Last month, I attended the Mobile Innovation Summit in New York, where technologies and processes around mobile and digital transformation were among the hottest topics. As a self-proclaimed data nerd and former researcher, I saved some of my favorite mobile stats and "did you knows?" that I pulled from various presentations. Here are a few of my standouts:
- Predictive Purchasing Weather Data: Brian Hull, the VP of Creative Labs at The Weather Channel shared an engaging presentation on their omni-channel experience. Turns out 80% of weather channel users opt-in to location-based services. In turn, they’ve learned that juice sales increase with windy and cold weather. Soda sales increase during snowy or rainy weather. 60 degrees in one location has a totally different consumer reaction than in others, for example Florida versus Chicago. Companies use their weather and location data to inform when they offer specific products, offer sales, or what they tweet about to which audiences, and more. Now, when will my Amazon Echo prompt me to order something, without me checking the weather?
- UI/UX "Pay to Play": Max Talbot-Minkin, VP of Product and Design at TodayTix, presented a unique way that their Broadway-based start-up is leveraging UI/UX innovation to reach new customer sets. Did you know that Broadway is a $50B industry world wide, with $1.4B in NYC alone, and an average ticket buyer is the age of 44? Their distinctive UI/UX model requires users to give info or opt-into social shares to “unlock” sought-after features and deals. Their UI/UX innovation opened a more youthful demographic, with an average age of 30, redefining the Broadway ticket in perfect time for Hamilton. Good example of using your UI/UX to collect data where your mobile backend as a service could facilitate different business logic flows, data storage, and user roles.
- Best Apps are Native Apps: Zachary Smith, Director of Mobile Product at Groupon, shared new mobile stats, too. Americans now spend twice as much time on their mobile phone than on their desktop, and the vast majority of mobile time - 87% - is spent “in app,” not in a Safari browser. These trends and others are pushing companies to up their native app experiences and to rethink their strategies. Apps like Wal-Mart, Kohl’s, and Target’s Cartwheel have all nearly 100% or greater year over year growth app visitors, and others like Amazon, eBay, and Target see significant shifts from mobile web to mobile app. Smith proposed that retailers would have more success if they didn’t all try to be the “go-to utility” app that simply repackages your ecommerce experience in an app, but rather invest in alternative strategies like the Brand-Builder app, Home Depot’s Project Color, an In-Store Companion app like Target’s Cartwheel, and the Browse Habit like Nordstrom’s HauteLook.
Those wrap up my favorite stats from the event! In case you missed it, here are some of the infostats that I shared from my presentation on AnyPresence:
- By 2018, 1B mobile workers will be connected to enterprises. Juniper.
- Demand for enterprise mobile apps will outpace development capacity five to one. Gartner.
- 80% of mobile applications will leverage cloud backend services. Gartner.
- Mobile-optimized access to backend data is the biggest development challenge for 72% of enterprises. IDC.
You can learn more about MBaaS and AnyPresence. We’re also running a free trial of our platform, so you can see if it’s a fit for your mobile app development needs today.
Thanks again to the folks from Innovation Enterprise and all the engaging participants!