Mobile and ‘human first’ for success

Mob­No longer is the bat­tle for busi­ness con­fined to the high street or even the inter­net. Increas­ing­ly, it is being fought in the mobile space, with brands look­ing to attract, engage and reward cus­tomers over mobile phones and tablets.

Key to suc­cess is ulti­mate­ly ease of use – mak­ing it as pain­less as pos­si­ble for cus­tomers to find infor­ma­tion, browse and dis­cov­er prod­ucts, and make pur­chas­es. Those who are able to deliv­er this can expect to see high­er sales, a more loy­al and engaged cus­tomer base, and greater lev­els of repeat pur­chas­es.

One organ­i­sa­tion that has already embraced this is the hotel chain Pre­mier Inn. The busi­ness approached mobile inno­va­tion and design agency Moni­tise Cre­ate (a divi­sion of Mon­e­tise) in 2011, look­ing to design and devel­op a mobile appli­ca­tion. In a short time, this had been down­loaded more than two mil­lion times and over 150,000 stays were booked through this chan­nel dur­ing 2012 alone.

Ear­li­er this year, an enhanced ver­sion of the app for iPhone and iPad was launched, with an improved, more intu­itive book­ing flow, mak­ing it even eas­i­er for cus­tomers to book hotel rooms, and giv­ing them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to book extras, such as break­fasts, to increase bas­ket size and encour­age repeat stays.

As a result of the redesign, con­ver­sion rates – the num­ber of book­ings made for each down­load – have near­ly dou­bled, from 3 to 5.9 per cent, and today more than 30 per cent of Pre­mier Inn’s sales come through the mobile chan­nel. The busi­ness is not rest­ing there, either; in 2014 it will launch “hub by Pre­mier Inn”, a new, com­pact city-cen­tre brand where cus­tomers can con­trol their entire hotel expe­ri­ence, includ­ing the tem­per­a­ture and light­ing of the room, using a smart­phone.

Oth­er busi­ness­es have fol­lowed. As a pure­ly online – and now mobile – retail­er, Notonthehighstreet.com faces even more pres­sure to inter­act and engage with cus­tomers, and has devel­oped into one of the lead­ing inter­net mer­chants of the past decade. With mobile traf­fic already account­ing for 30 per cent of its web traf­fic, the busi­ness turned to Moni­tise Cre­ate to devel­op a unique shop­ping expe­ri­ence for Christ­mas 2012, the year when 41 per cent of the UK pop­u­la­tion was expect­ed to buy gifts online.

The result was The Thought­ful Gift Find­er, which drew on the pow­er of social media to allow cus­tomers to select per­son­al­i­ty traits for their Face­book friends, and would then sug­gest intel­li­gent and rel­e­vant gift ideas for buy­ers. The appli­ca­tion also allowed cus­tomers to cre­ate a cal­en­dar of their friends’ and fam­i­ly mem­bers’ birth­days, ensur­ing they received reminders of impor­tant dates and tai­lored gift sug­ges­tions, help­ing to dri­ve sales and repeat busi­ness. The app was down­loaded more than 200,000 times in the first few weeks and to date has been down­loaded almost 400,000 times, becom­ing the sec­ond largest rev­enue chan­nel for the busi­ness and hit­ting return-on-invest­ment tar­gets six months ahead of sched­ule.

High­ly cus­tomer-focused ini­tia­tives are essen­tial for brands to attract new and repeat busi­ness in a com­pet­i­tive land­scape

Such high­ly cus­tomer-focused ini­tia­tives are essen­tial for brands want­i­ng to attract new and repeat busi­ness in such a com­pet­i­tive land­scape, says Adam Lev­ene, senior vice pres­i­dent of strat­e­gy at Moni­tise Cre­ate. “In the con­nect­ed age, first impres­sions count more than ever,” he says. “The ‘con­nect­ed con­sumer’ has greater expec­ta­tions, so it’s so impor­tant to cre­ate rich and easy-to-use mobile expe­ri­ences that remove the fric­tion of trans­act­ing.”

The trend towards devel­op­ing spe­cif­ic mobile plat­forms has been grow­ing over the past two or three years, but many organ­i­sa­tions have still to embrace the shift that has tak­en place in the mar­ket­place. Some have been hap­py to offer mobile ver­sions of exist­ing web­sites, but these are not user-friend­ly and do not encour­age cus­tomer inter­ac­tion. Putting a 16-dig­it card num­ber into a web­site viewed on a smart­phone is a cum­ber­some process and not one cus­tomers will want to under­take when there are oth­er options avail­able, includ­ing being able to store their card details in a secure fash­ion, as prac­tised by com­pa­nies such as Ama­zon and Apple.

Those busi­ness­es with a strong in-house team may look to devel­op a mobile plat­form them­selves, but oth­ers may find it more ben­e­fi­cial to part­ner with a third par­ty with a proven track record in deliv­er­ing secure and easy-to-use mobile prod­ucts. Moni­tise Cre­ate, for instance, has worked with major clients includ­ing Sam­sung, RBS and B&Q.

Suc­cess in mobile comes from a phi­los­o­phy which they call “Human First”, says Mr Lev­ene. “The first prin­ci­ple of Human First is how use­ful the prod­uct or ser­vice is that we’re cre­at­ing. Mobile is about mak­ing life eas­i­er; our approach means we always start by under­stand­ing the needs of the con­sumer and how to solve their pain points,” he says.

“The sec­ond is how con­tex­tu­al you can make the prod­uct. By under­stand­ing the consumer’s time of day, loca­tion and how they use those ser­vices, we can cre­ate mean­ing­ful propo­si­tions that com­ple­ment their lives. If it’s late in the evening and you’re in need of a room for the night, you will turn to the Pre­mier Inn appli­ca­tion in your pock­et that makes it eas­i­er to find and book the near­est hotel.

“The third prin­ci­ple is how visu­al we make the propo­si­tion. That’s not cre­ativ­i­ty for creativity’s sake; it’s about intu­itive design dri­ving per­for­mance and impact.”

An impor­tant and often over­looked stage of launch­ing a mobile propo­si­tion is mak­ing cus­tomers aware of the app. Through App Store opti­mi­sa­tion and pro­mo­tion through exist­ing chan­nels, such as social media or e‑mail cam­paigns, a busi­ness can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase down­loads. Turn­ing down­loads into cus­tomers, how­ev­er, requires a par­tic­u­lar focus on what the com­pa­ny calls “mobile CRM” [cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment]. This is an ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy that keeps engag­ing the cus­tomer through ini­tia­tives like tai­lored push noti­fi­ca­tions. Ulti­mate­ly get­ting the right propo­si­tion can dri­ve loy­al­ty and repeat busi­ness, says Mr Lev­ene, putting busi­ness­es at a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.

The dan­gers of ignor­ing this pow­er­ful new chan­nel for busi­ness­es are all too real, as can be seen in the dif­fi­cul­ties estab­lished names have expe­ri­enced after fail­ing to embrace the web ear­ly enough. “The rapid rise of mobile is prob­a­bly the most dis­rup­tive shift in busi­ness ever seen – and it’s hap­pen­ing a lot faster than with the web,” says Mr Lev­ene. “The busi­ness­es that embrace not just ‘mobile first’, but ‘human first’, will have the great­est long-term suc­cess.”