Let’s say you see someone wearing a really cool pair of shoes and you want to get the same pair. What’s the first thing that you’re going to do? Unless you’re actually walking distance from a shoe store, you would probably take out your smartphone and search for it online. Once you find it, you’ll add it to cart and make a purchase right then and there.

This is how a lot of people do their shopping today. About four in five Americans shop online, and more than half of them do it on their mobile devices. It’s easy and convenient. Many of us do not just use our phones and tablets for communication, social media, and gaming but also for searching for products, comparing prices, and shopping.

For this reason, mobile marketing plays a big role in the success of both small and big businesses.

Mobile Marketing –

In a nutshell, mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy that targets a specific audience – the ones on their mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Mobile marketing is done either via social media, email, apps, and more.

How Important is Mobile Marketing?

According to Statista, just last year, 52.2% of all web traffic all over the world was mobile-phone generated. As of July this year, there are 3.9 billion mobile internet users worldwide. Eighty-nine percent of buyers are more likely to recommend a business or brand if they had a positive mobile experience, while 46% say they won’t purchase again if they have a negative and interruptive mobile experience.

These are numbers that should not be ignored. As more and more people shop online via their mobile gadgets, mobile marketing has become a necessity in ecommerce.

Also Read – How to Choose A Visual Commerce Platform For Your Ecommerce Business?

Advantages of Mobile Marketing for E-Commerce –

1. Instant Access –

Mobile marketing is comparably faster than other digital marketing approaches in many aspects. Not only does one have instant access to it whenever it’s needed. A consumer can quickly check an image or watch a video on mobile without the fuss of having to take out a laptop or plug a desktop.

2. Streamlined design –

Because websites optimized for mobile have simpler designs, all kinds of content are viewed easily by users. All the information a prospective customer could want is just a tap and swipe away on their mobile phones, making things more user-friendly.

3. Easier Payment Methods –

As banks now support and even encourage mobile banking, most payment methods are now processed through mobile devices, too. This makes the whole buying process more convenient and less time-consuming for shoppers.

4. Larger Audience –

There are more smartphone owners than laptop or desktop owners. Not everybody has access to or makes use of a computer on a daily basis. But most people now have smartphones and use their mobile devices constantly throughout the entire day. Having a mobile marketing strategy in place allows you to reach a wider audience with ease.

5. Optimized Social Media Platforms –

It’s hard to imagine mobile marketing without social media. There’s a reason why businesses, both startups, and more established companies, find their home on social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media channels are optimized for mobile. Users find it easier to use their phones than their computers to access and spend hours on social media. Mobile marketing allows you to make the most of social media to engage your audience and boost sales.

Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing –

1. Privacy and Security –

Privacy and security may be one of the very few cons of mobile marketing. One needs to check their privacy and security settings to ensure that important information, including their location and financial details are not compromised. Hacking is still a risk that hasn’t been completely eliminated.

2. Screen Variety –

With all the different brands and models of mobile devices, screen sizes vary. It is therefore difficult if not impossible to have one online shop that works perfectly for all screen sizes. Thankfully, there are some online tools that you can use to see how your website actually appears on a number of mobile devices. You can then make necessary changes to improve how your site looks on the majority of those screens.

3. Landing Page Optimization for Mobile –

Many businesses still have trouble optimizing their landing pages for mobile. Smartphone screens, especially, are tricky because even a responsive design for a landing page that would work seamlessly between laptops, desktops, and tablets, may not exactly work as intended on a much smaller smartphone screen.

4. Navigation Limitations –

Even with the emergence of phablets, website or online shop navigation can still be tricky on mobile. This is more so on smaller 5-inch screens. Unlike with a desktop mouse or a laptop trackpad with a tiny pointer to help you accurately navigate, mobile users only have their fingers, and it’s so easy to tap on the wrong link or button. Marketers also have to choose carefully what content to show on a limited screen size because they just can’t show all the content they want on mobile.

5. Functional App or Website Required –

While a fully functioning website is a requirement even for laptop or desktop users, it is even more important for mobile users who are less patient when it comes to loading speed.. Additionally, a highly-efficient app for e-commerce is becoming more of a necessity than an option now because mobile users prefer to use dedicated apps than their mobile browsers for checking out products and making purchases.

Now that you know the pros and cons, you would want to know how you can make the most of mobile marketing for your e-commerce business. Here are some of the best mobile marketing practices that you should keep in mind.

Make sure you have a responsive or adaptive design. This is a no-brainer, but there are still some online shops out there that are not optimized for mobile viewing. What you can do is check if your site is mobile-friendly using this tool. There are also some tools or web builder templates that you can use to give your website a more adaptive design. Most of these tools are easy to use and don’t even require web design knowledge. Of course, the best way is to have experts create an e-commerce mobile app for you!

Make it simple and user-friendly. Even with the ease of use that mobile devices offer, no one wants a complicated design, especially on such a small screen. Also, remember how you feel about popups as a consumer. You are not fond of them, so why should your audience be? Make every visit to your page or your app a pleasant experience for mobile users.

Check out how Amazon designed for mobile in a way that their call-to-actions are always in an accessible zone.

Structure your content in shorter paragraphs. Nobody likes big blocks or walls of text. Shorter paragraphs are easier on the eyes and won’t scare your audience away. Even if the content is of the same length, having shorter paragraphs will help keep your audience on your site for much longer.

Steer clear of big, bright, and bold text colors. When it comes to text, nothing beats the classic black and white combo. As a reader, you know how painful to your eyes those red and yellow texts are. Providing optimal visual experience should be one of your goals when it comes to mobile marketing.

Offer a hassle-free checkout process. Even if you provide your audience with a smooth buying journey, things could still go awry if you make your customers jump through hoops to check out items on your shop. Make the checkout process as easy as you possibly can so your customers will experience no trouble and won’t change their mind about their purchase.

Conclusion –

Mobile marketing is here to stay and whether you like it or not, it has changed the way e-commerce business is done. So make sure that you take advantage of all the benefits mobile marketing offers and don’t be left behind.

Author Bio –

Naida Alabata is a digital marketer with a vast experience in social media, digital marketing, SEO, web design & development, and business development. She’s also the editorial-in-chief for startupcredo.com.

Also Read – How Data Scraping can be Helpful for Businesses?

 

Let us find out what are the important factors that indicate Mobile SEO will play crucial role in 2019?

What is Mobile SEO?

The word “Mobile SEO” seems a little bit awkward, but yes it’s as important as traditional SEO formalities that we do for websites. Mobile seo is a type of search engine optimization technique, specially focused for visitors who enter the site via mobile devices or tablets or smartphones. Earlier, it did not make sense to devote time to optimize sites for users of smartphones and devices with small screens, since these kind of devices were very lesser compared to now. Also, nowadays, it has become impossible to imagine life without a mobile phone. Most of the people will start to panic even for a thought of “life without a mobile phone”

At the same time, Google had decided to change the approach to indexing the mobile versions of sites and announced about this transition in 2018 as the mobile-first index update. In this article, we will tell you a step by step guide how to do mobile seo for your site in 2019.

What are the main aspects of Mobile SEO / Mobile Site Optimization?

The main features of mobile seo or mobile site optimization is how well the content on a page is organized, your website pages must be responsive and a correct fit for any kind of small screen also the download speed for your mobile version site must be more than 80%.You can check the mobile version speed of your site at Google PageSpeed Insights tool, when the mobile version of site does not lose anything from the usual, and at the same time does not become overloaded, while remaining easy to download at a slow Internet speed. It’s not always possible to achieve this, so before creating a mobile version of site it’s better to think once whether it’s possible to make the site user friendly, and if in doubt, try to leave extra functionality, leaving only the necessary scripts on site. The same should be remembered when creating applications for smartphones and tablets that replace a site visit, for example, your site may be a social networking site, e-commerce site or a blog or a website.

Why Mobile SEO is considered as very much important?

Mobile SEO is very much important because it helps you reach more customers in the right place at the right time and provide them what they were in search of. Mobile traffic has now crossed the mark that of a normal traffic from a desktop PC’s! Every day, more and more people are discovering the benefits of using a smartphone. And easily the things are done just using a smartphone instead of using PC.Our whole life is dependent on these devices, it is amazing to see how quickly we became glued to our smartphones. Many people call it an extension of themselves and something without which they cannot live. To attract these kind of people, we need to focus on mobile SEO strategy as well.

Also Read: What is Content Marketing? Content Marketing Strategy 2019 for business?

What is the difference between Mobile SEO and Normal SEO?

There is a slight difference between Mobile SEO and Normal SEO strategy, but the goals are often similar. You want to reach your audience and convert it either to traffic or to income generating customers. In other words, the Normal SEO tactics also work for Mobile SEO, but in a slightly different way. Check out the three basic rules here:

1. Website Performance / Speed
2. User’s interest
3. Content is king

In case of Normal SEO, you will often pay more attention to a wider range of  audience, when it comes to Mobile SEO it is more focused on local business.

What are google signals for Mobile SEO?

Mobile SEO and its importance is very much clear as per announced by Google. Till the end of 2018, Google will give priority to mobile optimized websites. What does this mean? For the first time, Google will determine the ratings of a site based on the quality of the mobile version of the site instead of the Desktop version. The new Googlebot will scan mobile version of your site and check how it responds to the performance, responsive content, and also is the site user friendly. After everything is fine, you will get the best rating for your Mobile version of site. If you have any issues on your Mobile SEO, other sites will rank higher and your site. Even if you don’t focus on your mobile version of your site, you will still be ranked based on your mobile version site, so it’s time to take action and focus on Mobile SEO strategy for your website.

I will be sharing this kind of articles more in my coming posts.

I Hope this article was helpful to you. Please mention your comments below.

Read More: Best AMP Plugins For WordPress Themes

 

What is Digital Marketing? How it can help grow your business?

Digital marketing is a type of marketing through which we can promote our products or services with the help of some tools on internet like we can use mobile phones, we can run paid campaigns in several platforms like google ads, facebook ads, linkedin ads etc. The evolution of digital marketing since year 2000 has made an impact on businesses who use to promote their products or services online.

The investment being made on digital marketing has increased a lot from all kinds of business owners. We can reach a large amount of people online without spending more money. Such methods of promotion have become a great advantage for any business, and you can get decent profits. 

Digital marketing is not a business model and is not at all different from a basic marketing. There is a lot of confusion about what Digital marketing really is. Of course, there are people who created their business to use the Internet and make money. For them, this is a business model and the concept is based on Internet technologies.

But for most small businesses, Digital marketing is a separate communication medium that can be used to reach the target audience. It is very much necessary for businesses to build relationship with customers, know their behaviour and also gain equal amount of visibility within the sales market.

Important point for any business owner:

It may sound silly, but every business owner now a days need to have a website to start digital marketing. Before creating a website, it is necessary to select such keywords or phrases (search queries) that users will search to find your product or service offered. This can help professionals for whom digital marketing is a business model. It is important to ensure that your website is of high quality and meets the requirements of search engines.

Read More: Why Mobile SEO will play crucial role in 2019?

How digital marketing can help grow your business?

With help of applying proper digital marketing techniques businesses can generate more profit, find relevant target audience and generate great revenue. All kinds of businesses including small and medium sized companies can take the advantage of digital marketing. Digital marketing course can help you to promote your business online effectively. Although print media is present these days but it is more than expensive and not affordable for most of them.

Businesses can even make good presence in social media by improving their brand awareness. Companies performing digital marketing strategies have 2.5 times better revenue growth. Apart from this Real time marketing helps companies increase customer satisfaction, revenue, marketing efficiency. Digital marketing provides better ROI for investments.

A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents.a digital signature online is completely different. Electronic signatures aren’t encrypted and may be one thing as easy as you causation “I accept” via email to mention, your CA or fund manager.

What are the different types of digital marketing techniques?

SEO / Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is a process in which you optimize every page of your website according to google seo guidelines. Each page must have a unique information like meta tags etc. This type of optimization helps google or other search engines to know more about your website and with the help of proper keywords usage in your content you can get rankings for your website in search engines.

SEM / Search Engine Marketing / Paid Advertising:

Paid Advertising is a type of advertising in which you pay a certain amount of money to an advertiser to show up your ad to only your target audience and whenever any user clicks your ad then only you will be charged. This type of paid advertising you can do for your website in various platforms which  includes search engines like google, bing, yahoo, facebook, linkedin etc.

SMM / Social Media Marketing:

Now a days social media has become a very powerful and affordable medium for businesses who are constantly looking for potential buyers and also they can find target audience according to their need. Recent studies have shown that there is not only an increase in the target audience, but also an increase in traffic conversions from social media too. They are becoming very effective communication channels for advertising. Based on stats, we can find that, around 45% of all the internet users are already on facebook.

Content Marketing:

Content marketing these days is more popular and important aspect businesses are focusing on, because anywhere if you have heard the word “Content is King”, it one of the key aspect where users are looking more and more quality content on internet. Users now a days needs to know more information about any company, products or services.

For example if a user wants to buy any product or service he will not directly go and purchase it, Instead he will search in internet and check for all the information about product or service, reviews for it and then go for the purchase. If businesses wants to stay on top of success, then they need to invest in content marketing without any doubt.

Email Marketing:

Email Marketing is present from so many years, but still it is as effective as it was. It is one of medium through which businesses can directly communicate with its audience. Emails are very popular till today and it will be in future also. In today’s world, almost every person has his own email address or the company for which he works.

Every individual has an email and he will have access to his emails on daily basis. If businesses need to successfully work on email marketing then they need to have great content which must be informative, relative, engaging.

Mobile Marketing:

Apart from all the digital marketing techniques, mobile marketing is one of the effective techniques to follow for businesses. Now a days almost all of us have a mobile phone. The use of mobile phones have increased at a fast pace year on year. Every businesses these days must have an app related to their products or services, and also their website also must be optimized for mobiles as well, as mobile devices are driving more traffic than any other medium. Performing correct mobile marketing technique can bring more conversions and sales for any business. So Mobile Marketing is one of the important marketing technique that every business must follow.

Marketing Automation:

Marketing automation is like a tool which is an integral platform that brings together all your digital marketing activities. Without it, your campaigns will look like an confused puzzle with a crucial missing part. Marketing automation software streamlines and automates marketing tasks and workflows. Also important point is, it measures the results and ROI of your marketing campaigns that will help grow business revenue much faster.

Conclusion:

Digital marketing is an essential part of a marketing strategy for every serious business, regardless of its size and business model. So working on proper digital marketing strategies can lead to generate revenue and sales for your business.

Have you started working on digital marketing for your business? If no then this is the right time to do so.

Read More: What is SEO? How to do SEO in 2019? Complete SEO Guide 2019