I had a wonderful opportunity to speak to the Charleston chapter of the American Marketing Association last week. Thankfully, they scrubbed out my curse words. Here’s one of my quotes:
I don’t care what business you’re in, you need to commit to mobile right now and be serious about it. Otherwise, you risk losing market share.
True dat.
Read the full rundown here:
The Mobile Mindset
I’ll be trying this out the next time I’m in NYC:
the app allows users to broadcast their GPS location to taxi drivers who are also using the application
Kevin Woodward, of Internet Retailer, wrote a great commentary about the Walgreen’s app prescription filling feature.
…humans are lazy. Much as water tends to seek its own level, humans tend to seek the easiest way to accomplish something. If an app can save me the process of walking into the home office, logging into an account and remembering to bring the pill bottles with me, it’s going to be noticed.
Retailers also may note that performance must accompany simplicity. Once, I scanned a bar code in a store to sign up for its loyalty program, only to view the full desktop version of the enrollment page on my smartphone screen. Immediately, I abandoned the site. The retailer’s mobile commerce plan performed, just not well. No one took the next step of viewing the loyalty enrollment page on a smartphone.
Simplicity + Performance. I couldn’t agree more.
One of my observations during my one mobile year has been around what I’m calling the “Mobile Bow.” It’s a state where you are captivated in prayer-like position, looking down at your phone while sitting, walking, eating, driving, riding your bike (as seen in Charleston, SC), etc.
This morning I was being interviewed by Brendan Kearney of the Post and Courier and he mentioned his cousin, James Rajotte, did a series called Blasted. James describes his series as, “a portrait project intended to show a simultaneous moment in which people feel a heightened sense of self in a non-reality.”
Look at the look. Captivated.
This article from Internet Retailer hits on the exact points I was talking about at the Mobile Marketing conference this week: Design a good tablet site or pay the price.
“Just because a consumer is visiting a web site on a tablet rather than a desktop computer doesn’t mean they lower their expectations of how sites should load and perform. In fact, they expect similar and sometimes even better performance. And, if they’re unhappy, they are less likely to visit that site in the future, a new study finds. What’s more, many unhappy consumers are going to let others know”
See the article Tablet Users Have High Expectations
It’s been a mixed bag.
As I talked/ranted/joked during my session at The Mobile Marketing conference yesterday, the past three months have been enlightening. If you were in the audience, you heard me say things like:
For most of you that were not there, let me give some dimension to these comments.
I’m a mess
Well, I am. In the past three months, I’ve been trying to run a fully humming design studio and launch another business using only an iPad and iPhone. This involves more than just email; it involves managing payroll, refining an operating budget, collaborating with remote teams, invoicing, drafting agreements, etc. (See “The Net Net” below for more details)
Skype sucks
Seriously, it does. I used to rely on Skype for hours and hours of seamless communication when I was on a laptop, sometimes spending 4 hours a day on it. I still spend a lot of time on it but it’s an unreliable and unintuitive step-child to the version I used on my laptop. Bad Skype.
Why am I doing this? Because I’m a masochist
This was a joke, which was not received well at 9am. Nick Sheth (from Gap) didn’t warm up the audience enough when he spoke. However, by the time Catherine Roe (from Google) spoke, the audience was putty! You’re welcome Catherine.
Amazon is a disappointment
I hold Amazon to a very high standard and admire the leadership of Jeff Bezos and team for blazing new ground in internet retailing and e-readers. However, Amazon has shown slow leadership in mobile web. I hear chatter about how Amazon is making the site more tablet friendly but it’s a fail: they need an innovative, dedicated tablet site.
A year ago I would have gone to battle for Google Docs…
It’s a shame that the mobile version of Google Docs is as buggy and feature poor as it is. Seriously, there is no reason it can’t be better. They have coded their own operating system after all. Maybe they neglect it because they want people to by an Android device and use Google Docs on that? I’d like to think they’re better than that.
Running a business on an iPad is painful
Apple’s fault? Nope. In fact, I draft agreements in Pages and create proposals in Keynote very easily and iCloud syncs them with both devices. The pain is from the B2B software providers. Even a company I once loved, Freshbooks, disappoints. I plan on pontificating pretty hard on this area in the coming month.
I spend more money with Zappos because of their app
It’s true. They have an elegant app that lets me dig into the purchase process. They’ve given me a very easy way to browse and buy products on my iPhone and iPad, so that’s just what I do.
The Net Net
It’s unfair for me to leave my first three months with sound bites and minimal commentary. I said I was a masochist, not reckless (any funnier?) Seriously though, I am going to spend time over the next several days outlining the experience of the past three months, writing posts around key topics in work and life. Then, I’ll start to review apps and accessories I come in contact with. This will help give more context to the insights and opportunities.
Now, for the big finish: I’ve spent no more than 10 hours on a desktop in the past three months. 10 hours would have been a normal day for me in front of a laptop before this mobile year.
Next week, I’ll be speaking at The Mobile Marketing Conference presented by IIRUSA.
I’ve been holding back on posts for the past couple of weeks so that my audience at the conference has some of the freshest material and the first peek into my insights from the first three months of my “adventure” in an all mobile world.
During this talk I’ll cover:
After the talk, I’ll update my posts after the talk so everyone is clued in.
As seen in an Amsterdam train station on my way to India last week. If only I could touch this like a big iPad screen, the world’s problems would go away. Well, maybe not, but at least the error would go away.
There’s a new place to eat in Charleston and it has an interesting mobile twist. In addition to their stylish interior, daily menu, and minimalist bathrooms (think provincial courtesy meets high-end convenience store), Butcher and Bee has the most unique way to checkout I’ve seen in a while.
To checkout, your order is entered on an iPad. Paying with a card? It’s swiped using the iPad case’s card reader. Paying with cash? No probs. Butcher and Bee respects the true meaning of a “cash register.” I don’t know how they got their hands on this yesteryear register but the sound of punching the keys and opening the drawer is mechanical music.
In the past, I typically scanned important documents so that I could keep a digital copy or email them. Today, without a laptop to plug a scanner into, I got resourceful.
Our company fax line automatically digitizes a fax and sends it to my email. Just a short trip to my local FedEx Office and $15 later (ouch), I had a digital copy of one of our new hire’s insurance application and a credit card statement for our bookkeeper to use for reconciling 2011 books. Both of these docs had to get from paper to pixels so there wasn’t another viable option.
Outside of how expensive it was, this worked perfectly. Score for the mobile man!
