing, sales process, small business resources, Web Design
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January 7th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
Google Translate
Les tailles sont sur le petit côté. If you plan to sell products or services overseas, don’t assume all your customers speak English or you could be turning away a lot of interested customers. (The phrase means “Sizes run on the small side,” by the way.) Google Translate is a free translation service that provides instant translations between 64 different languages. By looking at patterns in hundreds of millions of documents, it decides on the best translation and can translate words, sentences and Web pages. By simply adding a Google Translate embed code to your website, you make it easy for customers to choose the language they would like your website translated to.
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Tags: ecommerce, Marketing, small business resources, Technology, Web Design
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December 17th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
This holiday season is providing hard-to-ignore proof that increasingly, consumers are turning to mobile devices for functions like search and shopping. Recently, eMarketer did a roundup of some mobile device stats that should get you thinking. Here’s some of what they found:
- The desktop isn’t obsolete yet. U.S. consumers on average still spend twice as much time on desktop computers than on mobile devices.
- However, mobile devices are catching up fast. The average time spent on mobile devices is growing a whopping 14 percent faster than time spent on desktops.
- In fact, if that rate of growth remains the same, eMarketer projects that time spent on mobile could equal time spent on desktops in just a few years.
What are consumers doing on mobile devices? In ever-larger numbers, they’re surfing the Internet. The eMarketer article cites data from Net Marketshare that says tablets and smartphones accounted for more than 10 percent of global browsing traffic in October for the first time ever in October. Net Marketshare notes that this figure is likely an underestimation since it didn’t include users who accessed the Internet via mobile apps.
Net Marketshare’s data is global, but in nations where smartphones are widely used, the growth in mobile Internet access is even faster. According to Chitika data cited by eMarketer, some 28 percent of Web traffic in North America came from mobile devices as of June 2012.
What does this growth mean to your business? If you haven’t yet invested in making your website mobile-friendly, or if you’ve treated this activity as an afterthought, it’s time to get with the program. While in the old days you could think about designing your website for desktop first and then stripping it down for mobile, now you’ve got to consider how users interact with your site differently on desktops, smartphones and tablets.
Also keep in mind consumers are increasingly expecting to be able to choose between a mobile-optimized website and a mobile app depending on their needs and moods—so if you haven’t thought about an app yet, it may be time (provided, of course, there’s some business value that you can offer customers).
I’m not saying you should ignore your website—it’s still the foundation on which all online activity is based, and for right now, it’s still where consumers spend most of their online time. But that’s changing faster than you think. Is your business ready?
Image by Flickr user p_a_h (Creative Commons)
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Tags: mobile marketing, sales process, small business, Thought Leadership, Web Design
Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Sales Process, sales process, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Web Design | No Comments »
December 10th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
How can your small business reach the elite group of high-achieving small companies? Online marketing is the key, suggests a new Forrester research study commissioned by Act-On Software. In the face of continuing economic uncertainty, the study, “Driving Revenue in a Volatile Economy, found that the top-performing small businesses are those that truly embrace online marketing.
The study identified these lessons small businesses can take from top performers and large companies:
- Don’t automatically cut your marketing budget in a down economy. Top performers were less likely than bottom performers to cut their marketing budgets (33 percent vs. 56 percent). On the contrary, top performers prove that maintaining or increasing marketing spending does pay off in terms of revenues.
- Take lead generation seriously. The top-performing small businesses carefully manage sales leads, vetting, qualifying and nurturing them before handing them off to sales to close. They were also willing to spend more to get new leads, while bottom performers spent their time and money trying to squeeze new sales from existing customers.
- Adopt digital marketing techniques. All small businesses in the study focused primarily on traditional marketing techniques, such as print advertising, tradeshows, events and seminars. However, top performing businesses were more likely to have adopted digital marketing tactics and technology tools to help scale their marketing efforts.
- Get serious about social marketing. While larger businesses are realizing that “social media” is not just an abstract tool for generating buzz, small businesses are lagging behind in developing a social media strategy and making social media part of the sales pipeline.
- Increase collaboration between sales and marketing. By working together, these teams can drive leads more effectively and close more sales.
- Invest in marketing automation. Companies that automated marketing functions had better results. For example, 61 percent of top performers used CRM vs. just 46 percent of bottom performers. And only 5 percent of bottom performers used marketing automation, compared to 28 percent of top performers.
- Measure results. Nearly half of the bottom performing businesses did not measure any aspect of their marketing. In contrast, top performers measured everything.
Visit Act-On’s website for a free ebook, 7 Marketing Habits of Today’s Highly Successful SMBs.
Image by Flickr user ganesha.isis (Creative Commons)
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Tags: Marketing, online marketing, Search Marketing, small business, social media, Web Design
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Technology, Thought Leadership, Web Design | 3 Comments »
December 3rd, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
Just how mobile are U.S. shoppers getting? Extremely, according to a PCMag roundup on the results of the Black Friday weekend. On Thanksgiving Day alone, PayPal statistics showed that mobile payments via its service were up by 173 percent compared to last year. Black Friday itself saw an even bigger increase in the number of mobile payments, up by 193 percent at PayPal. Overall, PayPal’s total number of mobile shoppers was up 164 percent compared to 2011.
Etailer eBay also noted a similar increase in the number of mobile payments, up by 133 percent compared to last year, and eBay subsidiary GSI Commerce saw mobile sales increase by 170 percent.
IBM statistics over the holiday shopping weekend show similar growth. This year, IBM reports that some 24 percent of consumers used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 14.3 percent in 2011. Mobile sales surpassed 16 percent, up from 9.8 percent in 2011.
Overall, IBM says 58 percent of consumers used smartphones and 41 percent used tablets to search for bargains over the Black Friday weekend. As you might expect, the iPad powered most of actual mobile sales. iPads accounted for almost 10 percent of online purchases, and for a whopping 88.3 percent of tablet traffic. iPhones made up 8.7 percent of online sales, and Android devices 5.5 percent.
Clearly, prognosticators’ predictions that this would be the year of the mobile shopper are coming true. And while mobile purchasing is still far from universal among consumers, what’s clear is that mobile devices are becoming essential tools in the research, bargain-hunting and product-finding process. Even customers who are leery of paying for products on a mobile device are happy to whip out those devices to help them find deals, stores and all the products on their gift lists.
How is your company adapting to the mobile mind-set of today’s consumer?
Image by Flickr user IntelFreePress (Creative Commons)
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Tags: holiday retail, mobile marketing, small business, Technology, Web Design
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November 19th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
How is the economy affecting small business owners’ thoughts and plans about their companies’ finances? In a recent Small Business Sentiment Survey conducted for Local Corporation, 92 percent of small business owners said the economy influences their financial decisions. Here are some of the changes small business owners have considered making as a result of the up-and-down economy of the past three years:
- 51 percent have considered reducing operating costs
- 46 percent have considered raising prices on their products or services
- 40 percent have considered reducing marketing spending
- 24 percent have thought about laying off employees
- 19 percent have contemplated cutting back their operating hours
- 16 percent have considered cutting either employee benefits or salaries
Most drastically of all, 16 percent have thought about closing their businesses either permanently (16 percent) or temporarily (11 percent). This, despite the fact that entrepreneurs are so dedicated, 61 percent have thought about taking a pay cut in order to keep their companies running.
Despite their financial uncertainties, small business owners firmly believe in the importance of investing in their businesses, with more than half (56 percent) saying they are prepared to make long-term investment in their company right now. The biggest areas where they plan to invest capital are business development (46 percent) and online advertising (37 percent).
As part of watching their finances carefully, small business owners are also seeking to get more from their advertising and marketing expenditures. As a result, more of them are turning to online advertising, which is projected to grow by $18 billion between 2010 and 2015, and fewer are using traditional media, which is projected to shrink by $5 billion from 2010 to 2015.
More than half (63 percent) of the small business owners surveyed report they are currently marketing their companies online, and 30 percent are planning to spend more on digital marketing next year. In addition, more than half (53 percent) of respondents think that launching a business website or improving their existing business website is the number-one way they could reach customers.
Have you made any of the financial changes the business owners in the survey are thinking about? How are you investing in the future of your business?
Image by Flickr user Terry Johnston (Creative Commons)
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Tags: digital marketing, internet marketing, Marketing, small business, Web Design
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