Businesses should always be looking to gain new customers and keep the ones they have happy. One way of doing this is adapting to the way your customers like to shop. E-commerce companies should be aware of consumers increased spending on mobile devices, especially tablets, and changes should be made to reach them.
According to an article on Direct Marketing News, “Tablet users who visited e-commerce websites in 2011 spent 54% more per purchase than smartphone visitors and 21% more than desktop or laptop visitors, according to a Jan. 19 report by Adobe Systems.” Tablets are a viable way to reach your target audience and businesses should be willing to make website adjustments to reach returning and potential customers. What type of adjustments? Make sure they can easily navigate and purchase on your site.
When a visitor comes to your website via a tablet, what do they see? Does your website adjust to fit their screen or will the user have to play with their display settings just to get a clear picture of the item they want? It may sound silly to ask such a question, but businesses can frequently lose out on sales due to visitor frustration.
The other night my mom went online to buy some books using a tablet. However, unlike a computer, she could only see one book per page. (The website wasn’t optimized to fit a tablet.) She spent some time attempting to find the books she wanted, but eventually ended up ordering over the phone. Instead of buying multiple books, she only bought one. This particular company lost business because their site wasn’t user friendly on a tablet. How can a company fix this? Easy, use a sniffer. A sniffer can detect what type of device a visitor is using and serve them a landing page that is configured for their device. It would behoove this bookstore to add a sniffer to their site. Who knows how many other tablet users have passed up on buying, due to the lack of a good user experience on a particular site?
When it’s all said and done businesses have to make changes to reach their consumers. If a decent amount of your target audience is using tablets to access your site, consider getting a sniffer. How can a company determine how many visitors are coming from mobile devices and tablets? Read the following article on obtaining this data through analytics.
The world of search engine marketing is constantly changing and it is up to businesses as well as advertisers to keep pace. Google recently modified their campaign geo—target settings, which should gives advertisers a little more leverage.
The new geo-target settings are more informative, in regard to showing how many people can be reached. For example if a business is thinking of targeting Kalamazoo Michigan, they can see how people are in that target area. Google will also display locations enclosing a particular area and offer related locations that might be of interest. This is a plus because many times people want to target a certain area, but don’t know if they’ll be reaching a decent amount of people with their advertising. This new reach feature solves that problem.
Another adjustment Google made is in the map section of the geo-target settings. Previously, a very plain version of the map would display the targeted location. However, Google has upgraded the map to show a more detailed area of the respective location. The map is almost identical to the map shown when one does a Google map search; streets are shown and even landmark locations in the area are displayed on the map.
The geo-target settings seem to be a consistent work in progress because there are features that are available this week that weren’t available a few weeks ago. This should not be a surprise, because Google has a “send feedback” button for people to offer their opinion on the geo-targeting modifications. When it’s all said and done, these changes should help businesses reach more of their target audience.
There are a lot of articles circulating about the benefits of mobile advertising. In fact, many companies and brands are embracing mobile advertising and seeing impressive results. However, the mobile advertising market hasn’t been cornered by one particular vendor and some are wondering if Facebook is going to join the mobile scene.
Facebook is recognized as one of the top social media sites. Plus, numerous businesses appreciate the advance targeting features that are available in Facebook such as demographics, interests, connections, etc. Some would like to use these advanced settings to reach the mobile market. This means businesses would already be prepared to pay Facebook to reach their respective audience. Another plus is that people use their cell phones to check on their Facebook accounts already, so it’s not like Facebook would have to entice anyone to go on their site via a mobile device. They also, have loads of mobile user data at their fingertips. According to an article on CNET, “Facebook already has access to data of a large mobile user base”… Facebook says nearly half of its nearly 800 million users already log in via mobile devices, giving the network momentum in a market estimated to be worth $630 million.”
Facebook seems to be in a great position to join the mobile market, and despite rumors that they will be offering mobile advertising soon, Facebook has declined to speak about the matter. Many businesses will benefit if Facebook gives them the ability to run mobile ads. The ball is in their court to enable mobile ads and only time will tell how they’ll proceed.
975 South Federal Highway, 2nd Floor
Boca Raton, FL 33432
800.787.0497
ph: 561.620.9682
fx: 561.620.9684
info@morevisibility.com
