Unique visitors ‘most wanted’ mobile metric

Posted on 22 / 07 / 08 by Sarah Keefe
Bango pushes mobile analytics to a new level providing a real picture

Bango pushes mobile analytics to a new level providing a real picture

When we conducted our survey among mobile businesses to find out what their ‘most wanted’ stat was for their mobile website, we were surprised that the mobile component of web metrics was considered less important than knowing the unique visitor count. But should we have been surprised?

Afterall, knowing exactly how many people visited your mobile site has got to be pretty important. Without this you don’t know the real value of your mobile business. The problem is measuring unique visitors rather than just visits is very hard on mobile and we found that folks were having to guess, patching together information from hosting companies and advertising partners.

Here’s what 550 businesses said in answer to the question: “Which of the following mobile web metrics are important to you?”

• The daily/weekly/monthly number of unique visitors to your mobile website – 80%
• Conversion rates/effectiveness of mobile marketing – 71%
• New/repeat visitors – 58%
• Information about the handsets your visitors use – 54%
• Location – 50%
• The mobile networks used by visitors to your mobile website – 41%

The way that Bango solves this problem – how many unique visitors do I have? – is covered in our new release: “Bango first to offer both Site and Campaign mobile analytics” at http://news.bango.com.

We gave away 5 Flip video cameras to say thank you for people completing our survey.  The winners were: Bernie, USA; Derek, UK; Benoit, USA; Javier, Spain; and Casey, Canada.

Filed under: Mobile advertising, Mobile analytics, mobile marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Next Gen iPhone – where next for Apple?

Posted on 14 / 07 / 08 by Andy Bovingdon

The latest shiny new iPhone with its super fast 3G web browsing is here and selling out fast – but that may in part be due to low initial stocks in the stores as well as consumer demand. The launch was not smooth with problems in the USA with AT&T activation server crashes and with O2 in the UK causing Gizmodo to call the event “iPocalypse”. But, dispite the problems, Apple are already claiming to have sold 1 million iPhones over Friday, Saturday and Sunday – higher than expected and over 7 days less than the first release – but then they had 28 operators in 22 countries this time.
iPhone 3G

iPhone 3G

Time will tell if this new model, with its new features and lower prices will deliver the success that Apple initially planned. Like many other people this weekend, I found myself testing out the latest iPhone features in the local store… The prospect of super-fast browsing on a large mult-touch screen and the promise of upcoming TomTom navigation using the new GPS capabilities is very tempting – probably a good job they had none in stock…

So is that it for Apple? Do they have the perfect phone? Well, of course not – there are plenty of niggles and many things they should be looking at for their seemingly annual phone release, especially with new versions of Microsoft Mobile and the new Google Android looming on the horizon. The new App Store is a great start and will give customers a steady fix of new iPhone goodness until the next big release. It opens the opportunities for third parties to start filling the gaps by adding more value (hurry up TomTom).

Last year I was predicting that Santa Jobs would deliver GPS and 3G, but like many others I was also asking for a decent camera. This seems to be the most obvious omission from the new device, especially since we are seeing 5 megapixels fast becoming the standard. We are even seeing a few 8 megapixel super-shooters and even entry level phones are coming with 3.2 megapixels these days. This makes the 2 measlypixel Apple a clear year out of date right from the start. I wouldn’t mind the low pixel count if the quality was good, but so far many sites are reporting low quality too compared with other mass market handsets. So prediction number 1 would be that 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash – perhaps with face recognition for exposure and focus.

A decent camera does not only improve the photo capabilities it should also add video. In this modern world of YouTube and video blogging, the lack of decent video capabilities on the iPhone comes as a slight surprise – especially since it is so good at playing back stored videos. So prediction number 2 would be VGA video recording and playback with the ability to post directly to friends and share online via YouTube.

Prediction number 3 would be gestures – flipping pages by waving your hand in front of the screen or waking up the device by giving it a good shake. Microsoft is already hotly tipped to be delivering this for Windows Mobile 7, see what Nathan Weinberg says on his InsideMicrosoft blog. Even the latest Nokia S60 is getting in on the act with the really nice ability to turn the device over to silence it.

My final prediction concerns that lovely screen – it’s actually no longer the best screen on the block. We already have a glorious VGA screen in the new HTC Diamond Touch (http://www.htc.com/www/default.aspx) and that will soon be surpassed by a new Wide VGA screen on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 – surely that would be an easy fit.

Whatever Apple do, they are already igniting the market, causing all the major players to introduce new touch phones and user interface designs… The next big handset release will probably be Android – I’m looking forward to see more great ideas from Google – the internet leaders. It will be interesting to see how sales for Apple continue to grow and how many iPhone users we see appearing in Bango Analytics or on Bango Live – I’ll be sure to report back soon. As to whether I’ll buy one…

Filed under: Cool mobile stuff, Mobile analytics, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How best to track mobile sites and marketing campaigns

Posted on 9 / 07 / 08 by Andy Bovingdon

Mobile web analytics is all about the quality and accuracy of the information – being able to make the best decisions based on your unique visitors and their interactions with your mobile website and mobile marketing campaigns. It is important to use the right tools in the right places to collect the best visitor information in each circumstance. Bango provides a range of data collection technologies to ensure the best quality of information can always be collected. To further improve this Bango is introducing a new data capture technology – Page Tracking. This sits alongside and compliments our existing Campaign Tracking technology – which is already being used to measure the success of many mobile marketing campaigns.

It is important to use both Page Tracking and Campaign Tracking to get the best picture of your visitors and their actions. Get accurate mobile analytics from Bango

Page Tracking identifies and records each unique visitor that navigates your site. All you need to do is add a very simple line of HTML code to each page you wish to track, especially landing pages, home pages and goals, such as download pages and forms. Page tracking records page views using a familiar image tag technology that has been enhanced with Bango unique user identification capabilities.

Campaign Tracking gives you the most accurate record of consumers interacting with your banner ads, search terms and other mobile marketing campaigns. You simply register your landing page and we give you tracking URLs to use in your campaign. Campaign tracking uses URL redirection, the same approach used by many ad-tracking companies. It uses the same visitor fingerprinting algorithm to identify unique visitors and can additionally pass back the user identification, country, operator and handset to your landing page, allowing the site to be personalized for each unique visitor.

Where Page Tracking shows visitors that have viewed a page, Campaign Tracking records an individuals decision to click on a link you control – ahead of a page being displayed. Combining both mechanisms gives you the ability to compare clicks from your ads with people separately browsing to the same landing page. Interestingly, our tracking links can be used to monitor people clicking links to leaving your site, navigating to any third party site you don’t own – this could be partner sites, forums and blogs.

Campaign tracking is also used to identify and record people interacting with your text campaigns (Txt Trigger) or from desktop web promotions from your PC website (Web Trigger) or from forums, blogs and social sites (Bango Button).

Page Tracking will be launced in Version 3 of Bango Analytics which is due later this month. Contact us if you would like to learn more about Page Tracking (or get a sneak peak).

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Filed under: Business, Mobile analytics, Mobile web, Off portal | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

It’s great to see top brands embracing mobile!

Posted on 27 / 06 / 08 by Beccy Asplin

The presentation by AKQA Digital at this week’s Online Marketing & Media Show clearly demonstrated the exciting ways top brands are engaging with mobile.  It’s really great to see top brands embracing mobile!

Nike PhotoiD mobile marketing campaign in action

In particular, Dan Rosen, Managing Director of AKQA Digital talked about one of the biggest global sports brands Nike launching their Nike PhotoiD, an innovative Pan-European mobile marketing campaign to promote their 1985 Dunk high-top basketball trainers and at the same time encouraging mobile users to interact with their surroundings.

The campaign enables Nike fans to create their own trainers based on colorful pictures they take on their camera phone.  Nike fans send the picture to a shortcode and receive a picture of the 1985 Dunk high-top basketball trainers in the two colors best fitting the picture they sent.  Along with the image of their customized trainer which they can save as wallpaper, they are given a unique code to enter online if they wish to purchase the trainers.  More about this in The Guardian (AKQA by the way was responsible for the creative for this great campaign).

Smirnoff is another major brand with a mobile twist.  Their mobile bar tender smirnoff.mobi site gives mobile users a comprehensive list of cocktails to easily reference and request when they are on an evening out and when looking for  the nearest bar serving Smirnoff Vodka, maps are close at hand.

The latest brand to jump on the bandwagon is Unilever with Pot Noodle who launched their mobile site earlier this week.  The Pot Noodle site potnoodle.mobi contains a whole host of free downloadable funny content including videos and ringtones.  This kind of mobile extension enables brands to effectively increase its engagement with consumers and increase reach by creating viral spread.

Mobile is personal and with a recent stat showing that 91% of mobile users are never more than 1 meter away from their mobile phone – brands have the most targeted platform for their marketing.

We’ll keep you up-to-date as more exciting mobile campaigns go live.

Filed under: Cool mobile stuff, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Could promoting a .mobi confuse consumers?

Posted on 11 / 06 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

The survey today from dotMobi and AKQA Mobile showing a strong consumer demand for services on the mobile web raises an important question over what web address you put on consumer facing promotions.  

I agree that promoting a .mobi domain makes it crystal clear to the consumer that the site is optimized for mobile – something that’s essential to avoiding a bad mobile web experience for the user.  But if over 50% of respondents don’t realize mobile-ready websites exist (according to the survey), is promoting a .mobi going to confuse them even more?
 
The question is with limited space on TV or print ads, would you promote both your .com address and your .mobi alongside other details such as a phone number for people to call?  In an ideal world, your .com site would detect mobile users and present the mobile optimized website.  But we don’t live in an ideal world so brands must grapple with what makes most sense for the consumer.  AKQA has done a great job in bringing mobile into the mainstream marketing plans of its clients and recommend their clients promote the .mobi.  News International sites – The Times and The Sun - also promote the .mobi address. 

But we could start to see a US/Europe divide with the US opting for the m.brandname.com convention and Europe going for brandname.mobi.  Given the option of entering m.thesun.co.uk or thesun.mobi into their phone browser, you can see why .mobi makes practical sense.  

It\'s easier to type in thesun.mobi
 

Filed under: Mobile web | Leave a Comment »

How mobile takes Long Tail granularity to the next step

Posted on 21 / 05 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

Chris Anderson talking at Media Bistro Circus on May 20, 2008The excellent talk at yesterday’s MediaBistro Circus in New York city by Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame made me think about how marketing is changing.  Once TV and radio was the main channel to push out your messages – now we can deliver more focused marketing in the online world.  Mobile is taking this one step closer to real people who could be looking for your product.

In his talk, Chris presented research by PubMatic that showed niche online sites, here social networking sites, command higher ad CPMs than generic sites such as MySpace or Facebook.  That’s because the niche sites have more value to advertisers - they can match their message onto the right psychographic  reflected by the viewers of these niche sites.

In mobile, we can take the granularity of the online world one step further.  Because mobile captures so much more detail about the user, we can fine tune the messaging even more.  For the first time on mobile, we can uniquely identify individual users as they navigate through a site.  We can build up a picture of their interests, their buying behavior and what influences them.  This picture can take time to build but match this with mobile specific data such as the user’s country, network (often demographic differences between them) and handset (think what that says about the user) and you have a winning combination. 

What’s your view on mobile marketing?  Do you think that mobile offers an exciting world of possibilities?

Filed under: Mobile advertising, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Bango.com website update

Posted on 6 / 05 / 08 by rayand

We just uploaded a fresh new bango.com website.

- redesigned (after a lot of AB testing) to help people become Bango users / customers more easily.

- a design that can easily be expanded to integrate with Blogs and feeds.

- new investor relations blog with email and RSS feeds

- new page architecture to allow faster responses and easier scalability in the future

Comments please to http://forums.bango.net or support@bango.com

Filed under: Mobile web | Leave a Comment »

Mobile is different but people want a unified world

Posted on 30 / 04 / 08 by Adam

Mobile Monday New YorkThis week’s Mobile Monday gathering in New York on April 28, 2008 on the topic of Social Search and Mobile Analytics gave some interesting insights on what’s shaping the mobile web and what’s important for businesses:

1. Design for the mobile web – sites designed specifically for mobile web are so much better even on handsets like the iPhone.  There was a debate whether Sprint’s new transcoding would have a positive effect on user experience and it was too early to say.

2. Mobile search needs to be different from desktop search.  Steve Ives at Taptu gave an illustration about Google using linking to other sites as value in search relevance.  This isn’t really applicable in mobile search because mobile sites don’t link to each other as frequently as on the desktop web.

3. Existing desktop analytics don’t work on mobile as JavaScript isn’t supported well.  Adding Google analytics code to a mobile website creates huge problems for people trying to download a mobile web page as it adds such a heavy piece of code.

4. Businesses want a unified world.  Dan Mason from ESPN said he needs a single analytics tool for both desktop and mobile and how important it was for them to be able to get information about handsets and carriers but also to be able to uniquely identify users.

5. To uniquely identify users you need a persistent user ID.  I said that Bango was the only company to provide a persistent user ID, other analytics vendors discard the cookie based ID after 30 days but it’s important to offer enhanced personalize the user experience this isn’t discarded.

6. Long tail in mobile search is here.  Bryson Meunier asked for examples of long tail search in mobile and I said that an excellent example of it happening is bango.com/live, where we see lots of customers’ sites being viewed by users in other countries so they must have been found in mobile search.

Filed under: Mobile analytics, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

So what did the folks with strange hair think of mobile?

Posted on 17 / 04 / 08 by Andy Bovingdon

ad:tech is the place where all the trendy leaders in the online advertising business go to discuss and display their latest technologies and services – where clicks and page views are discussed alongside web search and ad network aggregation. For someone more familiar with the mobile world of CTIA, it’s a show full of strange hair, designer shoes and odd-shaped spectacles… 
 
tech San FranciscoBut at this show there is something very new in the air – the Mobile Web. Sure there are a few text message marketing companies but the real story is the good old internet on all those mobile phones – everyone knows it’s the new marketing revolution and wanted to know more – even those without a shiny new iPhone or 8Gig N95 know it’s the future. Bango, along with other leading mobile web companies like iLoop and NetBiscuits are showing the benefits of mobile in the first ever Mobile Marketing Pavilion.
 
Many people I spoke with had done their homework and knew about mobile but most did not realise the full extent of the opportunity or the maturity of the market. The biggest absense in the show were the big marketing agencies and the new mobile ad companies – both I’m sure would have found great benefits in attending.
 
So was it worth it? You bet, there was never a quiet moment and we had interesting people to speak with right up to the last second. Mobile certainly made an impact at this show and is most definitely here to stay. We look forward to the New York and London ad:tech shows.

Filed under: Mobile web, online advertising | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Of course the mobile web’s not dead!

Posted on 16 / 04 / 08 by Sarah Keefe

I don’t know whether you have had as much fun as we have reading the various blogs responding to story that Russell Beattie Throws In The Towel On Mowser; And Doesn’t Believe In The Mobile Web Anymore (here in MocoNews).  Of course, the mobile web is not dead.   All you have to do is take a look at our live ticker of people accessing mobile websites and paying for services through the Bango platform to see it’s alive and kicking. 

And is very much a global phenomenon – as we reported earlier this year, 54% of mobile browsing is from outside of the US and Europe.  India, South Africa and Indonesia sit alongside the UK and the US in our mobile web browsing top 5.  Take a look at the mobile web from the point of view of people in these countries and you see that mobile phones are the only way they can access the internet.  Why?  Because the majority of people in these countries don’t have a PC – and why should they?

Also, let’s not get too hung up on the iPhone and how it’s changing the world.  Yes, it’s encouraging people to surf the web on their phone but the penetration of the iPhone in the mobile phone market is still tiny and in many ways it’s a closed system.  Also although most business executives own a SmartPhone so they have access to email and voice on the go, this doesn’t reflect the vast majority of mobile phone users and what they want to do.  In our view, most mobile web surfers are using their mobile to to get a range of stuff – updated sports scores, listen to music, view traffic alerts and be entertained (yes and that does mean adult content for some). 

It’s everyday people accessing everyday stuff that’s feeding the mobile web.  

Filed under: Business, Mobile web | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

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