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Category Archives: Research
The future is mobile – update
It's hard to believe how fast everything seem to be moving in the world of mobile marketing… here are some of the things I've been reading and hearing about since my 'predictions' a year ago and even this post from October 2010.
Smartphone dominance isn't far off – Peter Sondergaard of Gartner predicted last June that by 2014 "80% of users in western world and affluent users in emerging markets will have a smartphone" (via @joannejacobs).
The rise of m-commerce – retailers are realising the importance of having a mobile site and/or app.
Buying and researching online: behaviour varies by product type
Before making a purchase, it's not uncommon to research the various choices on the web. Sometimes we buy offline after having researched prices online, and sometimes vice versa. An interesting recent study from IAB Europe shows that researching and buying behaviour varies according to the product type.When it comes to CDs and books, it appears that more of us buy online than research online, whereas if you're talking about domestic appliances, far more people research online than actually buy.
A few things that come to mind when I read this:
real world bookshops and record stores with no online outlet are up against it (as if they needed telling) for online booksellers, reader reviews/ratings are perhaps redundant real world sellers of domestic appliances need to put more effort into providing good quality information, advice, ratings and reviews online, not necessarily to compete with but to complement the shopping portals/price comparison sites
Simplified, perhaps, but a reminder that our use of the web continues to become more nuanced and complex, and behaviour in one sector does not necessarily translate to another.
Why we set so much store on metrics (and why we shouldn’t)
I read a nice post from Tim Kastelle today about the problem with metrics. Over-reliance on stats is something I've blogged about here before and it continues to bother me, particularly as we live in a country where we seem to have become obsessed with measurability and stats of any kind. As a result, it feels like we are losing the ability to make decisions on any criteria other than numbers, and often dodgy numbers at that.
Of course, one of the glories of internet marketing is that it's measurable.
Permission email marketing: permissible, or not?
Hands up if you like receiving unsolicited email on subjects that don't interest you!
No? Ok then….what about unsolicited email on subjects that do interest you?
I see a couple of hands going up there. So what's the problem, the rest of you?
Ah, I get it – it's the unsolicited bit that's annoying. Stuff you haven't asked for, clogging up your inbox, even if you are tempted by the subject line.
Yup – there's no denying that spam (bulk, unsolicited, commercial email) is truly one of the evils of the internet.
