Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

ComScore Inc released a study on US mobile retail usage, and the results only underscore what I’ve been telling my clients in the last few months – Mobile Matters.

You can see the full report here, on the comScore Inc’s website.

Google Analytics and the Device segment in Google AdWords reports on mobile traffic to a website, and that number is increasing for all my clients, no matter the type.  Also to note, in most cases, the bounce rate is significantly higher than desktop devices and the conversion rate is lower, which are not the statistics anyone wants.

You might be thinking that I’m only talking about BtoC or ecommerce sites, but that’s not the case. More and more business people are doing initial research on companies from their smartphones – maybe while sitting in a meeting or while at the airport.

When they get to your site, what’s their experience like? In a February 2011 Harris Interactive Mobile Transactions Survey, 4 out 5 users experienced a problem on a mobile website, and 85% of users expect the mobile experience to be better or equal to using a laptop or desktop experience.  How does your site stack up?

- Is your site easy to read or is the text so small that the user has to pinch, expand and scroll?
- Is the search function easy to access?
- Is your phone number clearly shown?
- Does your site load quickly (less than 5 seconds)?
- Do you have flash content on your home page that doesn’t work on certain mobile devices?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a mobile experience. What’s the call to action on your website (making a purchase, filling out a lead form, calling your company, downloading a PDF)? How does that translate on a mobile device – can it even be done? I’m seeing significantly lower conversion rates for my clients on mobile devices, most likely meaning that the visitor couldn’t complete the action. Experience also has larger ramifications for a company: based on research from the Harris Interactive Study, 63% of online adults surveyed said that if they experienced an issue on a mobile website, they would be less likely to buy from that same company, even through a different purchase channel. And these statistics, from Compuware “What Users Want From Mobile” are even more staggering:

- 57% of users would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site
- 40% of users have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience

Ouch. That’s bad news for a whole lot of companies out there. From a PPC standpoint, I actually stopped advertising to mobile devices on Google AdWords and MSN adCenter for some of my clients not seeing productive results due to their mobile user experience. Can you make your mobile results shine above your competition?

Google offers a pretty good tool to test how your site looks and operates on mobile devices.  They also offer mobile site best practices, as well as case studies on other companies, including some pretty impressive before/after shots.

Make 2012 the year of your mobile friendly site. Your customers and bottom line will thank you.

Most businesses begin advertising online with Google AdWords because it provides a straightforward way to use  pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to attract more potential customers to their website. According to a new report by ZenithOptimedia, 44% of global online advertisers choose to advertise on Google as opposed to only 4% on MSN and  8.3% on Yahoo!  However, I have a feeling that this dynamic might be changing in the not-so-distant future.

On December 4, 2011, Microsoft hit the tech community with an exciting announcement that Xbox Live will now support voice searches on the MSN/Yahoo search engine www.Bing.com.  Consumers who own an Xbox 360 have recently seen a software update for their gaming console.  Additionally, those who also enjoy the Microsoft Kinect accessory will now be able to take advantage of the Kinect voice recognition capabilities to perform spoken searches on Bing through their Xbox 360 console.  According to Microsoft, this new feature is the next step in the evolution of television and entertainment.  They are hoping to be the frontrunners of this new era of entertainment by bringing games, movies, television shows, music, sports and the internet together in one place.

So what does this mean for the 87.7% of global online advertisers who are NOT advertising on Bing?  It means that they might want to think about allocating some of their PPC budget to Bing.  Migrating Google AdWords accounts to the MSN/Yahoo! platform can be a tricky task because the platforms tend to not play nicely together.  There are many nuances that make straight Google to Bing migration difficult for people who don’t do it regularly.  So, if this is something you are interested in doing with your AdWords campaigns, please consult a professional before you attempt it yourself.

It will be interesting to see how this Bing voice search functionality will evolve.  I am excited to see whether Bing will allow advertisers to build voice search PPC campaigns or whether voice search data can be analyzed separate for traditional type and click data.  There are so many possibilities and so much potential for this new functionality.  I can’t wait to see what the future brings.  Only time will tell – so stay tuned!

Last week was full of big news from the Google+ Project.  Not only did Google announce that they would finally be opening Google+ up to businesses via Google+ Pages, but they also unveiled the new Social Extensions feature in AdWords.  Social Extensions will be rolled out to advertisers this week and will allow advertisers with Google+ Pages to link their Google+ Page to their AdWords campaigns.  This means that all brand +1s that are received, whether via the website +1 button, ads or organic search results, will be complied and added together to be viewed as ONE single total visible to consumers.

How does this have the potential to affect the PPC advertising efforts you have in place for your business?  Google believes that adding Social Extensions can potentially improve the ad performance for PPC advertisers.  According to Google (via Harris Interactive, June 2010), recommendations from friends and family impact the purchasing decisions of 71% of shoppers.  The AdWords ads for current campaigns that do not have Social Extensions enabled only show the +1 recommendations for the specific landing page of the ad.  Once Social Extensions are enabled in your Google AdWords campaign, potential customers will be able to see all of the +1 recommendations that your brand has received and make their purchasing decisions accordingly.

Now that they are able to show more highly targeted and personalized ads, how will advertisers be able to study the performance data of this new feature and gauge whether or not it is working for them?  Of course Google has an answer for that!  Google has enabled a new +1 annotation AdWords reporting segment for any campaign, ad group, keyword or ad.  This new segment allows advertisers to view performance metrics by three categories.  The first performance segment category is impressions with personal annotations.  A personal annotation means that a personal contact of the searcher has +1’d your brand (your webpage, Google+ Page, organic search result or PPC ad).  The next performance segment is impressions with basic annotations.  Basic annotations are impressions that included an anonymous count of people who have +1’d your brand.  The third, and final, performance segment is for impressions without social annotations.  While both personal and basic annotations make your ad socially relevant, viewers that see people they actually know and trust +1ing something they are interested in purchasing will, in theory, be more likely to purchase said product.

If you are a PPC advertiser interested in making your brand more socially relevant, then you have some homework to do.  First, set up the Google+ Page for your business here.  Setting up your Google+ Page will not only allow you to get closer to your customers, but will allow you to create your business’s identity on Google+.  Next, you will need to use your Google+ Page URL to enable Social Extensions from the Ad Extensions tab in your AdWords campaigns.  Finally, after you have let the data accrue for a bit, use the +1 annotation reporting segment to see how the +1 features are affecting the performance of your advertising efforts.

Here at JumpFly we are very excited to see how these new Google+ enhancements will affect our clients ROI.  We expect nothing less than big things from the ever evolving Google!