How likely are you to stay on a website that takes minutes to load?

Isn’t switching to a lighting fast website a far better option and that too when there are ample of such fast loading websites available just on a single click?

At the end of 2015, India had 239 million smartphone users; the number is predicted to rise up to 705 million by 2020. According to a survey, 60.83% online shoppers prefer mobile websites and apps.

Retailers have reacted well to the scenario; 58.5% retailers have mobile shopping apps with purchase capability, 93% of the retailers have mobile websites. It is a great effort when you see these figures. But there is more to it actually.

People shop on the go because they are in a hurry. So your mobile website has got to be faster than your peers’. A study claims that an online shopper waits less than 3 seconds for your mobile website to load; if it takes more than that, the consumer is annoyed, he or she gets off your site, decides never to return, you lose a potential customer and worst of all: Negative word of mouth marketing happens. But as a marketer what can you do about mobile page speed? Technically, nothing!

But you are the one responsible for your brand’s popularity and of course for lead conversion; take the stats for it; you are going to lose it all without great mobile page speed.

79% of online shoppers do not go back to a site they were once disappointed by. So, do interfere in the mobile page design and use the following tactics to increase mobile page speed before it is late.

Tips to optimize Mobile Page Speed

1. Get rid of complexity; it wins you nothing.

An average web page consists of hundreds of assets that involve dozens of host servers. A lot of these assets are un-optimized and unmonitored thus unpredictable. Speaking from experience, these assets play a vital role in slowing down the web page.

• It is imperative that you give a good amount of thought to the essentiality of these page elements and make sure that you are not trading off the page’s speed for them. If the results are unsatisfactory, sit with your developers’ team and get rid of these elements.
• Next on the ditch list is the number of images. You probably cannot imagine your website going live without being decorated with a fair amount of product images, logos, and graphics; you are right as long as you know what the ‘fair’ amount is. Use of the images and other multimedia beyond that ‘fair’ amount would start making the page slow beyond consumers’ tolerance, thus dropping the conversion rates. The pages with higher conversion rates are found to have 38% fewer images than the ones with lower conversion rates. Also, make sure that the images have the right formatting. There is no point having PNG format if you can have JPEG format which cuts the size by 50%. Give it a thought and keep only what is necessary.
• While it is unavoidably important to track your consumers’ behavior on the page, you need to take into consideration the mobile page speed it costs you. Review the tracking codes and keep only the ones that are absolutely necessary.
• Video embeds are really good for customer engagement but they also cost you substantial page loading time. So, you need to be careful while you embed a video onto the page. Remember, every second of delay can cause your brand thousands if not millions or billions.

2. Reduce bounces by increasing speed.

DOM (Document Object Model) ready time of your site needs to be sped up in order to reduce lag and the resultant bounces. As we are already convinced that the loading time of your page is causing you valuable business, let us be ready to take any measures possible to speed things up.

• Avoid using JavaScript. It prevents a site from parsing HTML code and it has everything to do with your mobile page speed. The time required to parse HTML code is known as DOM ready time. The more DOM ready time your site has, more will be the bounces.
• Decrease full page load time by optimizing the font and structure of your website and making sure that the redirect links are avoided.

Decreasing full page load time is proven to reduce bounces and it has to do a lot with your brand’s popularity.

3. Caching can be a solution to multiple problems

With the advent of HTML5, using your browser’s local storage has become way easier. If you can cache some frequently required data it cancels the constant need of pulling data from the server. It helps your cause in ways more than one.

• As a lot of data is locally stored, the load time decreases.
• You save some expenses on server usage and bandwidth.
• Your site retains partial functionality even when the consumer is offline or your server is down for maintenance.

4. Never considered using CDN services? It is about time you did

Content needs time to travel as does everything. Yes, it can travel to Amsterdam from New York in a blink, and thus even a single asset that adds a tiny bit latency matters a lot.

Things would be so much better if your page could exist on multiple servers throughout the world so that wherever a customer peeps into your site, he or she sees it in full shape before getting annoyed.

Content Delivery Network or CDN can do it for you. It can store your page in servers all over the world so that your page is at a blinking distance from any customer around the globe.

You can avail Google’s CDN services called ‘PageSpeed Service’ for free for a while but then you will be charged competitively. You can choose any other service at any time; a lot of them are available but none are free. So, if you are truly concerned about mobile page speed as you should be, it is worth the expense.

5. Minifying JavaScript and CSS do speed things up

As we have discussed earlier, JavaScript can increase your DOM ready time. Well, what it also does along with CSS is making your visitors download files to view the page.

Obviously, this adds to the loading time of your page. It is hard to just chuck off JavaScript and CSS from your web page, but surely you can do your bit by minifying them.

Minification involves removing every unnecessary object from the downloadable files. Avoid adding useless comments and get rid of any white space that your JS and CSS files might have and you are good.

You can manually minify JavaScript and CSS but not without the risk of incorporating fresh errors. So, it is wise to take the help of minify tools.

6. Index your database

If your website uses a database that stores loads of consumer information acquired through the site or social media or other sources then your browser goes through real pain when it has to pull out data from the huge storage. Whenever it needs some information it has to browse through hundreds of thousands of records. It takes time.

You can cure this problem by indexing your site’s database. If the things in the database are classified in proper order then it becomes really easy to pull out information as the browser knows where to look.

You, as a marketer, have worked really hard to ensure a strong online presence of your brand; do not let two seconds of delay take it all away. As per statistics, every second of delay costs your website a 7% conversion rate. So implement these tacti cs and get the wheel spinning.

Framing up the above points in a nutshell:

• Optimize images and graphics to ensure only the necessary remains. Web pages with images up to 19 have shown better conversion rates. Get rid of unproductive elements.
• Review the font and structure of your page to ensure less full page loading time.
• Use Caching whenever applicable to have more mobile page speed.
• Employing Content Delivery Network services is a great way to enhance speed.
• Minify JavaScript and CSS to ensure less DOM ready time and more fluidity.
• Index your database to save your browser some effort and valuable time.

These tips are tested and applied and many have enjoyed the profits. So, either employ these tactics by yourself or seek professional help from expert website designers, later being the wiser decision and enhance your mobile page speed along with your site’s conversion rate.

The post Mobile Page Speed: 6 Crucial Tips For Marketers To Implement appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

After working hard to get your app up and running, you have managed to get it into the app market. A close look at the analytics reveals that even though the app is downloaded a fair number of times, it fails to engage users like you had expected, leading to a low user retention rate. What went wrong?

With so many apps out there in the market, the competition for attention and time is at an all-time high. According to a study by Nielson, the amount of time that mobile users spend on using apps is reaching new heights: a staggering 30 hours a month for each app per person on average. Not only that, the average number of apps that mobile users use is now 26.8.

So how can you ensure that your mobile app gets the attention you desire? How can you engage the users in the most effective way possible? Read the tips below to learn of ways to enhance mobile app engagement.

Tips to Enhance Mobile App Engagement

1.     Create an App Users will Love

The first impression is the last impression. This saying holds true when it comes to creating a mobile app. You only get one chance to make a great impression the first time around. Even though the time spent using apps is more than half the total time spent with all types of digital media, mobile users are indecisive, and usually delete more than 70 percent of apps they install, and that too within a month.

If you want to keep your customers engaged and engrossed, you need to have them coming back to your app again and again. To achieve this, your app should offer fresh content, interactivity, and features that will be authentically appreciated by your target audience. Your app’s navigation should be use.

With that said, if your app has got anything less than a four-star rating on the app market, then you need to determine what went wrong – update the app to get rid of any issues, and offer a updated version to the public as soon as you can.

2.     Implement Social Sharing

According to research by Forrester, social networking apps take up 14 percent of all the time people spend using apps in a day – accounting to more than 25 minutes. It is important to implement social sharing into your mobile app as it allows you to leverage the power of social sharing through a mobile device.

For instance, fitness apps almost always have a social sharing feature that enables users to share their progress with their friends. While it may not sound like a phenomenal feature, don’t forget the power of word of mouth marketing. A single share by a mobile app user can resonate with hundreds and thousands and even millions of other users.

The effectiveness of this approach can be understood by looking at Volkswagen’s SmileDrive app. Users can create shareable travelogues that contain drive details, including miles, minutes on road, and weather together with photos as well as status updates. By offering a social sharing feature, the app offers a memorable brand experience while generating additional downloads and enhancing brand exposure.

Volkswagen SmileDrive Social Sharing Feature

3.     Utilize Gamification and Promotions

Everyone loves promotions. People love the opportunity to score and to win prizes. Due to the fact that mobile is a dominant media, statistics show that mobile ads are 5 times more effective than online ads.

This means that you should develop mobile-specific promotions that are accessible only to mobile app users. This will instill in them a sense of exclusivity, encouraging participation.

Gamification is yet another way that can drive engagement. You can ask your users to post pictures of them interacting with your brand, or get friends involved for a reward.

4.     Track All Event-Based Interactions

All mobile app users complete a series of events or actions during each app session. These actions can be easily tracked using app analytics.

The data you gather will provide you valuable insights regarding the screens that your users find most engaging as well as those screens that ‘convert’ the most. The user actions are a reflection of their interests.

Information such as the time they spend on a particular page and the actions that they do on those pages can assist you in targeting the users even after they have concluded an action. This can be done through personalized & targeted in-app messages.

Take the example of a shopping cart: this is where a user can add a product and then complete a checkout later on. As soon as a user adds a particular product into the cart, you can learn what types of products are of interest to them, and then you can target them with personalized offers.

5.     Run Mobile Re-Engagement Campaigns

To prevent losing users after they download your app, you should plan mobile re-engagement campaigns as they provide an excellent way to get users to reengage with your brand.  They carry a strong performance record, including high return in investment (ROI) and click-through rates.

All major mobile app advertising platforms provide services for retargeting ads; these include Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and various other small ad platforms.

Make sure you dedicate some time and money to run re-engagement campaigns so you can remind your users about your app and increase user engagement.

Conclusion

Depending on the complexity of a mobile app, the average cost of development a branded app ranges between $50,000 to more than $1 million. This makes it necessary for businesses to make sure their app is generated the biggest possible ROI. But in order to get the right returns, everything boils down to user engagement –regardless of what your budget is.

The most expensive mobile app would not be worth it if it fails to keep users engaged. It doesn’t matter if you are currently planning a mobile app or have already launched one – make sure you have a strong engagement strategy in place to ensure maximum mobile app engagement rates.

The post 5 Essential Tips to Enhance Mobile App Engagement appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

The mobile application industry is on the move, making the whole world app-centric. As reported by eweek in a slideshow put together after gaining industry insights from Gartner and Forrester, 50% of the business processes worldwide will be mobile-enabled by the end of 2014 and there lies a huge opportunity for skilled mobile app developers to create a new enterprise user experience to capitalize on the exploding smartphone market. Hence, apart from website development, entrepreneurs are now focusing on creating user-centric mobile apps and streamlining their mobile app development operations to deliver native user experiences across all range of smartphones, tablets etc for Android, iOS, Windows and other popular mobile operating systems.

However, creating a mobile app that exceeds expectations in terms of user experience by delivering ultra modern, absolutely simpler & highly engaging UI across all mobile devices is a daunting task. So, in this post I’ve described 12 major mobile UI design patterns from industry popular apps that will not only address common UX flaws but also reduce your mobile app development time by 50%. Not just this, you will fetch 5 star ratings in the app marketplace and your users will end up writing reviews like- “What a great app looks good on my phone and works so fast!!” for your flawless mobile app.

Mobile App Navigation Pattern – Get rid of confusing mobile UIs & design glitches that frustrate your customers

Navigation is indeed the most important element of user experience that every UI developer must include in its checklist while creating mobile apps. This is because poor navigation frustrates customers to an extent that they often end up uninstalling the app & even posting negative reviews about your app on the App marketplace.

Below I’ve described 4 major mobile app navigation patterns that you can implement in your app for smoother and organized flow of information.

Primary Navigation Patterns – Springboard/Launchpad, List Menu, Tab menu and Gallery

The basic architecture of all the four primary navigation patterns is described below using an image.

Springboard/Launchpad Mobile UI Pattern

Springboard is an OS neutral pattern which means that this pattern will work equally well on all mobile operating systems. The pattern typically looks like a landing page of menu options organised in grid layouts (3X3, 2X3 etc) that directly take you to a specific point in the app

Examples of springboard mobile app usage pattern:

Facebook, Trulia, Linkedin and OviMaps

List Menu Mobile Design Pattern

Although list menus are similar in functionality to springboards, there are several variations of this pattern like Group lists and personalized menus that offer additional features like searching, browsing and filtering.

Examples of different patterns for list menus

Some of the best mobile app designs depicting list menus are Valspar Paint, Kayak, Amazon & Zoho CRM

Tab Navigation

Tab elements are not OS neutral and therefore app developers need to follow specific guidelines for each mobile OS. Hence if you choose tabs for navigation in your mobile app, you have to customize the tab orientation, location & design for different operating systems like Android, iOS etc.

Standard Tab Mobile App Navigation Patterns preferred for different mobile OS

Bottom tabs are mostly favoured for iOS, WebOS, and BlackBerry etc while Top tabs are favoured most by Android, Symbian and Windows

Here are examples from some of the best mobile app designs implementing bottom tabs pattern & top tabs pattern.

Mobile Design Pattern for Gallery

The Gallery pattern arranges or groups content fragments like individual articles, recipes, photos or products in carousels, grids or slideshows.

Example

Dwell mobile app uses side tabs to organize gallery content into manageable chunks giving us the best mobile design pattern inspiration.

Interaction Design Pattern – “Pull down to refresh”  for Content Updates & New Feeds in Social Networking Apps

Whenever we use social networking apps like Facebook, Twitter or Google, we’ve become used to swiping our thumbs from top to bottom so as to see new content in our feed. In other words, we “pull down to refresh” the feed. This is one of the UI patterns which are used to automatically pull the content and display new items on the top. Below you can see this pattern implemented by Twitter mobile app.

Mobile UI Patterns for Notifications

Notifications update users with new activities or actions. Here are some examples from some of the very popular social networks who’ve implemented the pattern for notifications in different ways –

• LinkedIn, the biggest networking app that connects professionals across the globe uses a numbered badge with a label to notify its connections about new updates.
• Twitter, the popular social media app notifies of new retweets, followers etc via placing a small dot for each new notification at the top of the timeline icon.
• Facebook Messenger shows notifications for new likes, comments, photo tags and friend requests.
• Quora, the popular Q & A networking website and Fab, both show new notifications in the superscript.

Allow people to easily enter data in your app – Compelling Design Patterns for Mobile Forms

If you’re going to create a survey based mobile app that seeks information from users, it is necessary to learn some design patterns to collect information without any hassle via Mobile Forms.

6 Basic Design Patterns for Mobile Forms

Sign In, Registration, Checkout, Calculate, Search Criteria, Multi-step, Long Form

Sign-in Form Patterns

While implementing sign-in patterns, you should use minimal amount of inputs that are extremely important like username, password, a “sign in” button, a “forgot username or password” button and an option to sign-in via Facebook Connect.

Example

Sign in Form Pattern implemented in a single page by Photobucket & Groupon mobile apps

Signup/Registration Forms

Just like sign-in forms, registration forms should also have less no. of fields. For this, you can consider eliminating the confirm email and confirm password fields here & instead asking users to cross-check the entered password by giving them an option to convert the starred string (****) into actual alphanumeric characters (e.g 34ab).

Checkout Forms

The checkout form in your mobile app should be very short and must represent a multi-step pattern that divides information into small sections using tabs or lists. Below is the checkout form design pattern implemented by Apple and Zappos to ensure extremely fast checkout.

Calculate Forms for Weight Tracking Apps, Tax Estimators, Project Cost Estimates and Loans etc

Using custom controls & layout, you can design calculate forms for cost estimation & tracking mobile apps. For Readability, follow basic conventions and allow people to enter inputs smoothly.

Examples

Tax Caster and Hypocalc mobile apps

Search Forms to “search” the database within the mobile app

Most of the mobile apps seek multiple information from users to filter and generate results. If you’re also creating a mobile app that needs to ask for multiple inputs from users, you can consider the following UI patterns used by Kayak and Open Table.

Multi-Step Patterns for Mobile UI

Usually, multi-step forms are found on the web with bulky wizards that ask for detailed information. But, when it comes to mobile UI, you need to follow specific UI patterns to show all the information for lengthier flows.  Below is an example of a long form from Chiptotle App that displays “continue” button at the bottom to signify users that the form filling process is yet to complete. Another example cited below is of Starbucks mobile app.

Mobile Design Pattern  for Long Forms

Long Forms are those forms that require endless scrolling. For such type of forms, you should clearly understand where to put the command and escape buttons and how to structure the layout so as to fit maximum content in a single page.

Example

Zappos and Skype iOS app using modal forms with some buttons in the title bar.

4. Optimize Searches in Mobile Apps – Mobile UI Patterns

To search information within the mobile apps, there are 4 basic patterns as follows

Design Patterns for Scoped Search

Scoped Search is a kind of mobile UI design pattern that allows one to as select criteria or filters before starting with their specific search. As soon as the “search button” is clicked after entering rest of the information, the app quickly displays the desired results.

Example

Pinterest search pattern

Search Design Patterns with Auto complete option

When it comes to mobile, we are used to seek information easily without much effort. While your customers start typing in the search box of your mobile app, it should display a set of possible results helping them to go forward with their activity. This is done by implementing a search pattern with Auto-complete functionality.

Example

Pinterest mobile app showing Auto complete options

Saved and Recent Search Patterns

This is an extremely important search pattern that should be implemented in every mobile app to allow users to select their previous searches without asking them to enter the information again. Below is an example from Pinterest mobile app that saves previously searched queries and displays them just below the search box.

Does your mobile app uses any of the amazing UI patterns listed above? Please tell us in comments below

The post 12 Amazing Mobile UI Design Patterns Unleashed from Industry Popular Apps appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

First comes the text messaging, then email and now social media platforms seem to take the control of the internet world due to which the social media marketing has completely revolutionized the concept of digital marketing in the past few years. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn have become popular names in the world of social networks for driving loyal customers and leads towards your website. Simultaneously, the growing popularity of mobile phones and tablets has increased the use of mobile internet extensively among the younger generation.

Hence, the mobile digital marketing and mobile SEO concept has also grown in significance as they offer an enhanced user engagement experience to the audience from anywhere and anytime. It means you cannot afford to overlook the increasing trend of mobile social campaigns because your audience’s spectrum has expanded from the desktop and laptop world to the mobile world. You have to concentrate on driving mobile traffic as well, which has given birth to “Mobile Social Campaigns”.

Is There Any Need for Creating Mobile Social Campaigns?

While social media sites have groomed their monetization schemes, social advertisement practices are also evolving at a faster rate. Facebook records one billion active mobile phone users daily, which has forced this social media giant to use its full potential for unlocking the overall revenue by the means of enhanced visibility via mobile news feeds, since everyone loves to spend their time on reading news feeds.

With people showing more inclination towards Smartphones, tablets, iPads, and iPhones, social media platforms are also modifying the way digital marketing is carried online. In such cases, it becomes mandatory for the social media marketers to devise effective mobile social campaigns for ensuring maximum revenue through both desktop traffic and mobile traffic.

As a social media marketer, you must consider every smartphone consumer as an opportunity for you because you never know when you can reach a potential buyer through the mobile medium. While best practices for mobile social campaigning might be unclear for many of us, but checking or evaluating if these campaigning is going as per our expectations is a bit complex process.

Meeting Expectations Via Mobile Social Media Campaigns

While measuring or evaluating the social media campaign is not an easy task, but we can take the help of Google Analytics, which give us key insights of our website’s traffic via different sources, including, desktop searches, direct traffic, social media traffic, and mobile traffic as well. Being a social media marketer, you can also use the data of Google Analytics for shaping effective mobile social media campaigns to impress and drive better mobile traffic on your website.

It is not always necessary that your mobile social media campaigns will always yield results as per your expectations. However, there are some important metrics, which will help you in evaluating your mobile traffic generated through social media campaigns. The Google Analytics metrics will help in proving why your mobile social media campaigns matters.

Check Your Mobile Engagement Using Google Analytics Metrics

You must have a clear picture of how mobile your customers are and then only, you will be able to develop an effective mobile social campaign for your website. Checking the percentage of your website visitors in desktop vs. mobile will help you in understanding, whether your mobile social media marketing efforts are meeting our expectations or not?

• For this you must specify your website data range at the top of Google Analytics dashboard.
• Select Overview option of the Mobile section under Audience in the left bard of Analytics dashboard.

You can see the breakdown of your website traffic including mobile traffic, desktop traffic and tablet traffic, as shown in the figure:

You can compare bounce rate, session durations for examining the insights of your target audience and if you find bounce rate is higher for your mobile audience, then you can recreate your mobile social media campaigns for ensuring improved lead generation through mobile traffic.

Using Web Analytics for Understanding Key Takeaways of Social Data

You can easily parse and evaluate the mobile and desktop social data with Web Analytics. You can also understand about the latest trends followed in social media campaigning process and so that you can push your own mobile social media campaigns for branding your business.

The key takeaways of social media platforms across both desktop and mobile social data are:

• Social media platforms help in offering enhanced customer retention rate, thus improving the chances for long term public relationship development, re-targeting and customer support.
• Social media sites offer ‘soft value’ to the digital marketers which include better user engagement experience, loyalty of customers and awareness of their business brands across different platforms.
• Twitter is one of the popular social channels that move the traffic on the top of the funnel, hence devising mobile social media campaigns taking care of the Twitter lead generation rate can help you significantly in maximizing the chances of revenue generation.
• Facebook videos are also becoming popular and most of the social media marketers are leveraging Facebook insights for measuring the performance. Employing this technique helps them in revising their mobile social media campaigning efforts for better outcomes.
• Here is an example of Adobe Creative Team, which has conducted an evaluation on one of its mobile social media campaign for driving leads for the CC product and the numbers display a major difference between the consumers rate engaged through social and non social.

Social media marketers can also use the website re-targeting technique in its mobile social media campaigning process for reaching across various social platforms. An example of this is the Facebook exchange (FBX), which can bring back the customers on your website via cookie-based re-targeting.

Best Examples of Successful Mobile Social Campaign Brands

1.Burger Chain of Milwaukee

This popular burger chain efficiently improved its weekly sales by 60% since it has successfully created 24K followers over its Twitter account where it displays channel inclined offers to its customers.

2. General Mills- Hello Cereal Lovers

Hello, Cereal Lovers is a popular social media campaign launched by General Motors in an effort to improve their lagging cereal sales this campaign covers a large social presence across different social platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

This campaign was successful in driving significant traffic through both desktop and mobile mediums to their websites, which eventually results in better leads and sales for them.

3. Breaking Bad –Name Lab

This critically acclaimed social media campaign over Facebook has not only dominated the airwaves, but it has resulted in huge success of a Facebook app, which has successfully garnered over 4.1 million impressions. The success of this campaign has proved that this type of user engagement works really well for ensuring success of your business over the internet.

Checking these experiences, you can also analyze your mobile social campaigns to see if the results are meeting your expectations or not. If your results are not up to the mark, you can rethink and recreate your social media campaigns to remain aligned with your other social media competitors. Mobile social media marketing has evolved recently and it is not going to see any type of downfall in the imminent years, hence, maximize your opportunities to gain maximum profit through effective mobile social campaigns.

The post Mobile Social Campaigns- Is Your Social Media Campaign Mobile Friendly? appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

I don’t know from where to start writing on this post but in the era of Smartphones, we cannot leave any domain untouched when it comes to Mobile SEO. I have already discussed about the importance of Mobile SEO and how they affect the revenue of our online business, but this time I am going to discuss about this new techie phrase “Mobile Email Optimization”, which is continuously growing in popularity just like fire spreads in forest.

Every day, we receive some promotional offers or discount offers through emails on our mobile phones but if they are hard to read or not so impressive, we just go on deleting those messages from our inbox. Do you have also deleted some promotional emails before? I don’t know about you but yes, I do this because when I have to put lots of strain on my eyes for reading those emails.

Therefore, I prefer deleting those poorly optimized mobile emails.  Here comes the vital role of mobile email optimization but before checking the statistics that claim why mobile email optimization is becoming a necessity, it is imperative to know if really these emails sound genuine to the mobile users or not.

Does the Promotional Emails Spam or Genuine?

It does not mean that the emails which are difficult to read or poorly optimized are spam. Instead, they are genuine but then also we prefer deleting them from our inbox just due to their poor optimization. You can check the polling reports of LifeHacker that displays the statistics of 49% of poll participants claiming that out of all emails received by them on their mobile phones, only 25 or fewer are spam messages.

It clearly depicts that there is a great chance of setting up your business brand among mobile phone users through your promotional emails but only at the cost of impressively optimized emails.

Your mobile readiness is another effective way of generating sales through your online existence. Here I am going to present three important cases and their supporting statistics to let you know why Mobile Email Optimization is becoming a necessity.

1. Mobile Email Usage Surging Amazingly

Are you surprised with this title? I don’t think so because you must be aware of the bursting fame of mobile device usage. Hence, it is important to check some researched data to know how mobile usage popularity is directly influencing the mobile email optimization.

• Research report of Gartner shows that 74% people buy Smartphones to check their emails from anywhere.
• Another report of Litmus suggests that majority of emails (nearly 51%) opens through mobile devices while 68% of Yahoo and Gmail accounts open via mobile phones.
• Radicati researches shows another striking claim that the worldwide mobile email users number will surge around 2.2 billion and currently 80% of email users are accessing their accounts through their mobile devices.

All above research reports shows that the number of mobile users accessing emails via mobile devices is surprisingly high and it will increase in imminent days. Therefore, if you really want to receive effective results through email marketing campaigns, then it is necessary to ensure that your promotional emails are efficient enough to be read by majority of mobile phone users.

2. Businesses Not Geared Up For Mobile Yet

In this cutthroat internet atmosphere, mobile phones have been continuously gaining significance among the users, but still there are majority of business, which are not ready to adopt any new mobile optimization strategy whether it is related with emails or the website design as a whole. However, the stats presented by some reputed websites will force to rethink over your decision if you are also not ready to adapt to this mobile shift.

• According to Equinux stats, only 11.84% of newsletter is responsively designed as per the layouts of mobile devices.
• Experian report tells another story according to which 24% of companies is not optimizing their emails effectively for their mobile audiences.
• eConsultancy reports that 39% of online businesses don’t have any strategy for their mobile email optimization while reports of knotice suggest that 95% of internet users are accessing their emails through their mobile devices and only a few internet users are using desktop for accessing  their emails.

In spite of the fact that mobile devices are taking desktops and laptops in terms of email accessing, most of the businesses are still not preparing to get maximum advantage from this shift. The reason may be the earlier adoption of technicalities and expertise but you should refrain yourself from getting adapted to changes. Move with the change and increases your opportunities of increasing leads and sales to your website through the optimized mobile emails.

Either you can remain an un-optimized sender or you can use this trending change to grab maximum profit through the mobile devices. You can take advantages of the tools available over Internet to track who is opening your emails and through which devices.

3. Mobile Emails Contribute to Revenue Generation

When Mobile SEO is gaining importance due to the increasing number of mobile phone users, undoubtedly mobile emails will contribute to business revenue if done accurately. However, we must peep through some key stats that help us in analyzing how mobile emails contributes in the revenue generation of your business.

• As per the research report presented by Adobe, 56% of internet users are likely to shop via a mobile app in the imminent years.
• Adobe has also conducted a research over the inclination of online shoppers and the report suggests that 69% of online shoppers are inclined to do shopping via company emails.
• Zoomerang has other interesting stats of customers who have joined the mobile phone loyalty programs and guess what the report says. 90% of customers claim to gain through these loyalty programs.
• Edialog shows another noticeable stats claiming that 27% special offers, 21% real-time tracking, and 21% vouchers are most favorable email types received on mobile devices.
• Stats presented by Responsys asserts nearly two third of mobile users subscribe with mobile marketing services have made final purchase due to relevant product campaign emails received on their mobile devices while sources from eMarketer states that mobile offers are redeemed 10 times faster as compared with the print offers.

Going through the statistics reported by the reputed websites, you must have understood how important mobile email optimization has become in past few months. The increasing fame of Smartphones and tablets has already made Mobile SEO an indispensable part of effective digital marketing services, but the inclination of mobile users towards emails shows that you must consider mobile email optimization if you are willing to achieve immense success and revenue through your online business. It is not concern if you are competing for the success of your ecommerce site or your B2B site, mobile friendly emails can always benefit you from all aspects.

The post Is Your Email Mobile Friendly? Get Ready For Mobile Email Optimization appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

With mobile internet usage facing an explosive growth in 2014, Mobile SEO has also moved from the category of “Someday” to “Priority”. With a sudden surge in the mobile internet uses, the competency for establishing your business existence among the mobile users have also grown extensively. If you do not own a mobile friendly website yet, it is the right time for you to invest in building a responsive website for promoting your business among the mobile phone users. However, owning a mobile site is not enough to lure the mobile users towards your services but you need to adopt unique and successful mobile SEO strategies for receiving fruitful results in this competitive era. A recent survey conducted on behalf of Google has revealed that 74 percent mobile phone users use search engines for their shopping purposes while 83 percent users show inclination to make a purchase in a day and 55 percent mobile users intent to make the purchase within an hour.  

Is this figure interesting? This figure highlights the growing importance of mobile marketing and they clearly signify that if your website is not customized as per the mobile phone screens, it will certainly hamper its search engine rankings and conversions.

A responsive web design corresponds to the technique that makes the website responds to the device, which is being used for viewing the web pages. It gives an optimal viewing experience to the mobile phone users. Responsive websites removes the pains of having different websites for desktop and mobile phones since a single website has the ability to optimize itself as per the varied screen sizes.

As the percentage of page views from mobile devices has boosted notably in past few months, it is very important to implement mobile SEO strategies successfully on your website to improve your business productivity.

It is equally significant to note that no mobile SEO techniques will do a miracle for escalating your business unless you own a responsive web design. We must have to find out the essential ways that guarantees us with mobile SEO success in 2014.

However, do you know why the mobile phone searches have grown extensively in past few months? It is because most people often access their social networks through mobile technology and hence, optimizing your social media existence will give a positive impact on your business conversions. A social presence of your business will add to your site’s implication and visibility.

Explore Importance of Mobile SEO

Do you ever try to notice the reason that encouraged the need of optimizing the website as per mobile searches? The answer lies with Google, whose search engines is completely inspired by mobile design. When we search on desktop version of Google, it shows eight paid ads above the fold and it still has space for a map and three organic searches accompanied by a couple of local packs but in the mobile version of Google, the case is completely different.

It shows only two paid ads above the fold with only one organic search that pops over the mobile screen. This single organic search has the benefit of being the only organic search on the page thus grabbing attention of users considerably.

Unquestionably, Google has started favoring responsive websites that are designed to lodge both mobile search and viewing. This is why mobile SEO has become mandatory for online businesses if they really want to enjoy the taste of success in this competitive marketplace. Google is consistently attempting for improving mobile user experience. Therefore, following the mobile strategies that fall in alignment with this goal will surely impart success to the website owners.

Role of Mobile SEO in Improving Business ROI

Every business tries to get its Return on Investment (ROI) in the shortest period while some businesses want a significant increase in their ROI. With the current trend of mobile phones and tablets, mobile SEO is also gaining its importance. Meanwhile, it is equally important to analyze how mobile SEO helps in improving business ROI.

For a successful online business, monitoring Google actions is very essential and with the launch of the design improvements in its search engine, Google has shown a greater inclination towards mobile and tablet users. An annual state of report was launched recently, which states that a great deal of Google searches are performed by mobile users and the adoption rate of smartphones and tablets are increasing considerably.

The global page views done from mobile phones between May 2013 and May 2014 are illustrated as follows:

 By carefully analyzing the graph, you can interpret how the global page views from mobile phones have surged extensively in the year 2014. Moreover, mobile phone users are social in nature and they like to keep posting their views, thoughts and pictures on social media sites, which have ultimately affected their inclination towards mobile sites as well.

Investing on developing RWD sites will eventually lead to an improvement in business ROI because the trend of using net through mobile phones tends to increase in the imminent years. The best examples of business with improved ROI are eCommerce websites.

The majority of mobile phone and tablet users searches for making a purchase through an online shopping portal. Earlier also, we have discussed the figure stating that 55 percent of mobile users have inclination for making a purchase within an hour while 83 percent have inclination to make a purchase within a day.

If you are eager how Mobile SEO directly affects the business ROI of an eCommerce website, we can compare the survey graphs of visitation rate of three famous online retailers, (Amazon, Walmart and Target) through both desktop and mobile devices. We have taken the average of last six months that clearly shows that mobile has eventually higher visitation rate than desktop.

The survey graph also reveals that the visitation rate of all these three retailers are averagely double that of the desktop which is why retailers as well as other business are focusing more on improving the key components of effective mobile ecommerce websites and promoting the sites via mobile seo. If your site is ranking well on Google’s mobile version of search engine, then it will positively influence the ROI of your business. Consumers are visiting the websites through their mobile devices at a rate double than desktop and if your site is not mobile friendly, then you might lose a significant percentage of your valuable customers including those who are searching for your store information as well as those who are making purchases from your store.

Impact of Mobile SEO on Local Businesses

Whenever the word local comes in our mind, the most common thought that strikes our mind is “Something or someplace nearby”. Now, let us come to the main question that pops up in our mind by reading the title. How Mobile SEO influences the local businesses? Does it have positive influence? I will explain it to you with proper examples.

The latest keyword research conducted by Bryson Meuner at Resolution Media in the 1^st quarter of 2013 shows that majority of the searches performed for local ATM machines (99%), bars (97%), and restaurants (88%) are performed through mobile phones and tablets. The research was conducted using the keyword tool of Google.

From the graph, it clearly states how an effective Mobile SEO strategy will help your business to locate easily by the mobile users thus positively influencing your business revenue.

Another survey done by Our Mobile Planet has revealed that 94 percent of mobile phone users have performed searches for getting local information and around 84 percent has taken action as well. BIA/Kelsey has also done forecast that the volume of mobile searches will see a massive growth in the upcoming years and Google itself has predicted that percentage of mobile searches will surpass desktop searches by the end of the year 2014. You can assume these forecasts as self-prophecies because if you have also searched anything on Google through a mobile device, you must have noticed that the location has a significant impact on your searches. Hence, it is mandatory that businesses capitalize this trend. Let us assume that you own a restaurant in your locality, and someone has searches through his or her mobile device about the restaurants in your locality. Now, if you have use the Mobile SEO strategies accurately for you website, then surely your website will be displayed in the  top list of organic  searches and the user will definitely visit your website to go through your restaurant menu. It will not only help in increasing traffic over your website but will also help in improving conversions.

From all these examples, you can easily understand how an effective Mobile SEO strategy will help your business to become popular and known among the mobile phone users. If you have not applied any of the Mobile SEO strategies yet on your website, the time has come when you think about this sincerely.

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The release of the iPhone 5 triggered an upsurge in the market share of iOS and a renewed interest in the App Store. iPhone and iPad users are definitely “apps hungry” as proven by record-breaking number of downloads the App Store registered in 2012.

However, despite this appetite, approximately 60% of the more than 700,000 apps in the App Store have never been downloaded, according to the analytical company Adeven. As such, marketers are focusing their attention to App Store optimization and when you talk of this practice, it is inevitable that you ponder on ways to improve mobile application rating. You see, mobile app consumption is like food – no one would be enticed to download your app if users are giving you “unpalatable reviews.”

Here are a few things you can do to garner more positive and stellar user rating.

Make Sure You Define a Support Address

An old customer service mantra dictates that dissatisfied customers will only talk in public if they can’t talk to you. Coincidentally (or not), the app support button is located beside the “Write a Review” button in the App Store Reviews Tab. So, if you didn’t set a proper support address in iTunes where users can get in touch with you, it would be a convenient alternative to just take the discussion to the public space. You wouldn’t want this to happen.

Engage Trial and Catalyze Feedback

In traditional product development, before a company launches a new product, they ask a group of people to test it out and provide honest feedback. You can use the same principle to make sure that your app is “download-worthy.” You can identify certain individuals that you can ask to put your app to the test and provide no holds barred rating. You can provide them with a promo code to encourage trial and stimulate feedback. Though they have to wait a few days to be able to rate your app in compliance with Apple’s guidelines.

Provide Your Contact Info Across All Touch Points

Incorporate your contact details in your app description including your email address as well as your Facebook details and Twitter information. If you don’t have a website or a landing page dedicate for app support, you better create one as this is an important component in App Store optimization. Once you have this website in place, you can add a Review Bar to easily rate your app. If the rating a user gives is 4 and above, he will be asked to leave a review. If it’s three and below, he will be encouraged to get in touch with you.

Take Advantage of Feedback Software Development Kits (SDKs)

SDKs are great tools for you to improve mobile application rating. Some notable SDKs include AppBooster (Appsfire) which allows users to give you feedback via a notification box and if the feedback is positive, AppBooster will automatically ask that particular user to leave a review in the App Store. Another great SDK is Apptentive. What is awesome about this SDK is it does not only make it convenient for users to give feedback, rating and review, it also allows you to reach out to them via customized surveys, reminders and polls.

You Got Your Feedback, Now What?

App Store optimization does not stop with getting feedback or rating. The more pertinent question is: how are you going to mine these data for insights that will help you either maintain or further improve your app or fix problems? While the ratings and reviews are what users see, it’s what you do behind the scenes that will ultimately determine your success in the App Store.

To improve mobile application rating, listen, empathize and take action.

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According to the research firm Gartner, more than 185 billion applications would have been downloaded when 2014 comes to a close. This means that if you’re currently developing mobile applications – whether as a tool to build your brand equity or as a source of revenue – there is a sizeable market waiting for you. This also means that there is a shift in focus from developing the best app to making sure that your app appears in app store searches.

Sounds familiar? Similar to the emergence of SEO in the mid-1990s, mobile store optimization is rising fast as a mobile marketing practice. With approximately 700,000 apps available in Google Play and the same number of apps available in Apple App Store, these are saturated markets where apps can easily sink into the background and go unnoticed.

App store optimization can be considered a mobile marketing practice in its infancy stage. Here are a few basic guidelines that can help you ensure that your app gets seen and downloaded by the relevant audience.

What’s in a Name?

There are major factors that influence mobile app optimization. These are textual factors, popularity factors and rating factors. How you name or label your app is the first textual factor you need to consider. You app’s name is the primary measure of relevance app stores use when someone searches for an app in either Google Play or Apple’s App Store.

While a catchy name is a must, your app’s name should also include a phrase that describes its purpose. For example, “Calorie Buster: Free Calorie Counter for Weight Loss.” There are also instances wherein apps are listed alphabetically so you would want to begin with the letter “A” when thinking of a name for your app.

The Name of the App Publisher

Aside from the name of the app itself, the name of the app publisher equally plays an important role in terms of ranking. It is highly encouraged that you include keywords or search terms you would want your app to rank high for in your publisher name. It’s also a current best practice to publish your apps under several subdivisions so you can include more keywords.

Great Descriptions to Trigger Downloads

The same SEO principle that good meta descriptions increase click through rate applies in app store optimization. Beyond a good textual description, include visually appealing icons, captivating screenshots and even instructional videos to encourage downloads.

The Number of People Who Installed Your App To-date

Why do you want to increase downloads? Next to textual factors, the next app ranking criteria are measure of popularity. The number of individuals who have downloaded your app so far is a key indication of authority, credibility and trust and these are primary consideration in app store ranking.

Peaks in the Number of Downloads

Ranking high in Google Play and Apple App Store is also dependent on the spike trends in the number of downloads that your app gets. If you get significant number of downloads within a relatively short period of time, you will rank well in both categorized and general lists, as well as for keywords that are indicated in your app description. However, this aspect in your mobile store optimization does not mean you can just launch, get good download numbers and leave. There are many platforms that look into historical data such as week on week growth percentage.

Wallflower and Uninstalled Apps

Another reason why you just can launch and leave is the fact that Google Play Store and Apple App Store collate data on the number of people that uninstalled your app and those who are not really using it. You can perform well in app store rankings today, but you can lose this rapidly if these app markets detect a huge increase in uninstallation.

What Users Think About Your App Matters

Lastly, you should pay attention to how users are rating and reviewing your app. Different app markets use the keywords in reviews to rank mobile applications in varying degrees, but what’s important is that reviews play a crucial role in terms of influencing users to install your app. Ratings are also important as highly rated apps are usually ranked higher than poorly rated ones.

Again, these are just basic app store optimization guidelines. As mobile app marketing becomes more complicated and sophisticated, so will the optimization practices. So, keep an eye out for these developments and always be prepared to cope with the change.

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Whether you’re managing 100 employees or you just want to manage your daily activities, you can often find it hard to do if you’re not writing things down. Thankfully for smartphones, completing tasks throughout the day is easier than ever! If you own an iPhone and you’re looking for a way to easily manage your tasks, here are four tasks you may want to keep in mind the next time you turn on your phone:

#1 Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a simple and easy-to-use app when you want to take care of daily activities and tasks. One of the greatest parts of this app is that you’re able to share your tasks with others. Set up email reminders, tasking, add notes, set priorities and even choose different backgrounds. Another cool thing is that you can reward yourself or others badges when a task is completed. With those badges, it’s up to you on what you want to do.

#2 TaskThis

Newly released, the TaskThis app is a great app that can manage all of your tasks in a very simply way. Able to create unlimited projects, you can add events, shopping lists, categories and even add tags to your tasks. So if you have to get the groceries for the day, you can add the “personal” tag to it so that you don’t get confused with your business tasks. If you’re looking for a task manager that is very advanced, TaskThis allows you to import birthdays, define priorities, assign tasks, lock tasks and synced items online.

#3 Errands

What you’re going to find is that most to-do apps on the market just don’t get the job done. Some are clunky and ask for money while others just have way too many options that you’re not going to use. This is isn’t the case for the Errands app. With this app, you can create separate folders, schedule daily tasks, write notes and even add badges. With many multiple views, you can define priorities, change views and even add photos to each one of your tasks. Free to download, this is an awesome app to consider for both personal and business use.

#4 Easy Note

If you’re looking for an app that is very simple, Easy Note may be the one to download. Free to use, Easy Note has a clutter-free design that is ideal for those that just want to add simple tasks throughout the day. So if you have to remind yourself to pay the rent, buy groceries or write a note, this is geared toward those who need to have personal task reminders.

Why You Need a Task Manager

If you’re looking at these apps and you’re wondering, “So what?” you have to realize that these task mangers can make life so much easier. If you don’t believe me, here’s why you should download one of the apps mentioned above.

Reminders – There are going to be times when you forget about something. What happens if you have a project due this Friday but you thought it was Monday? This could potentially put your clients or job in danger.

Alerts – Let’s say that you need to be reminded of an upcoming interview or meeting. If this meeting is 20 days away, you’re probably not going to remember it, right? With this task manager, not only is it going to remind you on the phone, it can remind you via text messaging, the phone and email.

Simplify – Task managers really do make life a lot easier. You just have to think of these of these task managers as a free assistant. Just pop in what you want to remember and it does the rest. If you don’t have a task manager on your phone, highly consider downloading one today!

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A mobile application is commonly known as mobile app. A mobile app is a software program designed to work on mobile devices, smartphones, and other handheld devices to help the user to do particular task.

Generally, mobile apps are used for overall productivity and retrieving information which includes e-mail, contacts, calendar, and weather information etc. For example with the use of the messaging app you can send and receive e-mail, MMS and much more.
The proprietor of an operating system for a particular mobile will design, develop and distribute the mobile applications through their mobile application distribution stores for example; App Store is the mobile app store of Apple Inc.,

There are several mobile apps available in the market, some apps are paid while the other apps are free to use. To choose your mobile business app, it entirely depends on your business requirement and personal need. The mobile apps can also be customised according to your business requirements

The common mobile apps are Documents-to-Go and Quick Office which are used for creating documents, spread sheets, maintaining databases, giving presentations, sending and receiving mails etc. to improve the productivity of the business.

The 10 great mobile apps useful for business are:

Evernote:

Evernote is one of the mobile apps particularly used as a reminder tool. This app is used to remember everything in your daily life. Evernote allows the users to write & store notes, organise the documents, set reminders, share documents, photos etc.

FormMobi

This app is used to create forms to build, personalise, collect data, pictures, audio etc. and distribute data. FormMobi app is also known as a Digital Clipboard.

Google Drive

Google Drive app is developed based on the Google Docs; it is used for creating and sharing the documents, spredsheets, and presentations from any of the apps through Google Drive with 5 GB of free storage. Google Drive App is similar to the concept of cloud computing.

Tripit

Tripit mobile app helps the users to keep the tracking of business travellers to maintain the trip arrangement in a unified location. It collects the information regarding the directions, maps and weather forecast to facilitate the travellers.

Bump

Bump is one of the networking apps which has revolutionised in the field of business networking. It will help the users to share contact information, files, photos etc. by placing two smart mobile phones together. This mobile app is very convenient for sharing files, photos, and videos instantly.

Expensfy

This App will synchronise with debit cards or credit cards to track your purchases in real-time, converts it into electronic bills or receipts, scans hard-copy receipts or bills using iPhone camera and finally converts it into a PDF file to track your financial status on all purchases you made.

LocalVox

LocalVox is an online marketing app which will help to build and promote your business online. This mobile app helps to increase your online business presence on the web through various channels online like websites, social networking sites, local directories and e-mail marketing to promote offers and discounts, updates regularly in order to retain old customers and attract new customers.

InDinero:

InDinero is a financial mobile application for managing your money online. This app is basically used to maintain day-to-day business transactions, synchronises your bank account with credit cards for financial forecasts and also to track the cash flow.

Square

Square mobile app is used for accepting credit card payments by charging you 2.75% per swipe. It’s a successful mobile app for small businesses for accepting payments through credit cards.

Asana

This app was developed to manage projects and team work effectively. It enhances the productivity of a business through instant group communication and collaboration.

A few Mobile Apps are paid business applications, if you want to promote your business through the paid mobile apps, but at the same time if you do not have sufficient money, then you can opt for payday loans, it is a short-term loan which can be approved quickly and hassle free to keep away your financial worries.

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