Monthly Archives: February 2011

5 steps to turning website traffic into customers

Posted on February 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

by Diane Shawe

What good is SEO and driving traffic to your website if nothing ever converts into a customer?

Would you rather have lots of visitors with no conversions or less visitors with higher conversions?

You have to realize that everything starts with your website and then onto mobiles!. Your website needs to be able to funnel the traffic in a way that will create some sort of action which is often been taken on mobile smartphones. That means conversion aspects in place, up to date design and lots of branding.

Here are some ways to turn your website traffic into customers:

Create an Apps Downloadable link
Over 500,000 apps was created last year for mainly the iphone and blackberry. this is set to quadruple in 2011/12. Apps originally where designed primarily as games, but now businesses are using them to brand and keep people focused on their cool, quick and uncomplicated processes.

For instance trainlines, tesco, strarbucks, mac donalds to name but a few make the shopping experience on your mobile phone translucent.

You do not have to be a large business, an apps is surely the best way to establish your pressence on your consumers smartphone. You could recruit, update, take payment, socialise with your consumer in an intimate cyber way never experienced before.

Live Chat
The live chat features out there today are incredible allowing you to see where a visitor is going and where they came from. You can ping in and ask them a question or you could simply wait until someone needs a question answered and they ping you and believe it or not but you could also do this in real time from your smartphones or ipad/notepads when your online and roaming around.

Shopping Cart Development
Shopping cart abandonment is a big problem for some websites and if the development is not in place to analyse or at least try to save the sale there could be a great deal of revenue lost. Install efforts that can ask a customer a question if they decide to leave the shopping cart anywhere through the process or propose to them a discount or coupon in order to have them move forward with the transaction.

Lots of smaller transactions can now be processed over the clients mobile phone so exploring mobile phone payment solutions is also a useful way to go.

Easy Communication
Your website visitor should be able to communicate with someone at your business with little to no effort. They shouldn’t have to look for a contact form or seek out a phone number at any time because most people will not look for a way to communicate with you. Make it as easy as possible for them to be able to talk to you. Have an apps located on your website, when they have downnloaded it free of charge, a click to call or email link can be very useful.

Clean Up Your Design
Sometimes all it takes is to really clean up your homepage design to entice people to want to work with you. You only have once chance to make a first impression and if your design and development is really off queue than people might just tune out right away.

Turning website traffic into customers is no easy step. Unless it’s an emergency, most people will focus on comparing online before they buy. some buy on price, others on how reliable the website looks, what people say about your services and how secure the payment process is.

Staying current and working with new technology is the best way forward. To find out more about how you could use an apps in your business, click here

Online Ticketing for How Apps could benefit your existing business. Discussing the Pros powered by Eventbrite

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Invitation to our forthcoming Apps Network Event

Posted on February 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Come along and join us at our informal networking meeting on Thursday 10th March 2011 in London to take a closer look at apps and how they could impact on your future business.

For a growing number of UK shoppers, the difference between off-line and on-line shopping will be no line at all.

What does this mean for retailers, sole traders, enterprise business and the retail sector?

Come join us at this free event when you will be able to listen, learn and ask.

With an inundation of new smart phone apps these hand held shopping tools are redefining the shopping experience and blurring the distinction between the in-store experience and the virtual world of information now available in the palm of your hand.

Advances in location-based technology, price-comparison apps, bar-code scanning apps and social-networking tools have turned the mobile device into a real-time third channel of commerce, empowering consumers while challenging retailers to rethink the way they do business.

The appetite for new apps seems voracious. A recent survey by comparison-shopping site PriceGrabber revealed that 36 percent of consumers plan to use their mobile phones for shopping-related activities this holiday season.

Around 4.2m of us in the UK are already using our mobiles to access the internet and browse retailer’s eCommerce sites.

This event will look at the pros of cons about introducing a apps into your business and all the pointers one should consider. Specialist speaks will be available to give you golden nugget advise.

Introducing our Panellist Speakers

Andrew Lamont

Andrew Lamont ‘Access Champion for the Royal Borough of Kenisigton & Chelsea’

Topic: Why Access & Apps go together

Partially sighted as a result of optic atrophy, Cllr Lamont is a seasoned campaigner on behalf of the blind and partially sighted. As a trustee of the charity BlindArt he has worked to remove barriers to the visual arts for all, inclusive of visually impaired people.

Andrew is currently the Access Consultant for i-send proximity and plays an important role in advising local authorities and Town Centre’s on managing the implimentation of Access.

Andrew is concerned about the new technolgy and feels that Apps and the new type of Smartphones should take into consideration access for over 2 million people throughout the UK

Diane Shawe

Diane Shawe Author of ‘How to Cyber kiss your business to Success’

Topic: Discovering the Pros & Cons for implementing Apps into your business

Project Director for i-send proximity, Diane has over 16 years experience in the Telecoms Fibre Optic and Microwave technology. Smartcard and internet audience measurement solutions.

Diane is often a guest speaker and training in business development and is currently working on several City and Town Centre Projects who want to build a PWAN Bluetooth Broadcasting Network.

The world of promoting your business has pivoted in a way that could leave a lot of businesses behind if they don’t implement a structured apps program.

Abul Hussain Author of Grow your business with Internet Marketing

Topic: Why SEO don’t work so for some businesses

A Managing Partner at the Middle Man Marketing Group, Abul is an experienced marketing consultant, who consults with the marketing departments of many FTSE 100 companies.

His specialities include SEO, Pay Per Click Marketing, Social Media Marketing, amongst other marketing areas.

He often is a guest speaker at business association events and a guest author around the marketing blogosphere.

Abul will discuss the importance of implementing certain strategies to insure that localised and regionalised businesses can make better use of the SEO online strategy.

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Posted in apps, assisted technology, Coupons and vouchers, credit cards, digital tickets, discount vouchers, educational apps, Free Wi-fi, GSMA, i-send proximity, ipad, isend, location-based technology, mobile phone broadcasting, mobile phone communications, Networking, nokia vodaphone O2, retailers loyality, shopping apps, Shopping malls, Smartphones, Town centres

Tagged apps event, apps seminar

Pharma companies investing in mobile phone apps for tracking diabetes

Posted on February 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Pharma giants Merck and Novartis have increased their investment in mobile phone applications and educational websites, it has emerged.

A report by consultancy Ernst and Young revealed that the two companies have spent 78 per cent more on apps in an attempt to convince patients they should take their drug treatments, as well as eating properly and taking exercise .

It was also found that pharmaceutical firms started 97 different projects for using information technology to benefit patient health in 2010, as compared to the 124 projects that had been initiated in the four years before that. It was shown that around 41 per cent of these projects were for applications on smartphones, which was a rise of 11 per cent from 2006.

Drug manufacturers are now taking more responsibility for ensuring patients are successfully taking their treatments, especially with increased pressure to prove that their drugs are value for money.

Among the applications developed for the iPhone are an app for learning about diabetes and the tracking of levels of blood glucose, nutrition, and activity, one that provides the opportunity to maintain a record of your vaccinations, and a German language map that allows you to pinpoint locations of diabetes specialists.

Sourse: Pharma companies investing in mobile phone apps for tracking diabetes.

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Posted in apps, assisted technology, educational apps, GSMA, health apps, i-send proximity, isend, mobile phone communications, shopping apps, Smartphones, Wireless Intelligence

Tagged phone applications and educations websites now using apps

Apps Entrepreneurs

Posted on February 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

The soaring popularity of smart phones has created a new type of entrepreneur – the “app developer”.

And now you can confess your sins via an apps. There is no end.

The industry has grown up around the iPhone. More than 450,000 different iPhone applications have appeared since Apple opened its Apps Store on iTunes to outside developers in July 2008.

Although it is the dominant player, there are many more to choose from including those from BlackBerry, Microsoft, Google, Nokia, and Samsung.

Applications rarely cost more than a few pounds or the equivalent in other currencies to download. Many are free.

But already the app market is worth nearly two and a half billion dollars (£1.65bn) a year, according to data from AdMob, an advertising company.

Other smart phone brands are striving to erode Apple’s early lead by developing their own platforms for apps.

‘Apps Goldrush’

The popularity of apps has created a gold rush mentality among a new breed of independent software developers. Some have even become millionaires.

IT’S TIME TO GET YOUR OWN APPS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

‘Powerful idea’

The success of Pocket God and other pioneering novelty apps has inspired large numbers of small scale entrepreneurs to have a go at developing software for smart phones.

I-send will build your apps to work across a variety of smartphone operating systems including Apple iPhone, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile devices

PRICES STARTING FROM £99

Nobody knows how many app developers there are, but the figure could run into thousands.

However, with so much competition around it has got a lot harder to create a top seller.

“You definitely have to do a lot more work today – doing PR and talking to people,” explains Diane Shawe Project Director of I-send proximity.

The essential point about current apps is that they are mostly intended to entertain and they have not involved a lot of work to develop. But we are seeing a rise of businesses using them to drive consumers to specific areas of there website.

There’s enormous innovation and a constant stream of new creative applications are coming online.

So forget about current applications, what matters are the creative things you can do to help your business get into the apps market and not being left behind.

It’s a lot like the internet bust that happened a few years ago

Dave Castelnuovo

Mr Yoffie draws a parallel with the early days of personal computers.

“If you think about the old spread sheets before Lotus 123 and Excel, they weren’t terribly functional,” he says, referring to two landmark programs in desktop computing.

“But ultimately we figured out how to take the basic ideas that were developed in the very early days and make them better, more effective and very powerful,” he adds.

‘Crazy ideas’

Apps for smart phones will go through a variety of evolution.

In the longer term, Diane thinks smart phones will have the capability to act like portable subtitling machines, translating foreign languages for those visiting foreign countries, payment cards and heart monitors.

Other firms are now offering apps for mobile phones

But not everyone believes the centre of gravity in computing will shift to smart phones, I believe that the smartpad will also play a pivotal part in the restructuring of advertising and how it is viewed by consumers.

On the one hand it is growing fast and there is the potential for really powerful apps that could change of the nature of computing.

The real apps war begins as we see microsoft and nokia join forces to level out the playing field against the iphone and ipad.

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Posted in apps, assisted technology, GSMA, ipad, isend, location-based technology, mobile phone broadcasting, Networking, retailers loyality, Smartphones, Wireless Intelligence

Tagged apps entrepreneur

The rise of the Apps. Now use second only to mobile messaging

Posted on February 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

Mobile apps attract almost as much mobile device use as messaging, and exceed the totals for voice calls and web browsing, according to a January 2011 survey by Zokem Research.

According to the study, commissioned by Wireless Intelligence, the research arm of the GSMA, mobile apps are responsible for 667 minutes of use per user each month, almost as much as messaging (671 minutes), and far more than voice (531 minutes) and web browsing (422 minutes).

The research revealed some interesting distinctions between apps pre-installed before shipment and apps downloaded by the users. User-added apps dominated in categories including entertainment (including gaming) and social networking. For ’commodity’ functionality such as browsing, messaging and voice, people are more likely to use the pre-installed software.

Add-on apps made up to 20 percent of total face time, but accounted for 30 percent of data traffic. Social networking represented 32 percent of total traffic with multimedia being the biggest chunk of mobile data usage at 57 percent.

Almost 10 percent of all smartphone “face time” is through the use of social networking apps. In terms of actual usage, only two third-party apps have greater than 30 percent penetration: Facebook and YouTube.

The research also noted differences between the major smartphone platforms. iPhone and Android device owners use an average of 15 different apps per month, whereas the number is eight for BlackBerry and Symbian OS. iTunes and Android Market Place have a monthly reach of 95 percent of their user bases, whereas Blackberry App World reaches 50 percent of Blackberry users, and Nokia Ovi store only 26 percent of Symbian users.

During January 2011, the average user added 2.5 apps, and nearly half of all users had more at the end of the month than in the beginning. One-in-five users had less at the end of the period, however.

iPhones generated more than 200 percent more traffic per month on average than Android devices. Wi-Fi usage was about 11 percent of total traffic to/from devices.

Overall smartphone usage dropped at weekends but generically averaged more than 70 minutes per day with apps capturing more face time than any other activity at weekends.

The findings showed that SMS usage was higher in the mornings than voice and usage of social networking apps built up through the day and peaked at 9-10pm.

Source: Apps use second only to mobile messaging – GSMA Mobile Business Briefing.

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Posted in apps, assisted technology, GSMA, ipad, isend, location-based technology, mobile phone broadcasting, mobile phone communications, Proximity Marketing, shopping apps, Town centres, Wireless Intelligence

Tagged GSMA, mobile apps, mobile marketing

Why Smartphones May Be the Best Business Opportunity in Healthcare | Dark Daily

Posted on February 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Meet “mHealth!” That’s the new term to describe how mobile devices are used in the delivery of healthcare to patients. Many clinical laboratories and pathology groups already have laboratory informatics solutions that support how their client physicians use mHealth solutions in patient care.

Experts predict that Smartphones will dominate mobile healthcare (mHealth) in just a few short years. The enabling tools will be mobile applications (apps) that monitor such conditions as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease and asthma. Smart phones will also be used to order medical laboratory tests and access clinical laboratory test data.

Mobile health monitoring apps can track patients’ vitals signs, such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and breathe rate and share that information with their physicians. (Photo by Natasha Lomas/silicon.com. Sourced from ZDNet.com.)

Why Smartphones May Be the Best Business Opportunity in Healthcare | Dark Daily.