Google Accelerated Mobile Pages entered the world on February 23rd, a day earlier than expected.
If you have been a little dozy for the past few months, here’s a quick skill pill to bring you up to date.
All marketers should now be aware that mobile is increasingly overshadowing desktop in many areas, and it seems retail searches during Christmas is one of them.
Retail searches on mobile are expected to increase by at least 500% over the Christmas weekend alone.
In the final trends round-up from me (until next year, of course), I’m looking ahead into 2016 to see what the most exciting developments in mobile will be.
Well, I won’t actually be doing anything other than collating the opinions of a group of people considerably more clued-up than me.
A recent study found that Tesco was the most visible supermarket website in mobile searches on Google UK.
This may come as no surprise, since Tesco dominates the grocery market in general. What is surprising though, is how much Amazon has muscled in on this market.
As digital marketing has matured, integrated search has become even more important and wide ranging.
Integrated search has traditionally referred to a tactical and strategic balance between natural search (SEO) and paid search (PPC), but with the proliferation of multichannel behaviour and the use of mobile friendliness as a ranking signal, the term has become somewhat broader.
Today, Google began to use mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, but the search giant isn’t stopping there in its push to promote good experiences for mobile users.
Case studies are always hugely popular on the Econsultancy blog because they act as a valuable source of inspiration for marketers.
In this post I’ll roundup six interesting mobile case studies, some of which perhaps lean more towards being about multichannel marketing.
These have mostly been borrowed from the Econsultancy Case Studies Database, which is packed full of useful examples from a range of brand and industries.
The ever-increasing use of smartphones among consumers means that mobile and local search should be a high priority for marketers.
But what’s the current state of play and how will mobile search develop in future?
Mobile and desktop paid search ads vary wildly in terms of the use case and the UX.
Fewer ads are displayed on the mobile screen and advertisers have less copy to work with.
Paid search is a key element of marketing campaigns during the festive shopping season.
What should advertisers be focusing on to succeed this year?
Second screening is a fact of life in our new mobile-enhanced world. Regardless of how interesting a TV show might be, viewers will always turn to their phone to check messages, share their thoughts via Twitter, or just aimlessly browse Instagram.
As with all changes in consumer behaviour, marketers are falling over themselves to find a way of injecting their brand messages into the second-screen experience.
It’s easy to see the attraction, as in theory smartphones allow brands to deliver a more in-depth and engaging experience to enhance their TV campaigns.
Our own Ben Davis has already gone on record to register his doubts over whether marketers will ever achieve any success with the second screen, however a new report from Millward Brown shows why brands won’t stop experimenting with this channel any time soon.
More than any other industry, bars and restaurants are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the boom in smartphone use.
Decisions on dining are often made on the spur of the moment so by having a simple mobile site with a booking tool and click-to-call button restaurants will put themselves in the best position to attract some extra customers.
A new report form JiWire has found that consumers are twice as likely to use mobile than desktop as a source of information about where to eat.
To find out whether restaurants are making the most of this opportunity I searched for places to eat around the Econsultancy office in London’s Soho.
It’s a prime tourist spot that’s also home to thousands of office workers, so there’s plenty of money to be made keeping all those people fed.