Using mobile email marketing to support m-commerce

5 key insights to create the best experience for your smartphone and tablet audience

You'll know that usage of smartphones and tablets, and the revenue and engagement delivered by them, is skyrocketing. In Q3 of 2014, 25% of global traffic to e-commerce sites came from mobile devices (10% smartphones, 15% tablets) according to Monetate.

That’s up 3% in a single quarter. Meanwhile, eMarketer predicts that the value of UK m-commerce in 2013 will have reached £6.61 billion.

Understanding and optimising the customer journey and experience for these active mobile audiences has become an imperative for mainstream multichannel brands, as well as pure-play digital brands. Happily, there are simple ways to do this. Here are five steps I would start with ...

• Insight 1. Define 'mobile'

Organisations, analytics reports and the media use this term inconsistently. Be clear whether it just refers to smartphones or whether it's an umbrella term for all handheld devices including tablets.

For actionable insight into consumer behaviour and to review the effectiveness of experience, as a minimum you need to segment by smartphone and tablet and then key devices and operating system versions on iOS and Android.

Inconsistency can lead to strategic confusion, misreported usage and you won't reliably be able to explore the distinct behaviours and appetites of each device audience.

It's only going to get more muddled in the age of wearable tech and in-car computing so iron out your terminology now. And don't forget to track and analyse visits to full desktop sites from handheld devices too. There will always be smartphone users who opt out of a mobile version and most desktop sites don't redirect tablet users.

• Insight 2. Map your users' multichannel footprints

It's vital and relatively easy to understand your users' multichannel footprints. Users engage with you where and when they want to, via a variety of devices, often whichever is closest to hand, but there are usually clear hourly and weekly patterns.

If you plot a graph of user visits by each available channel, hour by hour, day by day and month by month for at least a 3 month period, the peaks and troughs should be clearly evident and you can realign your customer experience and marketing to optimise to these distinct audience segments. Compare mobile web vs mobile apps, as well as mobile vs tablet vs desktop patterns.

The most loyal may interact several times per day, and the additional device channels present an opportunity to connect with them more frequently, and are not purely at desktop's expense. Don't forget to take account of any variation in timezone in your audiences.

• Insight 3. Explore seasonal, weekly and daily patterns in depth

As you plot usage of each channel, examine the most popular page flows during the regular daily peaks and troughs and try to understand the key drivers for these different visits. Are your users placing a weekly food order on a Friday night, or looking up store opening hours on a Sunday morning, or checking football scores on a Saturday afternoon?

Once you know what they are looking for, it becomes easier to prioritise the correct journeys or content on the relevant entry pages and optimise your comms and marketing. Setting up an automatic report within your analytics package that is regularly sent round the team, helps to boost stakeholder engagement – and often funding!

• Insight 4. Take account of context, mindset and demographics

I've become a little addicted to empathising with my users' minute-by minute lives. I always find it helpful to use a combination of user research and analytics channels to fill in the context of a mobile or tablet session. What is the time and day of the visit, what are the major referring URLs? Is it a seasonal peak such as Christmas or Valentine's Day?

Through qualitative research I have come across distinct mobile mindsets, for instance the 'dawn catch up and plan my day' scenario. A user wakes up and first of all reaches for their phone to see what's happened in the world, as well as their social and email queues. They are receptive to offer summaries and news round-ups that are quick to scan, and might contain links to return to at more length later on. A quick scan through the day's diary commitments and weather forecast takes them into planning mode, when a heads up about live coverage that lunchtime or an order cut-off time fits in nicely.

Tablet evening usage provides a very different context, as users wind down from the day and browse and consume at a more leisurely pace. Rich and inspirational content such as video works well at this stage, as well as offers and time-limited activities.

• Insight 5. Never make assumptions, keep asking

Never assume you know your audience but do assume the landscape won't stand still. Interrogate the users and the stats relentlessly, and don't be afraid of a u-turn if the situation changes at pace.

Qualitative insight work, such as asking users to record video diaries about their use of your service or a competitor's - is just as important as quantitative research. If it's a questionnaire, ask what top 3 features users are looking for on various devices as they may be very different.

Even within the smartphone user base, there can be surprising differences between platforms. I was once surprised to find that Android and iOS users of the same content app were choosing to read vastly different articles over a single day, despite being presented with exactly the same home screen selections so it's worth asking seemingly obvious questions.

Thanks to Liane Katz for sharing her thoughts and opinions in this blog post. Liane is a mobile evangelist and independent digital consultant to clients including Waitrose and Mumsnet. She has over 10 years’ experience in digital journalism and publishing at Guardian News & Media where she was most recently head of content for mobile. Her work ranges from strategy, insight and product discovery, to mobile UX, project delivery and expert review. Follow her on Twitter @lianekatz and LinkedIn.