[originally published 5th December 2015]
The lesson I studied yesterday at the e-commerce online course was about mobile commerce. So here I let a sum up of the content I studied:
As we studied at Culture Vulture’s subject, the time current and next generations spend looking their smartphones is increasing more and more. Companies must know that many of their clients will not see them if there are not on smartphones platforms or if their platforms are not designed thinking on how smartphones are used.
1) There are three main differences about smartphones and laptops:
Usability: with the finger and most of the times multitask environment (talking with someone, walking on the street, with too much light, raining or without enough light, receiving notifications of others apps, watching the TV or listening music, etc)
Localitation: It makes possible to personalize the supply and to create a customer loyalty.
Apps: Most of the searchs by smartphones are made from apps instead of from traditional seekers like Google.
2) The design have to be:
Simple: There are many factors acting while using mobile. Smaller screen comparing it with the laptop. Finger and voice are the tools to interact here. It has to be visual and easy.
Offline & online interaction: through geolocation, bidi codes and augmented reality.
I learned about augmented reality on second year of college and I made some advertising campaigns using it. Because it is a “new” way of interacting with the customer it use to be so effective. If you don’t know about it, I recommend you to search for information. It’s not so difficult to put into practice.
Here the video IKEA made which shows what you can do with augmented reality.
Blippar is an application which companies like Heinz Ketchup had used to add value to their product packaging using augmented reality. Heinz Ketchup develop their marketing campaign making ‘unlock’ a pop-out recipe booklet when the camera is placed over the product, with the recipes featuring Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Then they give you the posibility to downloaded the recipies as a PDF, or click through to video recipes on the product’s Facebook page.
3) As we studied in the last lesson, in e-commerce we can find: Free content, premium content and fremium content.
So in mobile commerce we have:
Free apps: they are mainly financed through advertising.
Premium apps: you pay for download. (Store providers – like Google by Google Play or Apple by Apple Store- charge a 30% commission for each download)
In-app purchose: extra content and subscriptions that you can buy in apps.
Webapps: is an application program that is stored on a remote server and delivered over the Internet through a browser interface.
There also free or payment apps which are supporting features of the services that a company provides. It can be usefull form a bank or an insurance company to an outlet shop. On thia apps, the purchase transactions are conducted outside of the app store, so they are not submit to intermediaries’ commission.
4) Others customers opinion is important on the final decision before making a purchase.
5) Traveling: the smartphone is always with us, in our daily day and when we travel abroad. It is developing a new way to understand and enjoy travelling.
