Mobile Becoming Top Priority for Marketers in 2014

Marketers have always wanted a platform that allowed them to reach their customer base directly. In the past this required expensive marketing campaigns with call centers trying to reach a pool of potential customer to test the product or service they are launching. While call centers are still used for marketing, today marketers have several different options to reach customers quickly and effectively. Mobile technology is one of them, and according to a recent survey by Netbiscuit, a global provider of analytics and device detection products to help companies achieve increased reach and performance, marketers in the UK are making mobile their number one priority in 2014.

A key point the survey makes is less than half of the brands questioned are exploring customer mobile behavior through desktop web analytics, which is leading three quarters of the respondents to deploy a websites focused on mobile in the next 12 months. The increasing computing capability of smart mobile phones and tablets, faster mobile networks with LTE (News - Alert), cloud technology and effective analytics solutions is making this possible. And analytics service providers are taking advantage of this opportunity by providing multiple solutions to marketers across different industries.

This requires understanding mobile behavior and engagement by carefully analyzing visitor personas and device awareness. Even though the study revealed there is a high rate of adoption of mobile usage by UK marketers, which stands at 70.9 percent, more than 50 percent are deploying traditional desktop web analytics in order to fully understand user engagement on mobile devices.

This has led some marketers to reengineer desktop websites for mobile use, which hasn't been very effective. However, marketers today are looking for dedicated mobile solutions to solve this particular problem. The survey revealed 62 percent of marketers would rather have a responsive websites, because they believe their business could benefit by boosting their mobile capabilities.

Once the platform is in place using mobile specific analytics can help marketers identify users according to many different criteria. This includes identifying the screen size of the device, how much bandwidth is available at the point of connection and location, which gives marketers the necessary data to identify and track issues of abandonment and conversion rates. After technical issues have been fixed, additional analytic solutions can be implemented to take advantage of the large amount of data marketers have at their disposal.

"We’ve been working with our customers to develop a number of user personas, as a way to simplify how the data can be interpreted. These personas showcase valuable insights on specific user device and preference behaviors that can then be used to enhance mobile web content," said Anthony Payne, director of global product marketing, Netbiscuits (News - Alert).

Netbiscuits provides analytics service for mobile strategies so its customers can understand many of the reasons why users engage, abandon or convert on its mobile device. The company's cloud software records more than 1 billion unique page impressions a month for a global clientele of some of the most recognized brands, including eBay (News - Alert), Coca Cola, MTV, BMW and T-Online.