The Disruption Tour - Run To Survive A Social Media Revolution

Mobile-friendly emails will become more common

A recent Nielsen study showed that 42% of all time spent on mobile devices was used to read and send email, making that the number-one activity on smartphones and similar devices.

For that reason ShoppeSimple recommends that your promotional emails need to be easily read on all mobile devices.

Why not find out how we can help you with a Mobile Commerce Program. Soon you too can be turning your emails into a Social Commerce profit center.

Email [email protected] or phone 612-349-2700

E-mail click-through rates in Q2 drop to the lowest level on record...

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E-mail click-through rates in Q2 drop to the lowest level on record

E-mail click-through rates dropped to 5.3% during the second quarter of 2010, the lowest rate recorded since 2006 when marketing services firm Epsilon began its tracking.

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Let ShoppeSimple help you raise your email conversion, repeat order rate, New To Files, customer reactivation and average order rates. To learn more about how we do it email us at [email protected] or phone 612-349-2700 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              612-349-2700      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Commerce Strategy Now

Mashable

Bill Zielke is senior director of Merchant Services at PayPal, which recently announced the initial rollout of Mobile Express Checkout. Bill is responsible for the development and marketing of product strategies related to PayPal, and for counseling merchants with product recommendations.

Remember when people debated whether e-commerce was for real? When the media scoffed at the idea of being able to “just point and click for great deals?”

Today, e-commerce is a massive industry. In the U.S. alone, online spending reached nearly $130 billion in 2009. Like e-commerce before it, mobile commerce is on the cusp of becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s time for merchants to take notice and seize the opportunity.

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M-commerce by the Numbers

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At PayPal, when we look at our merchants’ numbers, we’re seeing the impact of mobile commerce jump:

• Our mobile transactions show dramatic growth, increasing nearly six-fold, from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.
• We expect to close out 2010 with over $500 million in mobile payment volume, and more than 5 million members regularly using PayPal from mobile devices.

But we’re just a slice of the overall m-commerce pie:

• Globally, consumers are expected to spend $119 billion by 2015 through their mobile phones, accounting for about 8% of all e-commerce activity, according to ABI Research.
• The total value of mobile payments around the world will quadruple from $170 billion in 2010 to $630 billion in 2014, according to Juniper Research.

From point of sale offerings, to mobile shopping apps and enhanced mobile web experiences, it seems like companies both big and small are trying to capitalize on what mobile commerce promises consumers.

Though much attention has been paid to how consumers are adopting a mobile shopping experience, little consideration has been paid to how merchants can get in the game. In my years helping merchants of every size enable sales on the “third screen” (with televisions and computers as the first and second screens), a few things have held true in most of the successes I’ve seen.

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Mobile Browsing vs. Mobile Shopping

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The numbers speak for themselves, so it’s fair to say that consumers are rapidly adopting mobile shopping as a way to buy physical and digital goods. This rapid adoption rate means customers are starting to expect that their favorite retailers will have a mobile presence, making mobile commerce both an opportunity and an imperative for merchants.

Realizing measurable gains from engaging with these tech savvy shoppers means understanding what motivates them to complete a mobile purchase. Consider the difference between “mobile browsing” and “mobile shopping.” Applications and websites that allow customers to view the latest fashions are great for brand awareness, and maybe even getting them in the physical store, but without a mobile-specific checkout experience, they don’t yield actual sales. I call that mobile browsing because making the purchase is secondary to just looking at the item for a price tag.

Mobile shopping on the other hand, offers consumers the chance to buy something in a checkout experience catered to a mobile device and perhaps most importantly, reduces the amount of clicks it takes to finalize the purchase. This is particularly important in the context of mobile web browsers, where cutting back on content and minimizing the number of clicks is vital to keeping shoppers engaged.

I spend a lot of time on my phone checking out how retailers are taking their online stores mobile. I’ll log onto a retailer’s mobile website which allows me to look at all the merchandise I want. Content loads quickly and after a pleasant and easy browsing experience, I decide to go ahead and make the purchase.

As is all too common with mobile shopping, I’m taken to a third-party checkout site that is not catered to a mobile browser. Instead of making a couple of clicks, I find myself scrolling, re-entering sensitive information, resizing the screen, ultimately getting frustrated and abandoning the purchase.

As a retailer, it’s critical that your mobile customer has the same level of convenience that they would have if they were shopping on their laptop with a checkout experience that’s designed for the device.

A number of retailers have successfully brought easy shopping experiences to mobile platforms. Buy.com, for example, has tailored their mobile website for intuitive shopping and quick checkout. While developing a mobile shopping experience is more art than science, layouts with large buttons, minimal text, little scrolling and a fast checkout have proven key to conversion.

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The Mobile Web vs. Native Apps

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Much has been made of whether the future lies in mobile applications or the mobile web. Both apps and browsers offer compelling characteristics that, in the context of mobile commerce, can draw in shoppers.

Mobile apps are like your neighborhood produce store. You walk inside the doors looking for specific items. They also typically let users tap into their phone’s full potential. For example, a native app might integrate with a phone’s camera, voice recorder, contacts or other features. And for shoppers looking for a richer, more advanced interface, applications typically win out over the mobile web because they are designed specifically for that handset’s hardware and operating system.

Overall, native apps offer a tailored shopping experience that’s well delivered but limited.

The mobile web on the other hand is a like a huge shopping mall with seemingly limitless stores and tons of options all under one giant roof. It’s not as constricted or fragmented as shopping on disparate mobile apps but the experience isn’t as tailored as the specialty store.

Unlike device-specific native apps though, the mobile web has enormous flexibility and, usually, much larger reach. Customers don’t need to download robust programs from app stores to their handset in order to begin shopping. Instead, all they have to do is type in a web address in their mobile browser to start spending their digital dollars. Much of the time mobile sites serve as stripped-down versions of regular websites and serve a utilitarian purpose: selling goods and services.

The mobile web offers what native apps lack and vice versa. And just as in the real world, there’s room for both. As long as there is an easy way for consumers to shop from their mobile devices, both apps and browsers serve a purpose for retailers.

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Get Ready: The Holidays are Coming

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With the biggest shopping season of the year just weeks away, now is the time for retailers to look to the mobile channel to boost sales and meet their customers where they want to be met.

Last year, PayPal saw mobile payments on Black Friday rise about 650% compared to 2008. This year, the holiday season will be a pivotal time for retailers to capitalize on the mobile opportunity as the market really becomes mainstream.

Right now, merchants from small businesses all the way to the largest companies in the world are finalizing their strategies for the holidays. They’re thinking about how many MP3 players to keep in stock and how to get feet in the door, and which demographics they should be targeting once the doors fly open on Black Friday. But maybe this year, the smart merchants will think back to the 1990s –- to the birth of e-commerce — and decide to act on the opportunity that mobile commerce opens up, and to change the relationship with their customers once again. E-commerce drove sales, but also more importantly it changed merchants’ relationship with their customers. And mobile commerce has the potential to do it all over again.

Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social : How can ShoppeSimple Help Merchants Get Orders...

What if you can find new customers and reactivation older ones with ShoppeSimple's suite e of 16 Social Commerce Digital Assets. What if you could deliver highly relevant and targeted offers to wherever your consumer are. What if you could finally monetize both your search and your social efforts in ways you have never thought about before. Why not consider a test with ShoppeSimple to prove to yourself how we can help your grow your business.  If any of the above interests you give ShoppeSimple a ping at [email protected] or phone 612-347-2700

The Next Web

On the surface, Google Places and Facebook Places

would seem to have a lot in common.

Both services are out to create a landing page for every local business in the world.

Both services allow local merchants to “claim” their pages, giving the merchant some editorial control over content on the page.

And both services no doubt expect to grab a chunk of what is projected to be a $32B digital, local advertising market by 2013 by claiming the middleman position between the merchant and the end user.

But where the two services break from each other – and in a non-trivial way – is in their respective distribution strategies.

Google relies on Search.  Facebook relies on Social.

And this is where things start to get interesting.

Search vs. Social

Whichever service is able to attract the most consumers will likely attract the most local merchant ad dollars.  The merchants will follow the users.

Let’s take a look at how consumers are exposed to merchant pages on Google Places and Facebook Places respectively.

On Google, it’s via the Google Search box.  If I search for something with a geographic component, say “San Francisco Taquerias,” Google shows me a massive seven pack of their own Google Places results, before showing any organic results.

As queries with local intent are estimated to make up roughly 20% of all queries, and almost everybody clicks on one of the top three results, this aggressive placement of their own Places pages on top of the search results is no doubt driving massive traffic to merchant pages.

Some back of the envelope analysis tells me this:

6,500,000,000 total queries per month * 20% (local intent) * 90% (to seven pack) = 1.17B local merchant referrals per month.

Massive.

Now, let’s look at Facebook Places.

Facebook users are exposed to Facebook Places pages via one of three ways; A) Search; B) When a friend’s checkin shows up in their newsfeed; or C) Via the Facebook Places feature on the Facebook iPhone app or touch.facebook.com.

Facebook Places is a brand new service (see our coverage here, here, and here) that allows people to “check in” to local businesses, and share those locations with their friends.

Put another way, Facebook Places is a delivery engine for person to person local merchant recommendations.  Every check in represents an opportunity for a local business to go rocketing through Facebook’s interconnected social graphs via comments and likes.

If this service takes off, it could result in an awful lot of exposure – via trusted sources – for local businesses.

While Facebook hasn’t yet shared specific numbers around adoption of the Facebook Features, we do know this: social networking is overtaking search in terms of usage in some markets.

The Value of a Click

From a local merchant’s perspective, not all referrals are created equal.  In order from most valuable to least is:

- A first time customer who discovers your business and becomes a repeat customer
- A long time customer who is reminded of your business, and re-engages
- A person who is exposed to your business but never comes
- A freeloading customer who comes only for a loss leader deal, with no intention of coming back

Search traffic has proven to be highly actionable and highly valuable.  If I am searching on Google for a “San Francisco Taquerias,” I am likely quite ready to go eat some tacos.

Social’s correlation with intention is less clear.  If I am browsing my Facebook feed and see that my friend just want to El Farolito Taqueria, it is less likely that I am actively looking for a Taqueria recommendation.  However, depending on the friend, it is possible that I might make a mental note to check the place out at some point.

Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the use cases around consumer behavior and local search.

The Use Cases

Here are some sample local search use cases from the consumer’s perspective along with our thoughts as to who has the edge as of today.

Any way you measure it, Google is pretty far ahead at the moment.  Their venue pages are robust.  Merchants can add coupons on a self serve basis, and users can read and write reviews.  In terms of structured data lookup, it’s hard to imagine anyone will ever choose Facebook over Google.  Google’s mobile apps do a nice job of providing “near me now” categories, whereas Facebook place just shows you a list of nearby venue titles.

But the wild card here is the lucrative discovery / recommendation use case.  At the end of the day, this is what matters most to local merchants – finding first time customers, and turning them into lifetime repeat customers.  And if Facebook can prove that local merchant recommendations delivered friend to friend via social check-in can beat search based research, they have a fighting chance to win the dominant share of local merchant ad dollars.

Social and Mobile are Rising Tides

When two companies are competing head to head with similar products and similar strategies – e.g. Foursquare vs Gowalla – whoever executes better will likely win.

But when two companies are betting on entirely different distribution channels… well, this would seem to portend larger industry ramifications.

Facebook has plenty of question marks ahead of it as it enters the local search market.  Are people going to check in at all given privacy and social graph issues?  Do friend to friend recommendations beat expert recommendations?  Are check-ins worthy of showing up in the newsfeed or will they be considered just noise?

But we do know this.  Traffic to social networking sites is growing more quickly than traffic to search engines.  And mobile is emerging as a significant point of control.

Facebook owns social, and is doing a strong job with mobile.  Google exerts influence over the fastest growing mobile operating system (Android), and also has one of the largest mobile app (Maps).

And what about Yelp?  My personal opinion is that the Google / Yelp showdown that we’ve all been following recently may soon become a Google / Facebook showdown.  And that whoever snags Yelp might have a big leg up (those new Facebook venue pages would look awfully strong with some Yelp reviews on them and would help them rank nicely in Google).

There are lots of moving parts at play in the face off between Google Places and Facebook Places.  Some are feature specific, some are company specific, and some are occurring at a macro, industry level.

It will be fascinating to see how things play out.

Original title and link for this post: Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social