Archive for December, 2011

Dec 14

HotHouse Article

Mobile

Web Trends & Development

Making mobile a focal point of your marketing strategy

By Simon van Wyk

Back in September, Google/IPSOS published some interesting research findings on smartphone usage around the globe. While Australia scored second highest for smartphone penetration, the research found that only 20% of Australian businesses actually have a mobile-optimised website.

Furthermore, the research claimed that many businesses were confusing having a mobile app with having a mobile strategy. Believe me, it’s not the same thing. A mobile strategy includes acknowledging the multifaceted mobile landscape instead of focusing on just a few devices.

So, in the process of conducting some of my own research prior to an event I was attending I searched for a handful of banks and financial institutions to see what they looked like on my iPhone.

It wasn’t pretty.

shockandhorror

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Dec 9

HotHouse Article

Mobile

Web Trends & Development

Buoyant retail sales driven by mobile shopping frenzy

By Simon van Wyk

Shopping data out of the US following the holiday weekend shows a country of frenzied consumers hitting the sales. For all the economic doldrums, Americans leapt into their Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping ritual with real fervour this year.

While retail foot traffic was up and cash registers were merrily ringing, a big chunk of the shopping frenzy came from ecommerce sites. Given the consumer shift to mobile everything, not surprisingly shoppers using mobile devices like smartphones and iPads accounted for more of the purchases than ever before.

As part of its Smarter Commerce initiative, IBM released some interesting data on online spending over the holiday weekend. Its online retail benchmark study revealed that online Thanksgiving Day spending had jumped by more than 39%. Meanwhile Black Friday online sales increased by more than 24% compared to the same period last year.

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