Tag Archives: mobile search

How “Discoverable” is Your Client’s Mobile Presence?

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Stats from Google's GoMo intitiative.

Discovery is half the battle when it comes to promoting your clients. How can people interact with them if they can’t find them? You already know how important it is to market for Google searches (SEO is king, right?), but do you know how to market them for mobile Google searches?

Currently, about 98 percent of mobile searches are done on Google. However, only 20 percent of websites are optimized for mobile. That means that nearly 80 percent of google results on a smartphone go to a desktop site instead of a mobile-optimized site.

Likely, a consumer will turn to the Internet first to look for your client’s business — not an app store. And, unfortunately, the native app probably won’t show up in the top results of a search. So from a discoverability standpoint, you’ll want a mobile web presence in addition to (or in lieu of) a native app.

If you want people to discover your clients on Google, you’ll want to implement a mobile strategy — bring it to your clients’ attention that this is necessary to connect with their consumers. Explain to them that they should be easily discoverable on Google and provide an enjoyable mobile-optimized experience to keep users on their site. Explain to your clients that it’s in their best interest to provide a good mobile experience to consumers, because not only will they retain visitors for longer periods on mobile, but those visitors are likely to take action by connecting with or purchasing from your client.

Luckily, you can easily prepare your client’s mobile presence by building a site with Mojaba. Mojaba sites look and feel like apps, but they show up in Google searches — and they’ll keep users engaged with websites designed for their phones. Best of all, it’s a good price for you, and it works across all operating systems.

Click here to learn how Mojaba can best serve your clients.

[image via HowToGoMo]

8 Mobile Trends to Watch For in 2012

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Is 2012 the year of mobile?

Huffington Post just ran a blog on 8 Mobile Trends For Small Businesses, which we thought was pretty spot-on in terms of what’s next for mobile. Here’s our take on those eight items. Read on to learn how you can help your clients get on board with mobile — with the right tools, of course.

1. Tablets. HuffPost is predicting tablet ownership will double in 2012 (though since it has already doubled in one month, we’ll bank on a higher growth rate this year). Help your clients understand that mobile isn’t just a phase — you have to build a mobile presence. But understand that you’ll have to design with two very different devices in mind: tablets AND smartphones.

2. Mobile search. More often than not, we’re connected to the world with our phones. They’re always on us, within reach any time we have a question. Mobile search is on the rise (and increasingly local), meaning you have to think about mobile and local SEO for your clients.

3. Mobile Marketing. You, smart marketer, already know this is important. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

4. App vs. Web. The debate continues. The web is cheaper, but apps have a better experience (currently). Listen to this: “Usability Science puts the mobile user experience on par with web usability circa 1999.” That’s like the Dark Ages in tech time. (However, Mojaba can bring you out of the dark ages and give your users an app-like experience. Just saying.)

5. Data-driven mobile ads. Mobile advertising and SEO will come out of its infancy and be a major player in the ad world — complete with more accurate statistics. Mojaba statistics provide location data, unique visitors, amount of time spent on the mobile site, how many visitors returned, and the number of clicks and page views per visit.

6. Mobile payments. Smartphones may not eliminate your credit cards and wallets, but they could make it ok to leave your cash at home every once in a while. Start thinking about how your clients could benefit from a mobile payment system now.

7. More mobile video. Network speeds are fast these days, and video viewing on-the-go is fun. Consider including video on your clients’ mobile sites. Consumers will watch it.

8. Facebook and mobile advertising. Facebook is important — 300 million mobile users, according to the HuffPost article, with an impending “unlock” for advertisers. The plan’s under wraps, but watch out for how you can use Facebook to reach consumers on mobile. It’ll be big.

[image via computernewsme]

How Voice Search will Change Mobile Search

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The Evi app for iPhone.

The Internet buzz yesterday was all about Evi — the new natural speech digital assistant about to give Siri a run for her money.

We say “about” because Evi is currently broken. So many people downloaded the app (available for both iOS and Android), that the servers crashed on Day 1 — which was Monday. Since then, True Knowledge has had their dev team “on caffeine drips” and adding more servers to get Evi back online. (Incidentally, the PR on this release has been outstanding. Tune in to the Evi Twitter feed for Evi’s snarky and personal responses to disgruntled consumers.)

In light of all this attention on digital search assistants, we had to pause and reflect on what all this means for the state of mobile — and mobile searching.

Here’ what we know:

  • As of November 2011, 39.5 percent of mobile users have smartphones.
  • Mobile searches account for about 10 to 15 percent of all Internet searches.
  • Mobile is the fastest growing medium, with an annual growth of 20 to 30 percent over the past four years.

Meaning there’s nowhere to go but up for mobile use and mobile search.

With new and sophisticated tools like Siri and Evi (or rather, Wolfram Alpha, True Knowledge and cutting edge voice recognition systems), performing a mobile search is as simple and convenient talking to a friend — and that’s exactly how the makers of these platforms want you to think of their products. By giving them names, voices and personalities (both assistants seem to have a witty streak), these are some of the most anthropomorphic apps available.

Here’s what we predict: Because it’s fun, personal and easier than typing in a browser, voice search will be a key factor in defining how we use mobile in the coming year.

Possible Side Effects of the Rise of the Digital Assistant:

  • A new emphasis on knowledge bases. Knowledge bases like Wolfram Alpha and True Knowledge store millions of facts and can make trillions of “inferences.” They produce a rapid-fire question and answer process (which caters to the time-starved consumer looking for instant information). Knowledge bases provide easy access to information, eliminating results pages and clicks of the standard search engine query.
  • Less traffic for Google, Bing and Yahoo! If Siri and Evi users are finding their answers in the knowledge bases at Wolfram Alpha and True Knowledge, search engines could start to lose business.
  • More local search. Siri defaults to local search results, and, seemingly, so does Evi. And local search already makes up 40 percent of mobile searches, which will continue to grow as mobile use grows.
  • More integration between phone, app and web. Siri controls the iPhone and Safari searches. As of now, Evi can only search the Internet. But these are both brand new technologies. In the future, we’ll see more synchronization between digital assistants and their phones. We predict it won’t belong before you can perform any command  — not just searches and phone tasks — with your voice.

Also, Android is reportedly building an assistant called “Majel,” upping the competition. Play on, digital assistants. We’ll be watching.

Desktop vs. Mobile Searches — What You Need to Know

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You know by now that mobile websites are very different from desktop websites. They have large buttons and text, less information than a desktop site, and they’re designed to get important information to a consumer — quickly. But why is that? We found some stats on how people search on mobile devices vs. desktop computers — and the differences are somewhat surprising.

  • On a desktop website, it takes most visitors (70%) one week to act on a search — on mobile, it takes them one hour to act.
  • People who are searching via mobile are ready to act — and highly motivated to do so.
  • Mobile use grows steadily throughout the day, while desktop use peaks at midday.
  • There are more misspellings on mobile queries.
  • 40 percent of mobile searches are local. Only 20 percent of desktop searches are. That means mobile users are out on the streets, looking for local information and ready to act.
  • Advertisers with mobile-optimized sites and mobile-targeted campaigns have seen an average 11.5 percent increase in mobile clickthrough rates.
  • Mobile searches are more precise than desktop searches, using up to twice as many keywords.
  • First position [in a search results page] matters even more in mobile. “A drop from first to fourth position on mobile phone can mean a CTR drop off of more than 90 percent” (from Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, via searchengineland).

These differences represent a HUGE opportunity for marketers and businesses. They know what they’re looking for and know where they can find it. Take steps to have information on products readily available and clear calls to action by following these tips:

Optimizing your clients’ mobile sites for mobile search

  • Make your site’s keywords longer and more focused (and add more of them) to account for targeted mobile queries.
  • It’s tough to type on small (often touchscreen) keyboards, so account for typos. Add keywords and their common misspellings to your search phrases.
  • Since mobile use grows throughout the day, it generally peaks after the work day ends. If a business has late hours of operation, show that on the mobile website.
  • We’ve already established that mobile searchers are action-oriented. Make it easy for them to act on your client’s mobile site with click-to-call buttons, click-to-email buttons, and directions to the nearest open location.

Mojaba can help you do all of the above. To learn how you can benefit from the product, click here to sign up for our Beta testing.