I keep hearing this question. Well, actually it’s more like, “Does my business need an app?” but you get the idea. The answer is, of course; it depends! It depends on whether your business has a brand. (Yes. There are many companies with almost no brand and some make quite a lot of money.) Apps are brand tools. They facilitate your brand experience on a mobile device. That brand...
Before you read this post, put your metaphor cap on. Been talking to a lot of clients about what they’re online business should look like and there is a real interest in figuring out what they should be doing in regards to online, apps and iPad. The following metaphors seem to work best. Website – This is the primary method people use to get information about a business. The site has...
I’ve been talking to many businesses about where they should be focusing their energies, in regards to mobile site vs. app vs. iPad app vs enormous movable flaming billboard. After listening to many business talk about the performance of their iPad apps vs their site (some selling twice as many items through their iPad app as opposed to their site) I realized that the customer is as usual in...
Last night we started covering the mobile landscape. My goal was to cover the basics but we quickly got into the rock-n-roll. First, let’s talk about off-deck vs. on-deck. In a nutshell, on-deck is the AOL experience for mobile. Think Motorola Razor. The official definition is: A browseable portal of links to content, pre-configured usually by the network operator, and set as the default...
I keep hearing people that say mobile (web/app) needs to be “stupid simple” for people to use and although I do believe that usability is important, mobile does not need to be stupid simple. It needs to be smart. Smart like a Swiss army knife. For mobile, smart is: Easy to use interface – Usability is the number one reason why Apple’s smartphone has taken the smartphone...
Today was a good day. I got to talk to Vincent Hoogsteder of DISTIMO (@DISTIMO). They’re a company that I posted about two months ago and after reading there most recent report on the status of “all things application store†I thought it would be good to get them on the phone and talk about what they do and how they came to be. Just in case you don’t want to read my original...
As you all know, Google’s Nexus one was released Tuesday and as I read the review on Engadget, I noticed that there is only as 1g of memory. The only explanation for this that I can think of is that Android apps will at some point be essentially shells with the meat of the application living in the cloud. Of course this would only be possible if connectivity is virtually guaranteed. (This...
There has been a lot of hype around the Android release and Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted as saying that Android was “about to explode”. Sounds great, but . . . I have to lived through the “Linux on the desktop” hype so it’s really hard to imagine that Android or BlackBerry will ever really give Apple a run for their money. In the end, I believe that...
I discovered a great resource for tracking analytics across arguably the three primary app stores; Apple, BlackBerry and Android. The company is called Distimo and is based out of the Netherlands. They were founded in May of this year, have four employees and among other things, produce a free monthly report. Some of this months insights are: The average price for apps on BlackBerry App World is...