Mobile Tech & Business Blog

MSIA is a church and spiritual organization based in Los Angeles, CA, USA. For over a decade, their website at www.msia.org served well both as a powerful fundraising tool, and in providing information and other services to their congregation. In 2009, they decided a full rebuild of the web site was in order. Being aware of the rapid growth in Internet smartphones, Web manager Deborah Martinez decided the new website must be mobile friendly.

Just how big is the mobile web? A recent mobile market report by comScore gives us the data to figure it out.

The bottom line: 74 Million American adults looked at a website in their mobile phone this past May 2010. Wow! And that number is growing every month.

You're probably familiar with using social networking tools, like Facebook and Twitter, to put a personal face on your business. Letting people know there is a personality behind a corporation is a great way to attract new customers and instill loyalty in the customers you have. But It's important to remember that not every personality is appreciated, especially now that the mobile internet is becoming the most personal form of media the world has ever seen.

“Technological convergence” is a fancy name for a simple idea: that over time, different technology systems will evolve to let you do similar tasks. Looking at mobile, device convergence means that if you can do something with a particular phone right now, you would expect to be able to do it on ANY phone before too long.

For years, mobile device convergence faced tremendous obstacles. But finally a real solution is emerging: an important technology called HTML5. Let me explain.

Will you be in San Francisco this Wednesday, July 28th? Attend the Mobile Web & Marketing Workshop! Thanks to the Small Business Administration for hosting. Admission is free, but seating is limited. Sign up here.

In Inc. magazine yesterday, Mobile Web Up founder Aaron Maxwell shared how SMBs can benefit from geolocation apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.

Most of all, evaluate how your active marketing through a geolocation service will propel business. “It's not about Foursquare or MyTown or whatever else is hot this week,” Maxwell says. “It's about what investment of a company's time, energy and resources will create the greatest value moving forward.”

Read "Get Your Business on the Geolocation Map"

Here's some news from the banking and credit union industry:

• Banks with mobile capture twice their normal share of customers switching banks - 16% vs the typical 8%
• Attrition is 12% lower for customers that use mobile banking
• 60% of younger consumers use mobile as a deciding factor when selecting a new bank

To quote Bob Hedges of Mercatus: “Making the business case for mobile banking is like making the business case for oxygen.” It really isn't an option anymore.

When setting up a website for your business, you have a lot of ground to cover. You need to include an eye-catching yet professional design, service and contact information, website security, easy updating ability, and more.

By squeezing all of these features into a site, many businesses sacrifice loading time. Ironically, this is one of the most important factors in customer interest!

Converting a website from something that will look good on the average laptop, to something that will display quickly and easily on the average phone, means paying attention to a thousand little details. Sometimes simple changes mean significant increases in sales.

Fandango gets up to 20% of its weekend ticket sales from mobile phones!

According to Fandango's CMO Ted Hong, on some weekends the company sees up to 20% of advance movie ticket sales come through mobile.

Source: OMMA Mobile Reflections: Now It Gets Serious

Will you be in Northern California next week? If so, you don't want to miss the annual San Francisco Small Business Week - a series of powerful educational workshops and networking events, geared to small and mid-sized businesses.

It's tricky. Technology can tremendously help your business: lowering costs through automation, and opening new channels for sales and service.

The flip side of that is obvious: the rapidly-changing edge of technology, well, rapidly changes. And that means something that works today may suddenly not work well tomorrow.