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When we start talking about smart-phones, there has been a lot of changes: there are lots of smart-phones to choose in the market, retailers have started eying the mobile-friendly sites, applications and consumers are adapting to the idea of shopping on their mobile devices.

Retailers have started having a mobile strategy; “mobile commerce or the m-Commerce”, recognizing the rapid adoption of smart-phones, unlimited data plans and 3G services retailers have to provide the best mobile commerce platform. This provides a uniform smooth experience for searching, shopping and buying items. Mobile sites and applications have to be more user-friendly, and secured.

All this boils down to two important questions,

• Why retailers should have a native mobile commerce app?
  • The answer to this is very straight forward; smart-phones are currently dominating the mobile internet (the iPhone in particular and the fast catching android based smart-phone). A native app is likely to be appealing and more user friendly.
  • Smart-phones apps will appeal to an audience with more disposable income.
  • Better user experience and consistent user interface which user is comfortable with.
  • Native applications provide faster performance and more responsive application.
  • Using the on device imagery, could provide a high quality visual experience and branding.
  • Can utilize native capabilities of device (e.g., GPS, camera, Bluetooth, contacts)
  • Deliverance of push alerts even when application is not open and provide a real time awareness of time-sensitive communication.
  • Access to native cryptographic libraries for on-device data encryption and decryption.
  • Better integration to other applications on the device like email, messaging, contacts etc.
  • On some platforms, we can even leverage it to provide dashboards on the phone home screens.

• Why retailers should have m-commerce website?
• • Ability to reach a greater audience, an app restricts the number of customers you can appeal to.
  • Can overcome building multiple applications to support different platforms (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone).
  • According to Taptu Research, the browser based mobile market is the future.

When a retailer wants to reach the vast target audience for its different products and services, the best and effective way would be to start off with a mobile website optimized for all mobile and hand held devices. This would enable the retailer to reach most of his audience by optimizing the mobile website with the help of mobile search engines.

When a retailer has statistics of the different smart-phones and handhelds used by his audience and when there are a good percentage of users using iPhone, Android handhelds and many more upcoming tablet’s and handhelds, then the retailer could decide upon developing a native mobile application for his customers.

The best way a retailer can reach all of his target audience, is to have both the Mobile website and the native mobile application. This is some of the best practices followed by major and successful retail companies, i.e. Amazon, Best Buy, eBay and many more…

With smart-phone sales set to form two thirds of mobile handset sales in the US in 2015, opportunities for mobile commerce are expanding significantly,” says Coda Research (above).

Some of the questions to be answered before a retailer choose a mobile strategy

• Where should a multichannel retailer start its mobile strategy?
• What does a mobile strategy built against customer needs look like?
• How do you overcome the challenges of operating effectively in a new and evolving space?

How retailers can develop an effective mobile channel

• Leverage existing customer behavior
• Leverage the largest mobile install base
• Leverage existing promotions and CRM strategies
• Allow consumer to reach you directly for product and service information.
• Make it easy to opt-in
• Make it free
• Make it optimized for mobile
• Make it relevant

Best practices of a Mobile commerce site and application design

• Clear call to action: Simple and clear display of content, what you are offering and how they can get it.
  • Make sure the terms of the offer are very clear and the user fully understands the cost for the content.
  • Each transaction should take no more than two steps, fulfilling the double opt-in obligation and making for a simple and easy user experience
  • Provide Search functionality
  • Integration into the main website
  • Clear terms and conditions
  • Allow for exclusive content
  • Maintenance and updating
  • Interactive experiences
  • Customer support
  • Protect your brand
  • Ability to have real time clear insights on Analytic

Understanding the mobile audience and strategy

Mobile marketing includes many ways of delivering targeted communications to a mobile device, and each tactic has a predominant audience that requires a specific strategy to maximize reach.

There are four mobile marketing tactics that are currently more widely adopted by marketers, retailers and consumers alike.

• SMS and MMS
• Mobile Web
• Applications: Applications were made famous by the iPhone and the App Store, but other companies are now getting into the act including BlackBerry with its App World, Palm by making its Palm Software Store accessible from its mobile devices, and Google with its Android Market. Applications are fantastic for providing a rich user experience that far exceeds what is possible with a mobile-browser-friendly Web page. However, because applications serve a dedicated audience only, the rich functionality and consumer experience possibilities must be balanced against the relatively limited audience of all mobile devices that can use the application.
• Mobile advertising

It’s time to start paying attention to mobile Commerce. We at TechJini could help you come up with mobile strategies, which can help to set yourself up for the future right now.

For more details drop a mail on shiv@techjini.com

The iPad marks the emergence of a new business model for Publishing Houses, are you ready to use this opportunity to move into the digital age?

iPad is likely to be a great medium for publishing houses, who have drastically been hit with fast falling revenues (in reference to the year 2009). Newspapers have seen significant decline in print advertising revenues, online versions did not provide many options to monetize. However iPad and mobile apps may have slated to change all these.

Why iPad and Mobile Platforms for Publishing Companies?

 Why choose iPad and Mobile platforms instead of Web, the major problem with digital content on the web are that people expect it to be free. As this is one of the greatest strengths of the web, while free is great for consumers and the World, it does not create any revenue for publishers.

The iPad provides an opportunity to change all that. We’ve already become accustomed to paying for iPhone applications, it seems natural to pay for iPad magazines, books, and news papers provided the experience is significantly better than the dead-tree versions.

Several hundred thousand iPads have been pre-ordered. Analysts expect Apple to sell around 5 million units in 2010. A survey executed by the analysts of comScore indicated that 34 percent of iPad buyers will use it to read newspapers and magazines. 68% of young consumers indicated a willingness to pay for news and magazines specially formatted for e-readers.

The US Audit Bureau of Circulations already revised the definition of digital magazines. Publishers may now report items as E-reader distribution averages, mobile app purchases, etc. in order to reflect the new audience.

The article quoted Chris Anderson of Wired at TED 2010 stating that the iPad “[is] an opportunity to reset the economics,” of digital publishing. “For the first time, people may value this experience so much they’ll pay for it.”

Many Companies adapting to the World of Mobile and iPad World:

Many prominent Publishing houses like McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Kaplan, USA Today, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, the Associated Press, Time magazine and many more are looking at iPad apps as a very strategic initiative on a subscription mode. USA Today has been downloaded 175,000.

Statistical details on the applications being downloaded on the “Apple iTunes store” –source O’Reilly Research

We could see from the figure one that 30% of downloads are from the books and rest applications comprise to 70%, as many publishing companies have started publishing multiple titles on the emergence of the iPad.

In reference to the fig 2: Application Downloads

Obviously, a game developer won’t be able to churn out new applications at the same rate as an eBook publisher. Game developers have, on average, 2.3 apps in the store (looking at data from the last week), while a typical eBook vendor is selling almost 18 apps right now.

Books are also currently the fastest growing category in the App Store (285% in the last three months), mostly because vendors can simply pack different texts into separate applications. Compared to other categories, productivity apps are only growing slowly, though the number of apps in this category still grew 58% over the last 12 weeks.

Statistics on the Downloads

Different kinds of eBook application on iPad and iPhone

Average prices in Top-100 under the category “Books”:

Distribution of prices in Top-100 under the category “Books”:

Portfolio characteristics of the most successful publishers from Top-100 “Books”:

Fig 3: Content uniqueness:

Fig 4: By content

• Portfolio of the average successful publisher from Top-100(“Books”) has approximately 60 applications.
• Moreover, there’s one publisher holding 25% of all content of the section “Books”.

Effective models for selling the books:

• Free Application with free books and In App purchase of books
• Portfolio of books with SEO of high quality both in iTunes and through search engines (Google etc)

Conclusion:

• Publishing companies should work on releasing interactive books which started promptly developing last month, especially in light of iPad release (even though the cost for producing such books is much higher as compared with normal books);
• The segment of medical books has some perspectives (most probably it is also related to iPad release, which allows to operate easier with the graphics etc) and making the students or the readers to have a very good usability.
• Interactive books for children and comics, which is one of the most stable and quick-growing segments.

Why Techjini?

• More than 25 iPhone applications in the Apple-app store.
• Global Consulting Company: We apply innovation into every aspect of application development, be it Project management or Lifecycle Management.
• Individual and personalized focus on each client of ours.
• Competitive pricing  for iPad application development services
• Professional support and maintenance for iPad projects.

For more details or a free quote kindly contact shiv@techjini.com