Going Mobile: Industry Statistics, Native App vs Mobile Website, Data Driven Approach In Mobile
Mobile is evidently changing the way we live, talk and communicate. In 2010, Steve Jobs announced that the industry is moving towards ‘post-pc’ era and we couldn’t agree more. What does it take to build a disruptive native app? Which one should we focus first – building a mobile website or a native app? What’s the future of mobile market 3 years down the lane? What’s the fuzz about data driven decision making? Will a ‘real-time’ dialogue with a traveler help in increasing your revenue? These are few of the questions that were addressed by four speakers at World Travel Market 2012, London. We are presenting the key pointers from the presentation below:
1. Ewan Macleod, Founder and Editor of Mobile Industry Review:
- End of 2011, we have 1.7 billion televisions, 1.2 billion personal computers, 1.1 billion fixed line telephones, 2.2 billion internet users, 900 million pay tv subscriptions, 2 billion email users, 970 million registered car owners, 1.8 billion credit cards, 450 million newspaper subscriptions, 800 million IM users, 1.8 billion households, 5.9 billion mobile phone su
bscriptions (by 2013, this will be 6.4 billion) - More people have access to mobile phone than water and electricity
- Total mobile industry revenue in 2011 was USD 1.3 Trillion
- 1.5 billion handsets sold in 2011, for 2012 – its predicted to be 1.75 billion
- By December 2012, there will be more mobile subscriptions than the number of people on earth – 7.1 billion mobile subscriptions vs 7 billion people on earth.
- Everyday, more Android phones are activated than babies are born – 1.3 million Android activations daily vs 300, 000 births worldwide each day
- By 2020, half of all payments will be transacted via mobile – VISA
- 36% of emails are opened on emails
- The average person checks their mobile 150 times a day, that’s every 6.5 minutes
- 91% of mobile users keep their phone within 1 meter range 24/7, even whilst sleeping
- 63% of population do not share their phone with anyone else
- Choice Hotels does USD 1 million per month through mobile
- EasyJet does GBP 1 million in 4 weeks from their mobile app
- IHG does $10-12 million per month through mobile
- Marriott does $25 million a month via mobile channel
- 70% of Priceline’s mobile customers are booking for same day check-in, the same number for Expedia is 75%
- “Mobile will be 30 to 40% of our business in 5 years” – Carl Sparks, CEO of Travelocity
- 45 million Americans shopped for travel products via mobile in June 2012.
2. David Slocombe, Head of Mobile, Lastminute.com:
- Search volume from mobile and tablet have been continuously increasing since Q1, 2011
- Booking window is shortening (majority mobile customers do same day bookings)
- Growth in mobile unique visitors in last 10 months – 100 to 200+ %
- When booking travel on a mobile device, travelers tend to book via mobile browser
- Lastminute has 24/7 international call centers
- Life cycle of a mobile customer: Web – Search, plan, validate, book; App – travel, sharing, inspiring; role of web is to convert subset of mobile web customers to apps and role of app is to encourage reuse (repeat bookings, loyalty customers) and enhance the experience
- In mobile space its all about simplicity and reducing the friction
- How to get to market faster with greater reliability – Co-located (sit together), flexible workspace, Pairing stations, CI display and monitoring
- Customer Insight: We do Gorilla testing – we just goto a coffee shop, ask a customer to experience the product and we take feedback
- Let UX lead – Don’t waste precious development time on prototypes that may get dropped
- Product ideas comes from our call center team, from surveys, feedbacks, customer emails
Takeaways:
- Know your customer. Which customer would benefit from apps, which benefit from mobile web
- Deliver WOW to get noticed
- Co-locate your team
- No more heroes. Share knowledge and skills (XP, Pair Programming, Continuous integration)
- Target reduced cycle time from concept to customer through continuous integration and continuous deployment
- Make work visible – Showcase and engage outside of product and tech teams
- Empower your UX team to iterate the experience with customers without pulling precious development time
3. Jason Bryant, Co-Founder, President and COO, Nor1: Next level of mobile maturity
- Examples of mobile usage in Travel: Mobile websites, Traveler notifications, Check flight status, Barcode check-in flight, Supply flash sites, Reservations, Destination guide, Destination / dining recommendations, Hotel room access
Levels of mobile maturation:
- Level 1: Behind the curve, little or no mobile presence
- Level 2: Extension of existing web presence, mobilizing transaction screens
- Level 3: Customized mobile apps with native features
- Level 4: Personalized mobile commerce, creating data driven transactions at the point of consumption: Communicating with the traveler at the very moment they need
Personalized mobile commerce: a.k.a one to one marketing – offers, recommendations, communications determined and delivered real-time for a specific traveler, based on variables and derived statistics relative to the unique traveler and their trip
Data driven approach: Using transactional data to understand traveler preferences and to create relevant targeted offers and communications. This required sophisticated mathematics, predictive analytics, statistics as well as state of the art engineering.
Data driven lexicons: Business intelligence, Personalization, Data mining, Operations research, Profiles, Predictive modeling, Mathematics, Probability theory, Experimentation, Management science, Statistics, Artificial intelligence, Optimization, Game theory, Machine learning, Big data, Simulation, Customer behaviour Economics, Mathematical programming, Decision science, Dynamic programming, Stochastic programming.
The objective of data driven approach – Making the right product / service offer, at the right price, at the right time, by combining mobile technology with a data driven approach.
Understanding Travelers Through Their Trip:
Traveler upsell profile + Buyer behavioural profile + Trip based persona = Targeted offer
We use predictive modeling engine that’s trained on millions of historical data that makes real-time decisions on product, pricing and display rank. We do all these by understanding customer’s willingness to pay and can steer demand on behalf of supplier.
4. Stefan Rust, CEO, Exicon Ltd:
- Mobile Apps are for loyalty, your app is to serve your customers
- Mobile web is to acquire a new customer
- On an average, people spend 72 minutes inside a mobile web and 94 minutes inside an app
- On an average, there are 41 apps in a mobile
- Some hotels have reported an 18% increase for in-room dining orders since offering mobile features
- Augmented Reality and Gamification are increasing trends
Mobile picture credit: cnn.com
Author: Karthick Prabu
