It’s Time for Businesses to Make their Marketing Campaigns more Mobile-Specific

With the 2014 holiday season pretty much over, many studies conducted during that time shown that the importance of mobile as a shopping platform in growing each year. According to data from multiple sources, mobile traffic numbers and even mobile e-commerce sales beat expectations. It means that businesses, especially retailers need to start thinking about mobile as their main marketing medium.

The technology giant IBM conducted a study conducted on the US holiday traffic and sales and according to the company, about 45 percent of all online traffic during the 2014 holiday season comes from mobile. When it comes to mobile sales, it is about 22.6 percent of all online purchases during the last year’s holiday season. Among the mobile sales, smartphones contributed 31.2 percent of the overall internet traffic when compared to 13.4 percent contributed by tablets. When compared to smartphones, tablets accounted for 13.4 percent of online sales, which accounted for 9.1 percent overall online sales.

2014 Witnessed 76.4 percent Growth in Mobile Usage

According to Yahoo-owned mobile analytics firm Flurry, last year witnessed high mobile app usage up to 76 percent and in this context, the mobile analytics firm defines app usage as a user opening an app and recording what they call a session. In 2014, Messaging, Shopping, and Utilities & Productivity experienced triple-digit growth and were the key reasons. As smartphones and tablets are becoming more and more a part of our everyday life, we are increasingly dependent on them for activities such as communication, working and shopping. For the past few years, we saw massive growth in games and entertainment in mobile, but 2014 was the year when mobile apps got down to serious business. Flurry categorized mobile usage in four sections and they are:

  • Shopping – On iOS and Android devices, the sessions in shopping apps increased by a whopping 174 percent year-over-year. Here you need to note that the “Lifestyle” category for iOS device includes more than shopping. When it comes to Android devices, the shopping category increased by 220 percent compared to previous years. 
  • Utilities & Productivity – According to Flurry, in 2014 smartphone users opened mobile apps related to Utilities & Productivity, confirming that mobile devices have become indispensable that will help us in the work and keep our lives organized. Microsoft office, which is the world-renowned productivity suite is now available as a mobile in iOS, Android and even in Microsoft’s own Windows Phone. Microsoft is now showing more commitment towards after the well publicized purchase of Nokia Mobile and email app Acompli. It makes sense that productivity in the cloud should be mobile-centric, powering the ‘on the go’ nature of the way we work today.
  • Messaging – We know that with high popularity of smartphones, mobile messaging has become a trend like social media. According to Flurry, messaging, which boosted mobile to grow 115 percent in 2013, also posted a triple-digit growth in 2014, as instant messaging apps have become platforms themselves and exposing other services like payments in the case of LINE, SnapChat and WeChat. 
  • Games, Media and Entertainment – According to the mobile analytics firm, some of the early mainstays of mobile continue to be maturing. When it comes to mobile games, the growth is slowed from 61 percent in 2013 to 30 percent in the last year. The same is true for Media, Music and Entertainment and for them, the industry witnessed a slow growth rate from 79 percent in 2013 to 33 percent in the last year. This double-digit growth is remarkable in any context, but we are seeing a shift where the growth in mobile has moved from entertainment apps to apps that help us in fulfilling our daily activities.

This Year will be More about Mobile

Despite all this information and documented shopping behavior of consumers, most brands and retailers have yet realized the potential of mobile. According to many marketing experts, app retention is said to be key reason, but so is general mobile online visibility. There are mobile websites that are not performing as per Webmaster guidelines of Google and other search engines and will affect their mobile SEO rankings. It is time for businesses, irrespective of size to include mobile in their marketing budget and create mobile-centric strategies for attracting the attention of ever-growing mobile consumers.