Its undeniable that mobile devices have taken unprecedented root in the lives of millions of Americans and billions across the globe in the past 12 months. We are connected 24/7. We simply can not sleep, work, eat, vacation, shop or even go to the loo without our mobile devices. For the first time in history, the number of smartphones in circulation is close to eclipsing the number of feature phones. Tablets, grew to become so dominant, they are infringing on PC market share.

To recap all that happened in the world of mobile in 2011, we are kicking off a short series “2011: A Mobile Year in Review” featuring mobile industry luminaries, media executives and brand marketers. They will guide us through this year’s key innovations, noteworthy campaigns, effective mobile techniques, smartphone and tablet trends, HTML5 adoption and other hot mobile topics.

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As we move along in our “Boost Your Mobile Site Appeal” series, we’ll take a look at how integrating a social aspect to your mobile site can give your brand or campaign the extra push it needs to really take off.

It’s quite obvious that mobile phones are inherently social in nature—we use them regularly to communicate with our friends, family, and more often, anyone who cares to listen. comScore recently published a study showing that 52% of mobile users access a social networking site on a daily basis, and almost 80% do so at least once a week. With social networking numbers skyrocketing at a similar pace to mobile web use, it becomes clear that the two are a perfect fit for any company interested in enhancing its mobile initiatives.

Taking advantage of the social network effect via your mobile site comes down to 4 main inter-related ideas: connecting, sharing, interacting, and co-creating. (more…)

Last month, we introduced six benefits of moving your companies’ services to the mobile web. In this post, we will drill down into one such benefit to retailers: mobile websites drive people into brick-and-mortar stores. Google’s “Mobile Movement” study found that 55% of consumers who research and browse for goods on their mobile device visit a store afterward, with 40% making an actual purchase from the brick-and-mortar location. Another set of data collected from various retailers shows that 5-7% of their total store visitors are driven by mobile. The key to leveraging the mobile channel effectively is to have a mobile optimized website that addresses consumers’ most burning questions — WHERE is the store, WHAT can I buy, and HOW MUCH money can I save. (more…)

In a previous post from our Mobile Web Advantage series, we explored the various ways that mobile web builds on existing habits. In this post, we will drill down into mobile commerce, which refers to the buying and selling of products and services through a mobile device. Mobile commerce is experiencing such explosive growth that many retailers are rushing to create mobile websites to capitalize on this trend and satisfy their mobile-savvy customers.

Smartphones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous within the mobile population. There are approximately 429.7 million global smartphone subscribers; this number is expected to increase to 1.2 billion by 2015. Furthermore, the global m-commerce market is expected to reach $119 billion by 2015. As this ecosystem expands, customers will begin to expect more and more options for satisfying their shopping needs while on-the-go. Both e-commerce and more traditional brick-and-mortar companies will need to keep up with their consumers by ensuring that their website is usable from a mobile device.

Major brands are beginning to see tremendous growth in the percentage of their business transacted over mobile. For example, in 2010, eBay sold $2 billion worth of merchandize via its mobile channels, tripling its 2009 results. This number is expected to double to $4 billion in 2011. As recently as last month, eBay stated that it expects to process $3 billion in mobile payments via PayPal in 2011, up from $700 million in 2010.

Mobile ticketing, a subset of mobile commerce, is a growing market as well. According to Juniper Research, mobile ticketing transactions are expected to exceed $100 billion worldwide by 2012. Fandango, a leader in the mobile ticketing space, now sees 20% of ticket sales coming through mobile. In fact, 19% of the recent Harry Potter opening weekend revenue of $169 million (that’s $32 million in two days if you’re doing the math) was generated from mobile devices. Fandango’s mobile site, which was developed with the assistance of Trilibis, allows users to search for movies playing in their area in real-time and to buy tickets. In some theaters, users can even hand their phone to the ticket taker for scanning. No standing in line, and no dealing with the clerk or the kiosk. (more…)

A mobile website will put a spring in your step. Just listen to Andrew Koven, a former president of e-commerce and customer experience at upscale shoe seller Steve Madden (@stevemadden_com).  Koven was positively clicking his heels when he told attendees at the Mobile Shopping Summit in fall 2010 that the company’s mobile presence had generated $500,000 in mobile sales in just six months.  Over that same period, Steve Madden’s share of online traffic coming from mobile devices rose steadily from 4.4 percent to 10.5 percent.

New customers and new sources of revenue are just two of the many benefits of creating a mobile website for your company. This is the first of a series of posts exploring the benefits of mobile websites. Future installments will each examine a key benefit in detail. This introductory overview should serve as a wake-up call: It’s high time you jumped on the mobile website bandwagon. After all, people are now more likely to first experience the Internet through a mobile device than a desktop computer. That’s because more people have cell phone subscriptions (5.2 billion worldwide) than wired broadband Internet connections of the sort used for desktop computers (555 million worldwide) according to mobile marketer mobiThinking (@mobilThinking).

Here are a few more reasons for why your company, brand or service should have presence on the mobile web:

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As we look forward to a new year, we believe the current focus on ”apps” is a fad.  Within the next few years, most mobile content will be viewed through a browser, driven by three key trends:

1. Advances in mobile browser technology, specifically access to GPS and camera functions;
2. Content owners’ desire to reach consumers broadly and manage their mobile business similarly to how they manage their current web business, specifically with a more unified, less fragmented technology platform allowing them to utilize key tools from the web including search engine optimization, A-B testing, and integrated reporting; and
3. Consumers’ increasing use of mobile phones as their access point to the web. Shipments of smartphones will exceed PCs as early as 2012, creating a very rapid evolution in internet access.

Therefore, we believe native apps will soon be limited to games, novelty items, and certain niche applications that require intensive local processing on the handset.

Furthermore, due to the rapid pace of innovation and competition in mobile devices, including tablets, no standards will emerge to solve the industry’s big fragmentation problems. As a result, content owners will increasingly rely on platform technologies for managing the mobile presentation layer.

Our perspective is somewhat provocative but comes directly from our extensive experience working with leading brands on their mobile offerings.