Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg’s speech at this week’s Nielsen 360 conference is getting a lot of attention for her observation that email is dead because only 11% of teens check their email daily.
But is it?
Read More…
Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category
Mobile Online shopping starts to take off
Our friends at Usability Sciences have been doing a lot of research on Mobile eCommerce (that’s shopping on your iPhone or Blackberry or what have you). What they’re finding should give eCommerce companies that haven’t optimized their sites for mobile pause — lot’s of people in key demographics are shopping online using their phones:
Looking at age, here is the breakdown of those who purchased through their phone in the last 6 months:
Clearly, if your target demographic is in the 25-44 age range you want to have your site mobile optimized.
Now, methodologically, there is some room for doubt here — the sample group is self-selected and that group may skew towards people who are more likely than average to do stuff like shop with their phones.
via Volume 40 – Shopping Online Mobile – Alive and Very Well Part II – May 2010 | Usability Sciences.
3 ways Bell.ca can stop blowing the customer experience
May 21st, 2010
I’ve got a MiFi 2372 from Bell. It’s a cool little device that I’ve been recommending to almost everyone… until a couple of weeks ago. What the device does is this: it connects to Bell’s wireless data service and acts as a wifi router, allowing you to use 3G wireless Internet to access the Internet with laptops, non-3G iPads and other devices that don’t have 3G natively on board (hello hi speed at the cottage!)… until a couple of weeks ago.
On May 3 Bell disabled all MiFis on its network because of an issue with the MiFi’s battery. It sucks, but these things happen.
What really sucks, though, is that many Bell customers found out about this the hard way — by trying to get online (in my case in a mission critical situation), finding it didn’t work and trying to solve the problem.
And what sucks even more is that it’s really hard to get a straight answer about what Bell’s going to do about the problem. A recorded message on 310-BELL said to take the unit back to point of sale; retail said to wait for a replacement (or maybe some other non-equivalent wireless product) in the mail; call center said replacement would happen by mail but couldn’t confirm whether or not they’d actually be replacing the MiFis with MiFi’s or not.
It’s unfortunate. It would be so easy for Bell to communicate with all stakeholders in a way that clears up all the confusion and that keeps the recall in the “bummer” category and out of the “fiasco” category. Here are three ways Bell, and especially their Bell.ca Web site, could stop failing at customer service:
- Be fast and be proactive — communicate early and often with customers about what’s happening with the recall
- Leverage online channels — use email and the Bell.ca Web site to keep customers up to date about the recall process. They’ve got my email address and an online portal that knows I’ve got a MiFi 2372 — why not use those to talk to me about what’s going on?
- Be transparent — put up a public recall page on Bell.ca that can provide consistent information to call center staff, retail staff and consumers about what the recall process is. Show consumers that you’re customer service-focused and take the risk that a recall may make you look bad (it won’t)
Mobile Banking Set to Soar – eMarketer
According to eMarketer’s latest report, “Mobile Banking: Financial Services Firms Look to Cash In.”
Several forecasts predict that by 2015, 50% or more of US mobile users will be conducting transactions from their mobile devices.
You’d have to assume that Canadian adoption numbers would be even higher than in the US, which traditionally lags us in consumer banking technologies.
The full report, “Mobile Banking: Financial Services Firms Look to Cash In,” also answers these key questions:
- How many consumers already use mobile banking? How many are interested in trying it?
- How many financial institutions are using the mobile channel? What is the extent of their mobile offerings?
- What are the opportunities and challenges in mobile banking?
Redesigning the Web for Touch Screens
May 4th, 2010
iPhones and other touch-screen based mobile devices provide a slew of challenges for user experience designers, and it’s not just the size of the screen:
Web designers will have to wrestle with several issues when considering touch computers. For one thing, touch interfaces don’t give users the fine-grained control that they have with a mouse.
and
roll-over interactions are common on many websites, but these don’t work on touch devices. Other common tricks, such as hovering over a link to see the connected URL in the status bar, have to be adjusted before a user can perform the same function
Given that within the year there will easily be over 100 million touch screen devices in the wild, this is a potentially serious issue for businesses looking to connect with their users’ evolving needs. Some sites will need complete make-overs, others will need some subtle tweaks and other sites will need new mobile/touch screen versions.
There will also be a whole new range of opportunities to take advantage of mobile and touch-screen-specific capabilities to reach markets in new ways.
via Technology Review: Redesigning the Web for Touch Screens.
Fruition launches new mobile-friendly blog
Apr 27th, 2010
We’ve launched a new mobile-friendly version of our blog. If you’re accessing the site on your iPhone, Android, Blackberry (only some models) or other mobile device you’ll automatically be able to read and comment on all posts via a user experience that’s optimized for the small screen. You’ll also be able to tweet pages using your choice of the Twitter clients that are installed on your phone, post links using popular services like delicious, and email posts to your friends.
The new mobile blog comes along design changes to the Web version of the blog that are intended to make the blog cleaner-looking and easier to use.
Mobile Fundraising 101
Apr 26th, 2010
Rachel Foster at Fresh Perspectives has published an interview with me that she did earlier this year. It’s designed to give non-profits an overview of the opportunities and challenges they’ll encounter as they consider a mobile fund-raising strategy:
The relief efforts in Haiti and Chile confirmed that organizations can raise a lot of money in a short amount of time through mobile fundraising. It provides immediacy – a donor receives a call to action and responds right away. Donors may not have access to their computers or the Internet when they’re exposed to your fund-raising message – watching TV, listening to the radio, seeing a billboard or reading a newspaper – but they probably have their mobiles within arm’s reach.
New study : non-profit use of mobile messaging
Feb 22nd, 2010
mobileactive and M+R have teamed up to deliver the first ever study of non-profit use of mobile messaging for fundraising, advocacy and more.
Some quick conclusions:
- the churn rate for mobile subscriber lists is higher than for email
- response rates for both fundraising and advocacy appeals can be substantially higher for text messaging than for other media like email marketing
- merging subscriber data from opt-in email lists is the most common and effective way for non-profits to grow their mobile lists
Download the full study and view a summary at mobilebenchmarks.org.
How Non-Profits and Activists Can Leverage Location Based Services
Jan 18th, 2010
Although most Canadian non-profits are just starting to get their feet wet with social media, online fund-raising and mobile applications, location-based services are probably not on their radar here to the same extent they are Stateside.
This article from Mashable is a pretty good prompt to think about ways location-aware apps might help with fund-raising and on-the-ground organizing. For fund-raising, I’m especially intrigued by CauseWorld.
How Non-Profits and Activists Can Leverage Location Based Services (from Mashable)
