Earlier this week we shared how today's consumers expect more -- much more -- from mobile sites. They told us so in our recent research survey, What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today.
Today we'll share more results, with some great examples of businesses giving mobile users what they want. Whether you're a Fortune 500 company or the pizza shop down on the corner, creating a mobile-friendly site is a critical step: 67% of mobile users say that they’re more likely to buy a product or service from a mobile-friendly site, and 74% say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future.
How are smart companies making mobile sites work for them?
Less is more: ProFlowers
For their new mobile site, the flower retailer ProFlowers simplified things by highlighting the most popular bouquets to reduce scrolling, by trimming text, and by cutting checkout steps. How well has it worked? “Since becoming mobile-friendly, we’ve seen our mobile conversion rate jump by 20–30%," says Leif Heikkila, the company's senior director of online marketing. Download the case study.
Bigger is better: FragranceNet.com
FragranceNet sells perfumes and colognes, yes, but also face creams, shampoos, eyeliner and more. For Michael Nadboy, the company's VP of online marketing and strategic development, the trick to mobile success was to show bigger product images and buttons, larger font sizes, and fewer images overall. Mobile users loved it: FragranceNet boosted mobile sales by 48% in just four months. Download the case study.
Speed sells: TicketNetwork
Rock concerts, Broadway shows, NASCAR races: TicketNetwork’s mobile site helps on-the-go fans find tickets for them all. The company redesigned its mobile site with speed in mind, stripping away all non-essential content and graphics. They also trimmed steps from the checkout process to help mobile users buy fast. Four months after introducing the new mobile site, web traffic from mobile devices was up 120% and overall sales from mobile had grown by 184%. Download the case study.
You can see the keys to mobile site success: big buttons and text, less content, fewer steps to checkout, and a focus on speed.
What kind of mobile content is most important? The users we surveyed listed "Get directions”, “Find operating hours" and “Click to call the business” as some of their most-wanted mobile tasks. They also showed clear differences in mobile usage by business category. For instance:
Mobile Banking and Finance customers are most interested in checking account balances, transferring money and paying bills.
Mobile Travel customers are most interested in checking flight status and confirming reservations.
Mobile Retail customers like to contact a store and find product information.
Mobile Automotive customers are most interested in contacting the dealership and making service appointments.
The bottom line: mobile users are ready to make choices on the go. Help them get there fast and you'll help your business grow.
We reviewed these findings yesterday during our webinar: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising. If you missed it, please keep an eye out for the recorded webinar, which we'll post soon.
In the meantime, check out howtogomo.com for more tips on how to build a mobile-friendly website.
Posted by: Masha Fisch, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
Today we’re releasing version 6.2 of our Google AdMob SDK for iOS developers. This release contains maintenance updates and adds compatibility with iOS 6, in addition to continued support for iOS 5.
We are adopting Apple’s new Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) on devices running iOS 6. SDK 6.2 will continue to use the unique device identifier (UDID) for devices running iOS 5 and below. Developers must obtain appropriate user consent for sending device identifier information in compliance with relevant iOS policies.
The new SDK is available for download here. We encourage our developer partners to upgrade to the latest SDK as soon as possible. For full technical details of today’s release, please see our post on the Ads Developer Blog.
In this world of constant connectivity, consumers expect to find the information that they want, when they want it - especially when they’re on the go. We know that this applies to their web browsing experiences on mobile, so we took a deeper look at users’ expectations and reactions towards their site experiences on mobile. Most interestingly, 61% of people said that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site. The bottom line: Without a mobile-friendly site you’ll be driving users to your competition. In fact, 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site, so if that site’s not yours, you’ll be missing out in a big way.
Discover these and more findings from,What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today, a study from Google (conducted by Sterling Research and SmithGeiger, independent market research firms). The report surveyed 1,088 US adult smartphone Internet users in July 2012.
The problem (and opportunity) is big... While nearly 75% of users prefer a mobile-friendly site, 96% of consumers say they’ve encountered sites that were clearly not designed for mobile devices. This is both a big problem and a big opportunity for companies seeking to engage with mobile users.
Mobile-friendly sites turn users into customers The fastest path to mobile customers is through a mobile-friendly site. If your site offers a great mobile experience, users are more likely to make a purchase.
When they visited a mobile-friendly site, 74% of people say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future
67% of mobile users say that when they visit a mobile-friendly site, they’re more likely to buy a site’s product or service
Not having a mobile-friendly site helps your competitors A great mobile site experience is becoming increasingly important, and users will keep looking for a mobile-friendly site until they find one that works for them. That means your competitors will benefit if your site falls down on the job (and vice versa).
61% of users said that if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, they’d quickly move on to another site
79% of people who don’t like what they find on one site will go back and search for another site
50% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the website isn't mobile-friendly
Non-mobile friendly sites can hurt a company’s reputation It turns out that you can lose more than the sale with a bad mobile experience. A site that’s not designed for mobile can leave users feeling downright frustrated, and these negative reactions translate directly to the brands themselves.
48% of users say they feel frustrated and annoyed when they get to a site that’s not mobile-friendly
36% said they felt like they’ve wasted their time by visiting those sites
52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company
48% said that if a site didn’t work well on their smartphones, it made them feel like the company didn’t care about their business
Takeaways While the research confirms what we already suspected -- that mobile users actively seek out and prefer to engage with mobile-friendly sites -- it’s a sobering reminder of just how quickly and deeply users attitudes about companies can be shaped by mobile site experiences. Having a great mobile site is no longer just about making a few more sales. It’s become a critical component of building strong brands, nurturing lasting customer relationships, and making mobile work for you.
To learn more about our study
Click here and join our free webinar on September 26 at 1 p.m. EST / 10 a.m. PST
Get help on building a mobile-friendly site, visithowtogomo.com.
Posted by: Masha Fisch, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
Earlier this year, mobile took the stage as a category at Cannes for the very first time. Earlier this week, we launched theCreative Sandbox Gallery, a crowdsourced collection of global campaigns that push the boundaries of creativity and technology across digital platforms. It’s becoming clear that mobile has truly arrived as a creative platform, and we can feel a new awakening brewing within the creative agency community around the possibilities of mobile.
When creatives embrace and believe in the power of mobile, beautiful, impactful work is produced. We wanted to share a few of our favorite examples here, in our first ever video tour of mobile creativity. Below we share a sampling of some creative mobile branded experiences as well as some of our favorite rich media mobile and tablet ad executions. Be sure to check the Creative Sandbox Gallery regularly for more cutting edge mobile examples as more are submitted.
Branded Mobile Experiences We’ve seen brands from all verticals investing in creative mobile experiences. We recommend focusing on creative executions with broad reach, but we wanted to share a few noteworthy Augmented Reality and QR code executions as well. Here are a few of the most creative branded mobile experiences we’ve seen:
Heineken: With the insight that many people watch UEFA Champions League matches at home alone from their couches while using their smartphones instead of in a social setting, Heineken introduced the mobile game StarPlayer. To score points, players predict what will happen in the next few seconds of the game.
Band-Aid (Cannes Lions Mobile Gold Winner 2012): What better way to take a hurt kid’s mind off their boo-boo than this augmented reality Magic Vision app featuring the Muppets? After applying the bandage, children can use the app to interact with Muppets.
eMart (Cannes Lions Mobile Gold Winner 2012): This major retailer in Korea faced a challenge: sales slowed during lunchtime. To drive in store traffic during this time of day, they installed a shadow QR code in a heavily foot trafficked area that would only be scanable when the sun was directly overhead at lunchtime.
Toyota (Cannes Lions Mobile Gold Winner 2012): Toyota created an extremely entertaining app that takes advantage of the fact that mobile devices are location aware. Consumers can be a backseat driver as their real world route is pulled into this engaging mobile game:
Red Tomato Pizza (Cannes Lions Mobile Gold Winner 2012): In Dubai, where hundreds of languages are spoken, ordering pizza can be challenging. With the invention of the VIP Fridge magnet (aka Pizza Emergency button) that communicates via bluetooth with your smartphone, a simple push of a button transmits your exact order for delivery.
Airwalk: To promote their limited edition shoes, Airwalk created an “invisible pop up store”. For one day, if people downloaded the app and came to a specific location, they could visit an invisible virtual store made possible through augmented reality and purchase the shoes.
Chevy (Cannes Lions Mobile Gold Winner 2012): With the insight that consumers are increasingly engaging with their smartphones and tablets while watching TV, Chevy introduced their Game Time app, effectively hijacking the Super Bowl by adding a second screen. This app gave viewers a reason to engage with Chevy for the entire game and watch their ads closely for the chance to win prizes including a free car.
Rich Media Mobile Ads
Often, when we talk to creative agencies about mobile creativity, they immediately think about apps and augmented reality. However, an often overlooked and under-planned area in mobile creativity is mobile ads. Many creatives (and media buyers and brands, for that matter) are unaware of the creative possibilities of mobile ads. Using HTML5, app-like rich media executions can be created to run at scale to an engaged mobile audience as they browse apps. Take a look at the examples below to understand the cutting edge of mobile ad creativity, uniting the digital and physical worlds:
Coke (Cannes Lions Mobile Grand Prix Winner 2012): The classic “Hilltop” campaign was reimagined for the digital era through Project Re:Brief. Through this rich media HTML5 ad execution in mobile, consumers can literally buy the world a coke via specially configured vending machines set up in cities around the globe, delivering on a brand promise Coke made to consumers more than 40 years ago.
Bradesco Seguros (Cannes Lions Mobile Gold Winner 2012): Bradesco found a creative way to leverage rich media ads on tablets to promote car insurance plans to tablet users in Brazil. A simple swiping gesture between pages of content led the car in the ad to crash, driving home the message that “Unexpected events happen without warning. Make a Bradesco car insurance plan.”
The results? While many of these example have not publicly released their data or simply mentioned that they had strong engagement with their audience, some of these companies included sales results in their videos above. eMart indicated that their Shadow QR code drove sales during the lunch rush as intended and Red Tomato Pizza reported becoming so inundated with orders that they are considering expanding their operations. Research has also demonstrated the critical role plays in brand building. The bottom line is that mobile is a highly creative medium that works for building brands and driving sales.
We are inspired by the brands and agencies behind these industry-leading campaigns and we hope you enjoyed this quick video tour of mobile creativity. Please visit the Creative Sandbox Gallery to view new best-in-class mobile campaigns as more are added. If you’re a creative agency, we hope you’ll submit your work to be featured in the gallery. We can’t wait to see what you create.
At Google, we're amazed by how the ad industry is using the digital canvas to bring brands and ideas to life. And the mobile phone has put these experiences right in the hands of consumers.
This week, we launched theCreative Sandbox gallery. It’s a crowdsourced collection of global campaigns that push the boundaries of creativity and technology from across digital platforms -- a place to flash your brilliance, spark new digital ideas, inspire and be inspired. We're asking the creators to share a little detail on how they made the magic happen and the tools they used to do it, exposing us all to new ideas and new ways to improve our own work.
Learn how Chevywas able to extend the Super Bowl, or howBAND-AIDbrand turned an adhesive bandage into into stage to entertain, and how Lawry’swas able to get families back to the dinner table - all using mobile technologies in new and magical ways.
As with any sandbox, looking and playing are required. Vote to push your favorite projects to the top. Tell other creators what you admire. And if you've done something amazing lately,send it in. We'd all love to see it.
For marketers with mobile apps, one of the key goals is to drive new users to download - whether that’s for a travel app to book trips, or a banking app for finding the nearest ATM. So how do you effectively promote your app in a way that works and is cost effective? On Wednesday, we presented a webinar, “The Practitioner’s Guide to Driving App Downloads with AdWords” about ways to promote your mobile app with AdWords. Led by a few of our mobile experts, Cameron Grace and George Meredith, the webinar explained how to use the host of AdWords search and display solutions to drive cost-effective app downloads.
Attendees learned how to:
1. Drive app downloads by setting up a mobile app promotion campaign 2. Capture user intent with click-to-download and mobile app extensions 3. Measure downloads of Android apps 4. Utilize the Conversion Optimizer to improve ROI 5. Get the most out of their campaigns with mobile-specific ad formats and tools
With more than one million apps currently in the Google Play and iTunes Stores, we know that those of you advertising apps are looking for ways to drive valuable installs at scale while helping your apps stand out from the crowd. We recently launched several app promotion features designed to help those of you who have created an app promotion campaign in AdWords, or are considering creating an app promotion campaign, maximize your return on investment.
CPA Bidding with Conversion Optimizer You are constantly looking for ways to easily optimize your campaigns and attract the right customers at the right cost. Google’s Conversion Optimizer helps increase conversions across our search and display networks while decreasing cost per acquisition. Conversion Optimizer analyzes historical conversion data and adjusts bids on an ongoing basis to help you maximize your ROI. We're now extending the power of this automated bidding feature to app advertisers to help you drive efficient app installs at scale.
With Conversion Optimizer, instead of a traditional CPC bid, you can set a target cost per acquisition (CPA), based on your average cost per download. Conversion Optimizer will use historical conversion data and other signals to place CPC bids automatically, in order to hit the target CPA with as much volume as possible. While results vary per campaign, strong early results from our beta campaigns show a 20%+ decrease in cost per install with the addition of Conversion Optimizer. It’s important to note that Target CPA bidding does not guarantee a particular cost per install. The tool is now available to all advertisers that have created app promotion campaigns, and we’re excited to help you move beyond manual bid management to free, automated optimization.
Ad Formats For advertisers looking to promote your apps to app users, capturing the attention of potential users and driving them to download your app is key. Many advertisers use our text ads to drive people to an Android or iOS app, and we've now optimized text ads for Android or iOS apps to include more information about what users are getting, what they have to pay for it, and how others feel about the app.
The ad rotates to display all the information when a user clicks on the ad.
The user has to click on Download to go to the app download page.
With AdWords, app advertisements are automatically updated with the latest information like reviews and ratings. You simply create a text ad that points to your app download page, and AdWords supplies the graphics and formatting. We’ve found that when app advertisers provide users with this kind of important information about their apps, many have seen their cost per conversion decrease by about 25%.
If you’d like to learn more about Google’s app promotion features and see a live demonstration of how to implement and optimize these tools in your AdWords account, tune into our webinar on September 12th at 10am PST. Register today by visiting this link: http://goo.gl/B49ma.
Posted by Chrix Finne, Product Manager, Mobile Ads
Mobile Automotive customers are most interested in contacting the dealership and making service appointments.
The bottom line: mobile users are ready to make choices on the go. Help them get there fast and you'll help your business grow.
