Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Simon van Wyk outlines just what’s involved in developing an optimised mobile presence in his article on Marketing Magazine website, published on 20 April 2012.

With the acceleration of mobile everything, the onus is now on marketers to leverage their customers’ rapidly growing use of mobile devices to discover, explore and buy. As more and more consumers use smartphones and tablets to browse and research brands, marketers need sound mobile strategies in place to ensure that this consumer touch point resonates and delivers true engagement.

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Simon van Wyk, Founder of HotHouse, reflects on a week at SxSW 2012

In amongst the circus that is SxSW, with at least 50 other talks or events happening simultaneously it’s easy to get side tracked and lost in the frenzy. So I did my research up front and carefully selected the sessions that I thought would be of benefit to the work I do here at HotHouse.

However, after sitting through some less than stimulating sessions from agencies and social media companies, I decided to focus on sessions that would expand my world view in some way. And while I may have only scraped the surface of the ideas, trends and insights being discussed, these sessions were all incredibly thought provoking.

Indeed, a festival like SXSW can’t help but get you thinking of the future now. We’re in the middle of a revolution.  It was kicked off by the Internet and fuelled by the rise of mobile. The entire language of the conference is about the revolution. Anything’s possible and chances are that any of these ideas could be the next big thing (and your newest competitor).

So whether it’s your business model, how you go to market or how you use your marketing data, the intensity of this revolution is forcing us all to reinvent. The only businesses to survive are those prepared to innovate relentlessly and leverage marketing technology and data insights.  read more

HotHouse’s pioneering mobile development work for Toyota was showcased at SXSW Interactive over the weekend. In an industry first, HotHouse has employed Netbiscuits’ new Tactile HTML5 design and development framework for mobile web apps to build a brochure tablet app for Toyota.

As one of four high profile international mobile case studies, Netbiscuits unveiled HotHouse’s Tactile app for Toyota during their Emerging Technology session: Android ≠ Android: Lessons Creating a JS Framework. The session highlighted the advantages of developing high-end, multi device mobile web apps using the new Tactile framework and showcased the HTML5 enriched result for Toyota.

Simon’s at the festival in Austin, Texas, and commented: “SXSW is such a big event on the interactive calendar. The technology that is showcased in this arena is truly cutting edge. We’re delighted that our work with Netbiscuits for Toyota is considered worthy of this stage and are firm believers that to overcome the complexities of the mobile landscape, brands need to use the best technologies to allow them to seamlessly optimise for all devices.”

Lucas Challamel, Netbiscuits Business Development Director for Australia and New Zealand added: “SXSW Interactive is the place to experience what is unfolding in the world of technology. Our work with the HotHouse team for Toyota demonstrates the rich capabilities of Netbiscuits technology and delivers a solution for brands eager to offer their customers the most responsive and engaging experiences on touch-enabled mobile and connected devices.”

Famed the world over as an incubator of cutting-edge technologies, SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology and features the best new websites, video games and start-up ideas.

Currently, high street icons are way behind the curve in meeting their customers’ mobile expectations - yet Forrester expects that by the end of 2012, most noteworthy Australian online retail websites will be optimized for mobile (up from 20% of all sites today) or complemented by mobile apps (up from 6% today).

In this podcast, Simon van Wyk talks to Paul Marshall former executive general manager, Digital Innovation at Salmat and former executive general manager at Lasoo about the enormous opportunity that mobile presents to retailers and how to meet the needs of increasingly mobile-savvy shoppers.

 

 The State of Australian Retail from your Mobile: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week showed desperately soft retail spending in December last year on the back of lacklustre trade during November. The figures didn’t surprise anyone and only serve to underline the gloom enveloping the Australian retail sector.

But it’s not as if consumers aren’t spending. You see, online commerce is alive and well and growing exponentially. Forrester predicts that Australian online retail sales are set to balloon from $16.9 billion in 2009 to A$33.3 billion in 2015. So rather than soft consumer sentiment and worries over the global economy, I think Australian retail is being held back by a lack of foresight and innovation.

Australian consumers are enjoying renewed spending power and choice and Australian retailers need to play catch up. They also need to wake up to the consumer shift to mobile everything as shoppers increasingly use mobile devices like smartphones and iPads while they shop. According to Forrester, Australian smartphone users purchase an item every four seconds through eBay’s mobile apps.

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HotHouse will be discussing mobile at this year’s Red Rock Oracle Leadership Forum for IT professionals which will be held in Sydney on 8th March.

This is one-day conference covers all aspects of Oracle applications and technologies, and HotHouse will focus on WebCentre technologies expertise and how to manage and mobilise content.

The explosion of mobile usage offers big opportunities. But to appeal to mobile users and take advantage of this space, businesses need to provide mobile optimised websites.

IT professionals across the country will be required to implement mobile platforms to support their business. But where do you start? How do you overcome the mass fragmentation and how do you leverage your existing infrastructure and investment?

In our presentation, we’ll give you the facts and figures of a rapidly mobile nation.

We’ll talk through the issues of delivering optimised content across a confusingly fragmented landscape of devices and operating systems.

We’ll show you how you can leverage your existing investment in WebCentre technologies.

As a sponsor of the Leadership Forum, HotHouse has 10 complementary passes to give away. If you’re a HotHouse client and would like to go to this year’s event, please get in touch with Victoria Kerr on 02 9432 3600 or enquiries@hothouse.com.au.

Published in Marketing: Monday 09 January 9, 2012

As you work out how to exploit mobile in 2012, you need to start by working out which relevant and compelling consumer problem you’re going to address and how it delivers a benefit to your business.

It’s also important to understand that mobile represents just one of the many consumer touch points that you need to serve as part of your overall marketing strategy. Mobile marketing should not be treated in isolation.

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In October 2011, Mary Meeker, the feted venture capitalist at KPCB, released her highly-regarded Internet Trends 2011 report. The report captured 11 key trend s and what she labelled as the Mega-Trend of the 21st Century: The empowerment of people via connected, mobile devices.

Of course, this trend is a reality everywhere. More and more of us are armed with our mobile devices of choice and use them more or less non-stop, 24×7. Just walk down any busy street and take a look around - almost everyone, regardless of their demographic, is interacting with their mobile devices.

And the more we interact with our mobile devices, the more we will want to explore the mobile web. We’re already hovering tantalizingly close to the point where more people access the Web using their mobile devices than they do using a PC. To me, it’s clear that 2012 will be the year the mobile web comes to the fore.

And so, brands will start to realise that their mobile strategy can no longer be treated in isolation. From now on, every digital experience will need to be built with mobile devices as the starting point and brands will have to develop digital experiences for three screens: the smartphone, tablet, and personal computer.

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Published in Campaign Brief:  Tuesday 03, January 2012

They say that 2011 saw the dawning of the post-PC era. With the accelerated shift to mobile everything, I can certainly understand why. While I don’t believe the PC is dead, I do believe that mobile is moving at such a high speed that in 2012 it will be imperative for marketers to own the mobile screen - no matter how daunting the task. While 2011 might have been the year that brands “did” mobile by creating a native app, in 2012 marketers will understand that mobile is so much more.

For me it’s not that very different from those brands that back in the day that created brochure ware websites and those that realised the full commercial potential, connectedness, and power of the web.

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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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