Three key takeaways from the new Econsultancy Mobile Maturity Briefing

A few years ago businesses could be forgiven for their failure to react quickly enough to the massive shift to mobile technologies, as it was difficult to predict just how big an impact smartphones would have on the customer journey.

However new research from Econsultancy and Adobe shows that even now many companies still haven’t implemented an effective mobile strategy.

In fact only a third of respondents (36%) agree that they have a mobile strategy compared to 45% who disagree.

The Finding the Path to Mobile Maturity Briefing provides data and insights for those wishing to benchmark their own activities around mobile, and to elevate the importance of related business initiatives within their organisations.

The report is based on a global survey of 600 client-side and agency marketers carried out in March and April 2014.

Here are three key findings:

By David Moth May 20th 2014 11:56

Traffic doesn’t equal conversions

Despite the huge increase in mobile traffic in recent years, consumers are still unlikely to make a purchase using their smartphone.

On average, businesses surveyed for this study reported that 31% of their web traffic comes via mobile. This is backed up by the data that Adobe collects on behalf of customers, with 31% of the data processed by Adobe Analytics in Q1 2014 originating from a mobile device.

How much of your / your clients’ total website traffic is via mobile devices? (including tablets and smartphones)

However 71% of company respondents achieve less than 20% of overall ecommerce revenue through mobile devices.

Obviously this equation fails to take into account the impact of mobile research and price checking on the overall purchase journey, but it does show that conversion rates on mobile are still low for most businesses.

Marketers are responsible for mobile optimisation

In the section investigating how businesses approach their mobile strategy, one of the questions asks which department is directly responsible for mobile optimisation.

Both company and agency respondents indicated that marketing departments are most likely to be in charge of mobile (58% & 60%), followed by development/IT (39% & 40%) and ecommerce teams (29% & 28%).

Who is directly responsible for mobile optimisation within your / your clients’ organisation(s)?

The research also shows that businesses that use input from multiple departments/teams to develop their mobile strategy are more likely to achieved their KPIs and feel more positive about their mobile UX on average.

Responsive isn’t the only way

Responsive design is often touted as the most effective way of optimising websites for mobile, but in reality there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Almost half (46%) of companies surveyed for this research now use responsive design as part of their attempts to optimise for mobile, with a similar proportion (43%) using a mobile optimized site.

Only 12% of companies currently use adaptive design.

Which of the following have you / your clients employed as part of your/their attempts to optimise for mobile?

Article Conversion Rate Optimisation

Ryanair CMO: Digital is key for improving our customer experience

Ryanair is a unique brand. It managed to become one of Europe’s most-successful airlines despite a reputation for poor service that occasionally bordered on contempt for its own customers.

The ‘no frills’, challenger brand ethos became such an important part of Ryanair’s image and tone of voice that it ended up antagonising consumers as well as the competition.

But changing consumer expectations and mass adoption of digital technology means that Ryanair risks being left behind if it doesn’t change its ways, so new CMO Kenny Jacobs has been tasked with overhauling the customer experience and improving people’s perceptions of the brand.

The airline’s appeal comes from its low prices and massive choice of routes, so that has to remain intact if the business is to continue growing. Therefore Jacobs is focusing much of his efforts on improving the digital experience.

Article Ecommerce

Ecommerce in China: Why are Western brands flocking to Alibaba’s Tmall?

Western ecommerce brands seeking to expand into China cannot ignore the 500lb gorilla that is Tmall.

Even ASOS was recently forced to admit that its best chance of cracking China was to establish a presence on Tmall, while Burberry became the latest UK fashion brand to open a Tmall storefront in April.

In fact the Alibaba-owned marketplace currently has around 2,000 foreign brands among its 70,000 sellers.

So what’s so important about Tmall that it can make the likes of Apple, Uniqlo, Reebok, and ASOS create a store within someone else’s domain rather than rely on their own website?

The B2C marketplace was spun out of Taobao in 2010, which is itself a C2C marketplace that’s similar to eBay. Tmall allows brands and retailers to establish a digital storefront, which is again similar to the new model offered by eBay.

Article Digital Transformation

Senior level employees have greater digital knowledge: stats

So, you think your manager is an idiot? Looks like you’re wrong, as senior level employees have better digital knowledge than their juniors.

That’s according to preliminary averaged results from the Econsultancy Digital Skills Index, designed to test digital knowledge across marketing.

It seems that senior level digital employees can put their money where their mouths are as they scored higher than mid-level respondents, who in turn scored higher than junior respondents.

The average scores for each level of seniority were 67% for juniors, 72% for mid-levels and 74% for senior respondents.

The assessment will remain live and continue to hoover up data, so take the test if you’d like to benchmark your skills against those of your peers.

In this post I’ll reveal a few findings from the assessments so far and discuss them in light of the skills of the modern marketer (incidentally, the title of a new Econsultancy report in our Digital Transformation series).

Three key takeaways from the new Econsultancy Mobile Maturity Briefing

Traffic doesn’t equal conversions

Marketers are responsible for mobile optimisation

Responsive isn’t the only way

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