Web Design & Marketing – Web Advice & Tips | TWMG Blog

Slowly but sure, email messages are dominated by mobile devices with 38% of emails today opened on mobile devices. On the other hand, B2B emails have a lower percentage of mobile opens (between 10% to 30%, depending on the audience). However, business marketers need to pay more attention to the content and design of their messages to make sure they’re readable.

One reason why B2B emails see a lower mobile open rate may be that business people still send and receive many emails from their desks. However, as the mobile trends continue to expand, mobile-friendly emails will be even more important for B2B marketers. In some ways things are getting easier, because email is consolidated around fewer platforms.

To make mobile marketing a little easier, The Website Marketing Group provides these three tips:

1. Consider reflowing your design. The traditional email design of two or three columns doesn’t work on a smaller screen. Recipients don’t want to scroll from the right side to left. You might want to reflow your design from two columns into one stacked column. Column size is important, too. Desktop emails might look great at about 600 pixels wide, but mobile devices look much better when shrunken down and restyled so they are 220 pixels wide. Pay attention to the text size as well. Make sure the recipients can see your messages.
2. Start thinking about retina displays. Retina displays are high-resolution, which means everything appears sharper and clearer. Emails can potentially look worse if not designed with this in mind. Some people have even equated transitioning from regular displays to retina displays to the change from VHS tapes to DVDs. We are going to have to start paying more attention to how images and texts look like in an email.
3. Use Web resources to check how emails will render on mobile devices. Marketers can use websites to see how their emails will render on different mobile platforms. In addition, many of the ESPs offer their own built-in emulators. This is especially important for email marketers that send different versions out to customers. Most people will never use the ‘Forward to a Friend’ button. They are just going to forward it in email.

Consciously or not, mobile devices have gained enormous attention from all over the world. The rapid growth of mobile usage and the tendency to be always updated on the latest mobile gadgets had shifted the view of our modern society. Mobile searching and browsing are very common nowadays.  This infographic will tell you more about the growth of mobile searching.

Today, we live in the mobile era. While traditional marketing strategies need to be maintained, the urge of  mobile marketing is getting greater. For more detailed information about mobile world and marketing, please visit our website on The Website Marketing Group or call us on 1300 911 772.

Smartphones have become today’s primary need for every business owner. Therefore, mobile web is as much important as the conventional-computer web. Optimise your company mobile web now! Contact us at 1300 911 772 or visit our page at The Website Marketing Group.

Need a mobile version for your website? Please contact us today on 1300 911 772 or visit our page at The Website Marketing Group. We will be glad to help you.

Smart Phones Drive Online Sales

The online retail industry is heading into a period of maturity as businesses start acquiring each other and the market consolidates, as new research shows expenditure is set to reach $26.9 billion by 2016.

Most of the growth is occurring on mobile devices, research from Frost & Sullivan and PwC has found, with more than 57% of online shoppers increasing their level of spending over the last 12 months via mobiles.

Expenditure for 2012 is also set to reach $16 billion, with fashion and jewellery tipped as the next big growth areas.

“Most of the trends we’re seeing are pretty similar, but one thing that’s stood out to me is mobile usage,” Frost & Sullivan senior researcher and report author Phil Harpur told SmartCompany this morning.

“That’s where we’re seeing significant increases on the prior year.”

Harpur says the reasons why people shop online, including cheaper prices and faster delivery, don’t change much year to year as the market continues to grow. What has changed, he says, has been anything to do with mobile devices.

For instance, 62% of Australians aged between 15 and 65 who use the internet own a smartphone – and 34% say they shopped online through a mobile device in the past year. The primary uses are for finding a nearby store and actually comparing prices while shopping in store, which has become a pain for bricks and mortar retailers.

“This is just another sign of consolidation that we’re seeing, and it’s a sign of a maturing market,” Harpur says.

“Online shopping has been here for 10 years but it’s only in the past two or three that we’ve seen a significant acceleration driven by the average consumer.”

Mobile use, Harpur says, is also complicating the online retail industry as it becomes more difficult to differentiate between channels.

“As mobile and tablet usage becomes more available, it adds to this omnichannel experience, but it’s also becoming increasingly complex. Because you may buy it online, but search for prices through a mobile device, and speak to someone in the store.”

“The nature of the multichannel experience is dominantly being driven by mobiles.”

There is one area, however, where Harpur says businesses continue to lag – location services.

“It hasn’t caught on much here yet,” he says. “And that’s the area we really lag when compared to the US.”

“Whether it’s the targeting of online shopping when people are close to you, or comparison shopping or barcode scanning, that’s something where retailers are falling behind.”

Consumers aged 15 to 25 identified price comparison and transparency as the most important reason for shopping online, which, the report notes, has “implications for retailers currently targeting this demographic”.

The overall trends among shoppers have remained steady: 88% expect to increase or maintain their spending and 75% of shoppers buy from offshore retailers. Overall, about 45% of spending goes overseas.

However, the report says that the figure will drop as domestic retail increases its presence.

As for the reasons most people shop online, 55% said they do so because the prices are lower, up from 50% in 2011. However, only 15% said they shop in order to avoid crowds, down from 20% last year. And 11% said they do so because it’s easier to locate the product they’re looking for, up from 9% last year.

Google buys Motorola Mobility Holdings

Google, which will be the newest entrant to the handset market, announced plans for the acquisition last year in a bid to secure Motorola’s valuable patents and pave the way for a pairing of Google’s Android mobile software and Motorola’s handset business.

U.S. and European regulators approved the deal in February, leaving only the Chinese regulators as potential spoilers.

“Our stance since we agreed to acquire Motorola has not changed, and we look forward to closing the deal,” Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said, confirming that the Chinese had approved the deal.

Google, whose Android software is the top operating system for Internet-enabled smart phones, wants phone-maker Motorola for its 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications, as it looks to compete with rivals such as Apple Inc. and defend itself and Android phone manufacturers in patent litigation.

A main condition of the deal is that the Android system remain free and open for five years, said a source who is familiar with the Chinese approval but not authorized to discuss it.

“We are pleased that the deal has received approval in all jurisdictions and we expect to close early next week,” Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Weyrauch-Erickson said.

Mobile apps V Website design + Development 

According to new data from comScore, people accessing email via mobile devices increased an impressive 36 percent, from November 2009 to November 2010. More than 70 million people accessed email on their mobile devices in the month.

In this age where “mobile” is so often equated with apps – and their astronomical development costs – this study is excellent news and a steadfast reminder that every business can be “mobile” without breaking the bank. All you need is an email list – which you should already have and, if not, get on it – and a few tips on optimizing messages for the best possible mobile user experience. That’s where we come in.

Let’s take a look at some mobile email, using an iPhone as an example. Devices vary somewhat, but this gives a good picture of the mobile email experience on a standard smartphone.

In all cases, rigorously test mobile email messages across several devices before executing a campaign.

Before Opening the Message

Who is the sender? The sender display name is limited to 16 characters. Good usage of the sender field are company names, individual names,

The subject line. The viewable subject line is somewhere around 35 characters, including spaces. Keep in mind that a Forward (Fw:) and a Reply (Re:) will take up five characters each. It is vital to make the subject line compelling enough for the user to open the email and not delete it with one swipe of a finger.

Content at a glance. The first few lines of content make up about 75 characters, including spaces. Again, be careful of a Forward, as the entire first line could be taken up. Often, I receive emails that begin with “Message not displaying correctly?” or “This is a post-only message. Please do not respond” and so on. That’s wasted space and a very good reason for your message to be ignored.

The first 10 or so words of your message’s content need to give the recipient an explicit reason to click the message to read more – be it an offer, discount, request for a reply or whatever motivates your users.

Optimizing Mobile Email Content

Continue the action. Once a user has clicked on the message, the call-to-action must be immediately clear and reinforce the first few lines the user has already seen. Tell the reader exactly what to do next – click a link or forward the message to a friend, for example. Remember, these are users largely on-the-go, so be succinct and actionable.

Users can be sent just about anywhere from a mobile email, but good options are mobile-optimized pages of your website and social destinations, where the user can spread your message. Recipients can be directed to Facebook Places, Foursquare or even Google Maps. Coupons are a good idea, along with the store’s location, conveniently linked to an interactive map.

Using images. Debate swirls around using images in mobile email. Some devices will have trouble displaying the image but today’s smartphones are well fairly well adapted. If your audience is tech-savvy, you might have more flexibility. However, images should be well-planned.

For example, text on an image can be difficult to read, particularly on a small screen. Oftentimes, I receive virtual flyers in an email. The images dominate and the text is tiny. I am forced to zoom in to see the message, and that is not ideal. If you plan to use images, do so responsibly and make sure the success of the email does not rely solely on the image. An image can make a nice addition to making mobile email more interesting but it should be used to support the message.

Selling product. Mobile commerce is still relatively new but that does not make it impossible. There are mobile payment solutions, including PayPal, and the mobile space is ripe for impulse buys. It is unlikely that people will buy major products through their phones but ringtones, music, e-books, etc.? That’s doable.

Video email. As email becomes increasingly mobile (and smartphones and tablets flood the market), it’s important to remember some different ways mobile email is used. For example, in an airport, at a café, on the couch, in the park… that means users have a potential need for entertainment. Therefore, don’t be afraid to include video. The best course of action is to use a YouTube link, as those videos do not require Flash and are viewable across devices.