http://waracle.net/

The first mobile phone went on sale exactly 30 years ago in March 1984 - for the rather princely sum of around £6,000.

Since then, you could say there’s never been a dull moment. Promises of new technologies and ways of living, gigantic shifts in business models and global economies, no one could really guess then what we would be facing now – a truly connected world underpinned by mobile technology.

From smartphones to tablets, and the coming Wearables revolution, it’s not the future that’s mobile, it’s right here, right now.

This year will see even more of these seismic shifts- and we’ve nailed the 5 megatrends in mobile that as a CEO, Software Development Manager or Brand Manager you need to be focused on to get the most out of your business.

Based in Dundee Scotland, Waracle is a full service mobile app develop-ment, web and marketing agency. We’ve worked with some of the UK’s big-gest brands and businesses to help them mobilise and market their software. We’re worked with Virgin Atlantic, O2, Highland Park Whiskey, Imperial Col-lege London and Jones Lang LeSalle to name but a few. If you’re looking to take those difficult first steps into the world of mobile, contact the team directly to discuss your project in detail.

1. DEVICE SHIPMENTS

2. APPLE V ANDROID

3. MULTI-SCREEN LIVING

4. WEARABLES & IOT

5. VOICE-ACTIVATED SEARCH

CONCLUSION & KEY TAKEAWAYS

SO WHAT’S NEXT?

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CONTENT

41. DEVICE SHIPMENTS

Shipments of mobile devices are projected to reach 2.5 billion units in 2014*

Once, you had to go online. Now you are online. So it can hardly be a surprise to anyone that mobile device shipments have overtaken desktop. With phones taking the majority of the share, overall device sales this year will beat last year’s totals by an impressive 6.9%. Mobile is not going away. If you’re not already planning, here’s what you need to be think-ing about…

Worldwide Device Shipments by Operating System (Millions of Units)

Operating System 2013 2014 2015

Android 879,8 1,171 1,358

Windows 325,1 339,1 379,1

iOS/Mac OS 241,4 286,4 324,5

Others 873,2 683,5 565,2

Total 2,319 2,479 2,627

Shipments include mobile phones, ultramobiles and PCsSource: Gartner (March 2014)

WHAT IT MEANS? WHAT TO DO?

If you’re in the software sector, mobile changes everything. Your audience is now consuming and using your products across a range of de-vices.

You need to be planning for this and factoring it in to your overall business strategy. To cater for your mobile customers it’s crucial that you deliver your products and services in a way that enables them to work seamlessly across de-vices and locations - from the office, to on the road to on the couch. If you can’t, they’ll find a company that can.

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If you sell online, mobile has irreversibly altered the e-commerce landscape. Mobile plays an in-creasingly important role in the overall buying cycle, from arousing interest to completing a transaction. Mobile shoppers will move across a range of devices at different times of day to find out what they want, look at competing offerings, compare prices etc. But mobile commerce is a difficult nut to crack and only a few companies do it successfully.

E-Commerce tends not to work well for long tail brands on mobile. If you’re selling online it’s fundamental to understand where mobile fits with your overall buying cycle. Most people do the research stuff on mobiles, then move to the heavy hammer to buy (unless you’re Amazon/Ebay/Ikea).

In terms of internal IT, it’s no longer IT that call the shots. Your employees will increasingly demand to work across a range of mobile de-vices, both on-site and when working remotely. They’ll want to avoid using localised storage in favour of storing, managing and accessing data via the cloud for greater flexibility.

If you don’t give your workforce the flexibility to work across mobile, they’ll go around you. Plan now to empower your staff to use mobile de-vices to do their work – you will be rewarded with a happier, more flexible, more productive workforce.

As the world shifts towards mobile devices, so too will users of your software. Accessibility and user experience become central to success.

Your UI needs to be concise and captivating as it becomes harder to hold user attention via mo-bile. With heavy competition you’ll need to de-sign and develop a mobile UI/UX that stands out from the crowd and identifies with the complex characteristics of Gen Y.

The Marketing arm of the business will begin to evolve around mobile at an exponential pace - their needs will impact heavily on your team.

You’ll need to ensure your software UI is de-signed to support lead generation via mobile. You’ll also need to understand and then plan how to position and design an enticing call-to-action and at the same time establish how to utilise ‘click-to-call’ functionality that’s unique to mobile (and which was never prevalent via desktop UI).

The focus is moving from desktop developers to mobile UI, requiring a whole new set of skills and thinking.

Review your existing team capabilities and start planning for the long-term around mobile. Big opportunities knock for SWDMs who take the

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The focus is moving from desktop developers to mobile UI, requiring a whole new set of skills and thinking.

plunge and immerse themselves in mobile UI early on in the game but retraining existing desktop developers can be costly and difficult, especially if they’ve been heavily anchored in desktop for a long time. Mobile developers are now in high demand and short supply. Using an agency can help to get you started and learn the basics in terms of developing UI/UX - over time you can taper this expertise into your own team.

It’s no longer just about desktops and websites - mobile will now be affecting the success – or otherwise – of your marketing strategy wheth-er you know it or not.

You’ll now need to start getting tuned to the idea of mobile campaigns. Your customers use a range of devices to make a purchase deci-sion, so start to research around the role that mobile plays here and the overall affect that it has on your ability to generate leads, sign-ups and conversions. Then use the findings to shape how your strategy around mobile in your mar-keting mix – for example, when optimising your site and landing pages make sure your CTA is visible above the fold for smartphone and tab-let; consider the benefits of location features and ‘click-to-call’ functionality. If you don’t have the expertise in-house to do this, outsource.

Mobile plays an increasingly important role in the overall buying cycle, from arousing interest to completing a transaction. Mobile shoppers will move across a range of devices at differ-ent times of day to find what they want, review competing offerings and compare prices.

Understanding your modal customer journey is imperative. Do they first interact with your brand via mobile? What brings them back? Do they switch to a desktop to buy? Can you elimi-nate this in return for more signups? Take time to consider how mobile can be used to generate demand and leverage the unique opportunities afforded by mobile.

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Our web stats have shown a huge increase in mobile visitors to our various web properties. The way we design websites now focuses pri-marily on mobile. Desktop design is now secondary to this.

““

James Brown, Business Development Director, G1

82. APPLE V ANDROID

When it comes to mobile, it’s always been a two-horse race…

(diagram depicts US mobile OS market overview 2013)

Android

iOS

BlackBerry

Windows

Other Smartphones

53%36%

6% 3%1%

…other opponents exist, including Blackberry and Windows, but their combined market share is tiny compared to the Big Two. Until recently, Apple dominated the US market in terms of sales and market share, but then Android snuck up behind and stole the crown. It’s also the most used operating system for tablet devices - notching up an admirable 62% of the market – and growth estimates for its share of the smartphone market are push-ing 80% for 2014. Glory days indeed, but when you consider it’s Apple raking in the money, what does the market dominance of these two platforms mean for your business?

WHAT IT MEANS? WHAT TO DO?

As a CEO you need to be tuned-in to the devices your customers are using and create apps ac-cordingly.

In the first instance, establish the device pref-erences of your customer base. For example if your users are based in USA or Europe you’ll want to develop focus first on developing for iOS. But don’t assume - focused research in this area is key to success.Next, you’ll need to identify existing mobile re-sources within your company and establish

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what you need to move forward. This might be outsourcing to an agency, re-training your desktop developers - or recruiting developers that are in high demand.

Mobile is dramatically altering the purchasing journey. If you sell online, both Apple and An-droid can play an important role in nurturing your customers through the buying cycle. Mobile is great for top of the funnel information search, this applies to Apple and Android alike. How-ever Apple is more likely to monetise harder at the bottom of the funnel with Apple customers particularly primed for monetisation – think ex-pensive devices, pay-for apps, IAP’s etc. Android monetisation on the other hand is much less mature and heavily fragmented across devices.

Most developers in US/UK/AUS develop first for iOS. Why? It’s the easiest place to start and the most likely to generate paying customers. Typi-cally, focus on iOS first, then an equivalent for Android. And don’t forget Windows – it’s cur-rently gaining momentum and it would be fool-hardy to overlook.

Developing for both Android and iOS is a no-brainer.

As the world increasingly shifts towards mo-bile devices, so too will users of your software. The challenge now is to make it as accessible as possible. How? You’ll need to consider how to develop UI for mobile which means actively sourcing development expertise in Android and iOS. With everyone now focusing on the lat-ter first, demand for iOS expertise is extremely high. This is where you might want an agency to step in and help get you started.

If you’re selling online be aware that Apple is king for monetisation and engagement and that its users are primed and conditioned to spend quicker.Android users on the other hand start the jour-ney further up the funnel and are less quick to spend - and the Android OS can be challenging to develop for in terms of creating a seamless UX.

Be ready to deliver your UX around a crystal clear vision of your customers and which devic-es they’re using. It’s generally accepted that iOS users are more willing to part with money than Android. So moving forward you need to be ab-solutely clear about where each OS fits into your strategy and then plan carefully around your cus-tomer needs for delivering a valuable experience.

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It’s no longer just about desktops and websites - mobile will be affecting every area of your business whether you know it or not.

You’ll need to getting tuned in to the idea of re-sponsive campaigns that work across different devices. Your customers will use a range of dif-ferent devices to make a purchase decision so start to research around the role that mobile plays here and the overall affect that mobile has on your ability to generate leads, sign-ups and conversions. Use findings to inform how you will include mo-bile in your marketing mix – for example, when optimising your site and landing pages, make sure your CTA is visible above the fold of smart-phone and tablet; consider the benefits of loca-tion features and ‘click-to-call’ functionality. If you don’t have the expertise in-house to do this, outsource.

The penetration of each platform varies between different target mar-kets. Low cost Android devices mean Android is more prevalent amongst cost conscious senior citizens. Windows Mobile is gaining a foothold in businesses that rely on Microsoft for all of their other services and are now looking to replace Blackberry. Many individuals are unwilling to commit fully to one ecosystem and more and more households will have a mix of platforms. Therefore, the only way to ensure you reach all of your target market is to support iOS, Android and WinMo although that is no small undertaking.

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“Mark Petrie, Director of Engineering, GFI

113. MULTI-SCREEN LIVING

Not all screens are created equally

The new Multi-Screen WorldUnderstanding Cross -Platform Consumer Behavior

of all media interactions

are screen based

90% of our daily mediainteractions are on smartphones

38%

You’ve heard the line, ‘The best computer is the one you have with you when you want something”? With 90% of multiple device owners moving between screens to complete the same task, never has this been more true. We look at our phone an average of 150 times a day (peak times being when we get up, on our way to and just arriving at work, commuting home and after dinner) - and nearly half of us use it in the bathroom (make of that what you will). So as devices move from the corner of the living room to the palm of our hand (and the bathroom), they’re changing not only what we want, but when we want it. This is already having huge implications for your business whether you know it yet or not.

WHAT IT MEANS? WHAT TO DO?

‘Multiscreen’ isn’t a stand-alone method of consuming content – it IS how we consume content.

Seek out and implement research activities in and around your brand that will provide you with focused and integrated intelligence around your customers’ multiscreen activities. Then, start planning for investment in the devel-opment of a unified brand experience that func-tions effectively and seamlessly across a num-

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ber of different devices securely via the cloud. There are huge rewards for companies who can embrace multi-screening to create unique and engaging experiences for customers - so to get you up and running quickly, consider part-nering with mobile marketing experts who will provide you with a clear vision on next steps.

Multi-screen ad spend is forecast to increase from 20% of budgets this year to half of budgets within 3 years.

Consider the role that multi-screen plays in your overall channel mix and start planning for a re-alistic budget allocation that covers the entire customer journey. Next, utilize new planning and effectiveness tools and expertise to as-sist your transition to a multi-screen strategy.

How we use mobile is evolving at a rapid pace. Trying to keep up with your customers means there’s a stampede on for developers with a mobile-focused skillset – demand is outstrip-ping supply.

You now need to start planning and building a development team with mobile expertise. Mo-bile development requires specialist thought and skills. Transitioning desktop developers to mobile can be time consuming and resource-draining and requires someone to lead the way. This can be done through recruitment agencies but good mobile developers are tricky to source. Outsourc-ing additional capacity can be the best way to go.

Consumers move sequentially across devices. Your customers’ journey to purchase now starts on one screen and moves to another, possi-bly even another. The first screen may be the smartphone, the second might be the tablet, or the notebook. Making sure that cross-screen journey delivers a seamless experience is key.

Multi-screen attribution is becoming a hot topic in marketing. Increasingly marketing managers are switching marketing spend over to mobile to test if they can have a competitive advantage. However, it pays to test and produce a model of ROI. This is difficult and might be worth find-ing a marketing agency with expertise in mobile marketing.

Mobile has empowered your customers to tailor their purchase journey how they want it as they shift sequentially from one device to another (also sometimes using devices simultaneously) through each stage of the buying process.

Mobile plays a particularly important role at the ‘not ready to buy yet’ stage of the buying cycle, so as marketers you need to have soft conver-sion points that generate demand, position your brand as a thought leader and empower your

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customers to make a confident and informed purchase decision.

With newer devices and rapidly increasing broadband penetration, stor-age of data is now paramount for us as a club and a business. Over the course of a season we use an enormous amount of storage for video files and the ability to have affordable cloud storage which is easily acces-sible would help greatly.

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“Joe Rice, Communications & Media Manager, Dundee United FC

144. WEARABLES & IOT

By 2020 we will be living in a world of 20 billion web connected devices

Global Wearable Computing DevicesWorld Market, Forecast: 2013 - 2019

Smart Watched

Wearable 3D Motion Trackers

Sports/Activity Trackers

Healthcare

Smart Glasses

Smart Clothing

Wearable Cameras

Milli

ons

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

By 2018, the Wearables market is predicted to be worth at least $19 billion. And that’s a conservative estimate. These Wearables – right now, think Google Glass, Nike Toolband and the recently launched Oral B Smartseries toothbrush - are redefining our relationship to the world around us, rewriting and reshaping the narrative on how we connect with each other, how we communicate and share our lives across any distance, any time zone. The smartest companies are already thinking about how Wearables will impact their busi-ness. Are you one of them?

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WHAT IT MEANS? WHAT TO DO?

Whilst there is a long way to go in Wearables, when it takes off it will be as disruptive to busi-ness as the smartphone is right now. Truly un-derstanding the mind-set and motivations of your mobile consumers is not something you can choose to do or not - it’s a necessity. Wear-ables will go mainstream – and data about cus-tomers’ behaviours will become more prolific and more accessible, thus paving the way for the provision of a more personal brand experi-ence.

You’ll need to think about your software of-fering in new, unconventional ways - for ex-ample, smart sensors will reduce manual in-teraction with software and open up new opportunities for really innovative thinking.Redefining how you connect your audience with an increasing focus on mobile/wear-able will become a necessity and if you’re struggling to think about how, engage a mo-bile development/marketing agency soon-er rather than later to spike your thinking.

Desktop development will become a marginal vocation made largely obsolete by mobile tech, Wearable and the IoT. Mobile requires radically different and evolutionary thought compared to desktop. Developers currently working on mo-bile will be best positioned to create new and innovative software for Wearable and the IoT. Those who’re currently anchored in desktop will be required to learn mobile before making the step to Wearable.

Wearable technology will become an es-sential component of your company’s mix of technology and you’ll need to be prepared for this new landscape. Kicking off with the ba-sics, you’ll be required to develop location, device and time sensitive messaging in or-der to provide a more contextually relevant experience.to consumers who are actively searching for specific products and services.UI design will need to be heavily intuitive and rely on Wearable focused features like voice ac-tivated search. And like mobile, designing and developing for Wearables will be dramatically different to traditional desktop-focused prac-tices. Start considering the skills and expertise required to develop for these devices. Mobile developers will be perfectly equipped to take on the new wave of Wearable tech. You can retrain existing developers, hire new ones or outsource to an experienced company already infused with mobile/Wearable-first thinking.

Wearable tech will outperform smartphones and tablets in terms of accessibility which in

When the time comes, start planning for a strat-egy that considers how these devices are used

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turn will present a vast array of opportunities for quick thinking marketers. Your potential customers will use an ever increasing number of devices when buying products and services online. They’ll also use these various devices to consume content like HD video. Growth in this area of content consumption will be driven by network operators as 4G is rolled out in western territories.

in specific contexts (time of day, location etc.) in order to best take advantage of the unique opportunities Wearable and the IoT will afford.

Wearable tech and the IoT are facilitating seis-mic changes in terms of consumer behaviour.

There will be huge opportunities for marketers in terms of data collection via Wearable. This will provide a richer picture of consumer buy-ing traits and locations so you’ll need to plan for the ability to serve the right content, at the right time, in the correct location – and to the appro-priate devices.

The ability to work across devices is just a given now. People expect this level of accessibility. It helps get around the reality that most peoples cor-porate devices, such as their desktop PC’s, have older operating systems than their personal devices. My continued focus will be ensuring a high standard and consistency of user experience - whatever the device.

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“Suzanne Doyle-Morris, CEO, InclusIQ

175. VOICE-ACTIVATED SEARCH

By 2020 we will be living in a world of 20 billion web connected devices

“Where’s the nearest dry cleaner?” “What’s open on a Sunday around here?” “What’s on at the cinema this afternoon?” You might not have cottoned on yet, but Voice-Activated Search is on its way, and it will change the business landscape, impacting hugely on the way users discover your content and how they interact with your brand. As a result this will dramatically affect the way websites and apps are designed, developed, marketed and op-timised. Voice activated search will affect every area of your organisation from marketing and sales to IT, software design and development - and the big brands are already planning for it.

Global Wearable Computing DevicesWorld Market, Forecast: 2013 - 2019

Smart Watched

Wearable 3D Motion Trackers

Sports/Activity Trackers

Healthcare

Smart Glasses

Smart Clothing

Wearable Cameras

Milli

ons

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

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WHAT IT MEANS? WHAT TO DO?

Voice activated search will dramatically change the world of SEO. Consumers will increasingly use conversational voice search queries and phrases to discover information on products and services. This will mean that fewer people use traditional typed keyword phrases into search engines. As a result this will dramatically affect the way websites and apps are designed, developed, marketed and optimised.

Voice activated search is counter intuitive but there are great gains for those who start early. Consider an agency to get you started.

Your prospective customers will use VAS in an attempt to discover your website and gather in-formation about who you are.

Now’s the time to start thinking about strate-gizing around development and marketing with VAS in mind – developers can’t afford to ignore it and your marketing team will have to signifi-cantly adapt their existing optimisation activi-ties around this. It can be a tough nut to crack but don’t leave it so late that others get a foot-hold before you.

Immediacy and accessibility are two key ben-efits for users engaging with Wearable, mobile and VAS.

VAS will be driven by the adoption of new forms of Wearable technology, mobile and the IoT and will change the way you need to think about interface design and development. VAS requires radically new thinking when compared to designing UI for keyword search so you’ll need to think about designing a UI that provides immediacy and ac-cessibility for users making VAS commands.

VAS has been around on mobile for some time, but Google has now started rolling it out to desktops and laptops. The technology is not far from mainstream and possesses far-reaching implications for Brand Managers. In the not-too-distant future, VAS will dramatically influ-ence the way you produce content and the way you optimise your website to rank highly via the

Keyword matching and search can deliver huge amounts of data whereas voice search queries will generate less data but more spe-cific results. Semantic search will get better as Google gathers data on how people use VAS and help marketers to understand the intent of each search – you will need to study this data to understand how and why your customers

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search engines. Users of the technology will create more precise search queries and become less keyword driven.

make certain searches in relation to your prod-uct and build this in to your marketing strategy.

Search engines are already becoming less re-liant on keywords and increasingly becoming dependent on natural language questions. As things naturally progress towards VAS, any-one involved with SEO or content marketing will need to change their game fast. Traditional typed search will over time diminish and your business needs to be geared up for the changes. There will be vast rewards for marketers who can keep up to speed with the changes in search behaviour.

You’ll need to focus hard on producing content that answers the consumers spoken word que-ry and the buying/search context. You’ll need to focus less on keywords and more on under-standing what the user really wants and serve up content in order to address a specific prob-lem.

So where do marketing and wearable’s meet? This new, augmented reality creates a whole new challenge. But let’s be clear, the most innovative, pio-neering brands have been thinking about integration opportunities long before you even dreamed about Google Glass.

““

Pauline Fyfe, Website Co-ordinator, GFI Max

20CONCLUSION & KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Mobile must be integrated into any business strategy and not treated as a separate entity.

2. Develop and optimize content that can be measured across a wide range of devices

3. Multi-screen takes mobile to a whole new level, and with it your entire mar-keting strategy.

4. When developing for mobile, clearly define your objectives along with deliv-erables, ensuring they’re aligned with your brand and vision

5. When it comes, Wearables will provide unparalleled insight into your cus-tomers’ minds. And while it won’t happen overnight, Wearables will enter mainstream.

6. Voice-Activated Search will redefine ‘search’ as your customers use speech to seek out your business offerings. This in turn will affect every area of your business as you too have to redefine how you talk about your brand.

21SO WHAT’S NEXT?

It should now be crystal clear that if your current strategy around mobile is skirting around the basics – think ‘tactical reactions’ and ‘first-gen’ activities like duplicating your website for mobile, putting a BYOD policy in place, devel-oping native apps - then cutting the mustard and planning for survival you are not. And while there’s nothing at all wrong with these basics, as a CEO, Soft-ware Development Manager or Brand/Marketing Manager, you must start to look beyond questions like what to ‘mobilize’ and what devices to design and build your content around. Your eye now needs to be firmly on the bigger pic-ture – ‘How can I use mobile to make my business work harder?’, ‘How can mobile help me be more competitive in the market place?’, ‘How can I take advantage of the new opportunities that mobile offers now, and that it will be offering in the near future?’, ‘What do I need to do to innovate around mobile capabilities in a way that gives my customers what they want and gives my business the competitive advantage?’.

Right now, embrace change – better still, lead the change.

When all is said and done, to remain competitive, to survive, a robust long-term mobile strategy that gets iterated often is non-negotiable. For the greatest shot at success, ground your strategy in both technology and your goals, the big data you gather around your target audience and of course your budget. Put together a mobile roadmap and use what you can of your existing technology to get projects moving and start delivering a consistent experience into your mobile channel.

www.waracle.net