mobile | Internet Marketing Blog

Branch on the go: three key lessons from innovators in the tablet banking market

Banking is boring. We all know this as one of life’s truisms. It is also an activity you usually squeeze in at lunch time with a visit to a branch, or more recently conducted surreptitiously at work on your PC.

Now the arrival of the iPad has helped move banking transactions from a work based and PC-centric activity, to a “bank on the go” and now, more recently, “a branch on the go”, experience.

This is good news for banking and banks generally.

In what for most people has at best been a neutral experience and often less than that, the arrival of the tablet has revived some of the missing components of a pleasant banking experience.

by Paul Merry 04 April 2013 11:12am 0 comments

B2B mobile: key takeaways from Digital Cream London

Whilst some consumer sectors, such as retail, are forging ahead in the mobile channel, it sometimes feels as if B2B is lagging behind.

It’s not surprising though. While retailers can use m-commerce or drive purchases through discounts or incentives, the opportunities and the ROI in mobile B2B seem less obvious.

Formation CEO and Econsultancy trainer Mark Brill chaired Mobile B2B roundtable at Econsultancy’s Digital Cream Event.

Here are his thoughts on the day's discussions...

by Graham Charlton 03 April 2013 11:03am 0 comments

The death of commerce?

Retail is undergoing a major shift. The long predicted move from high street to online is reaching what appears to be an endgame with major names disappearing from physical retail at an alarming pace.

Jessops, Comet, Blockbuster and HMV weren’t isolated examples of poorly run companies, they were the result of tectonic shift in the way that everyone shops.

by Ian McCaig 02 April 2013 09:27am 2 comments

QR codes: the good, the bad and the ugly

Over the past couple of years, QR codes have cropped up everywhere from billboards to ketchup bottles, and have become a must-have gimmick for some marketers.

At our Digital Cream event this week, I was discussing QR and mobile marketing with Mark Brill, who had been moderating the mobile roundtable.

The upshot is that, when used well, QR codes can be a useful tactic for marketers, when used badly they're utterly pointless.

Mark showed me some excellent examples of QR codes, good and bad, from his Pinterest page.

Here is a selection of those....

by Graham Charlton 22 March 2013 14:12pm 27 comments

10 interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week

Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.

Stats include mobile strategy, interactive and outdoor advertising, email open rates, and online customer service.

For more digital marketing stats, check out our Internet Statistics Compendium.

by Graham Charlton 22 March 2013 13:02pm 3 comments

Ultimate guide to Google+ Sign-In: more than authentication

With social media authentication a common sight across the web, Google takes it one step further with their latest Google+ Sign-In.

With many questioning the worth of Google+ as a social media channel, there needed to be a change in their marketing model to give brands and publishers a reason to invest time into the platform. So, bright and early on the morning of February 26th, Google introduced Google+ Sign-In to the web community.

Now it is possible for users to sign into a website via Google and bring along their information from the Google+ social graph for an “upgraded experience”; something Facebook and Twitter have been doing for a long time.

by Andrew Isidoro 22 March 2013 09:59am 4 comments

More reasons for retailers to offer wi-fi in stores

Rather than fret about the dangers of 'showrooming', retailers should provide wi-fi for mobile users, as this influences the choice of store for almost 80% of consumers.

A new report by JiWire, which provides ad-supported wi-fi, finds that retailers needn't fear the mobile shopper.

by Graham Charlton 15 March 2013 09:37am 1 comment

10 tips for improving the click and collect customer experience

Click and collect (or reserve and collect, or whatever) is becoming ever more popular, to the extent that it is now a vital offering for any large multichannel retailer.

The reason? It fits perfectly with customer research behaviour, and allows retailers to drive footfall into their stores.

The experience must be right to maximise sales, and a new report from ExperienceLab looks in detail at the click and collect experience of major UK retailers.

It's a big report, but I've summarised some of the findings here and pulled out some key tips for retailers...

by Graham Charlton 07 March 2013 11:07am 4 comments

Should businesses and brands make their websites responsive?

With over 60% of the UK owning a smartphone and just under a fifth of the population owning tablets, it’s vital that businesses and brands are thinking about the different types of device their websites are being viewed on, and also what situations the users are in when viewing websites.

A recent report from Econsultancy found that four out of five organisations in the UK are still not designing their websites for smartphones or tablets.

As the use of mobile devices continues to increase, businesses need to be thinking about how their websites are appearing across the huge range of mobile and desktop devices available.

by Clair O'Neill 07 March 2013 09:09am 9 comments