Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0182 Retail Apps Blast Off

Around the offices here in Quincy, MA there has been a lot of discussion around mobile and its impact on retail.  I've said for much of the year this is the moment when the retailers struck back at eCommerce.  After a decade of bad news, mobile provides the tools retailers need to provide an "Amazon" experience in the store.

New mobile usage data by Yahoo! owned analytic company Flurry indicate retail is embracing mobile in a big way and the consumer is following.

http://www.flurry.com/blog/flurry-insights/shopping-productivity-and-messaging-give-mobile-another-stunning-growth-year#.VKwMwNLF_9Y

Here is a snippet from that piece:

In the six years that Flurry has been reporting on our mobile app usage, and in some cases addiction, we’ve seen stunning growth. This last year was no different. According to Flurry Analytics, in 2014 overall app usage grew by 76%. In this context, Flurry defines app usage as a user opening an app and recording what we call a session. In 2014, Shopping, Utilities & Productivity, and Messaging experienced triple-digit growth and were the key drivers. As our mobile devices become more and more a part of our everyday lives, we are increasingly using them for always-on shopping, working, and communication. Where years past have seen massive growth in games and entertainment, 2014 was the year apps got down to serious business.

Every app store category has again seen session growth in 2014. While 2013 was the year messaging apps took off, 2014 was the year retail came to mobile in a big way.

What will 2015 bring?  Will the Apple Watch have an even greater impact on retail?

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Mobile Apps Not Translating to Sales

This is very interesting news over on Re/Code:

http://recode.net/2014/08/20/should-there-be-an-app-for-that-why-mobile-sites-could-be-more-important/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

We live in a world of apps: More than a million can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store; another 1.3 million or so from Google Play. We spend the vast majority of our Internet time using apps on our mobile devices (86 percent of it, says Flurry).

Much has been made of the dominance of apps in the world of mobile. But guess what? When mobile shoppers actually buy stuff, it’s not through apps, but on mobile websites, according to an eMarketer report, based on work by Baynote and the E-Tailing Group.

I've been following this for a while and am fascinated at usage statistics in this area.  It does seem there is an excellent opportunity to offer a strong experience in the mobile web world.

So if retail apps aren't used all that much for buying stuff, what are they being used for, and what should retailers be building?  Seems the focus should be on everything else.

I wrote a paper that makes that argument, in part, a little over a year ago.

http://thagent.blogspot.com/2013/06/is-it-truly-mobile.html

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0101 Mobile App Usage

Great data coming to us courtesy of a couple locations.

TechCrunch has a write-up that is a good read:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/01/mobile-app-usage-increases-in-2014-as-mobile-web-surfing-declines/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

New data from app analytics provider Flurry released today states that native app usage on smartphones is continuing to grow at the expense of the mobile web. The company claims that users are now spending 2 hours and 42 minutes per day on mobile devices as of March 2014, up from 2 hours, 38 minutes as of a year ago. Meanwhile, mobile app usage accounts for 2 hours and 19 minutes of that time spent, while mobile web usage has dropped from 20% of the U.S. consumer’s time in 2013 to just 14% – or 22 minutes per day – as of last month.

That data is coming from Flurry as is cited in the article.  Here is their write-up from last year:

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/95723/Flurry-Five-Year-Report-It-s-an-App-World-The-Web-Just-Lives-in-It

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Today, the U.S. consumer spends an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on smartphones and tablets. 80% of that time (2 hours and 7 minutes) is spent inside apps and 20% (31 minutes) is spent on the mobile web. Studying the chart shows that apps (and Facebook) are commanding a meaningful amount of consumers' time. All mobile browsers combined, which we now consider apps, control 20% of consumers' time. Gaming apps remain the largest category of all apps with 32% of time spent. Facebook is second with 18%, and Safari is 3rd with 12% Worth noting is that a lot of people are consuming web content from inside the Facebook app. For example, when a Facebook user clicks on a friend’s link or article, that content is shown inside its web view without launching a native web browser (e.g., Safari, Android or Chrome), which keeps the user in the app. So if we return to the chart and consider the proportion of Facebook app usage that is within their web view (aka browser), then we can assert that Facebook has become the most adopted browser in terms of consumer time spent.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Tablets and How People Use Them

I've written extensively about the miss-categorization of tablets as "mobile" devices.  If these aren't truly mobile devices then how are people using them?

CMO.com has some data on this.

http://www.cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/8/13/_15_must_know_stats_.html

The article is titled 15 Must Know Stats About Tablets.

Here is a snippet from the article:

Tablet devices have been officially proclaimed the "lean-back" device, and this means many new opportunities for engagement with consumers. While often compared to and even referred to as mobile devices, tablets aren't mobile at all. The majority of people aren't using them to shop in-store or get information on the go either. 

The truly interesting question is how do small form factor tablets, sometimes called "phablets" fit in to the usage data?  A reasonable assumption is the usage is a mix between what we are seeing from smart phone users and tablet users.  Until a study is done, however, we won't know how the mix plays out.  Meanwhile it is useful to study usage data for both smart phones and tablets.

J.W. Gant

**UPDATE**

Flurry.com is out with a good study of iPhone vs. iPad usage.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/99859/The-Who-What-and-When-of-iPhone-and-iPad-Usage

Lots of excellent information in there that helps us differentiate between truly mobile usage and tablet usage.  By extension we can assume mini-tablet usage is somewhere in between.