Local Search & Mobile: Emerging Trends Small Business Should Know About

Local searches on mobile phone continue to grow day by day. People are using their smartphones to search local things and also look for services like doctors, hospitals, schools, restaurants, and much more. This article will let the small business owner know why their business should be locally optimized for mobile. This article includes the following:

• Search trends on internet
• Local search Trends
• Search trends on local mobile search

Internet Search Trends

• 74% of Internet users perform local searches.
• 66% of American's use online local search, like Google local search to locate local businesses.
• More than 100 million people a month use Google Maps from mobile phones to find business information.

Local Search Trends

• 61% of local searches result in purchases.
• 82% of local searches follow up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or purchase.
• As much as 43% of Google Search traffic has local content!
• Consumer said they would buy in store versus store when they are: close to store. (30%), could get the product quickly (35%), and saw better pricing (31%).

Local Search Trends on Mobile

• 54% of Americans have substituted the internet and local search for phone books.
• Microsoft has claimed that 53% of mobile searches on Bing are local in nature.
• Mobile local searches for local information are expected to grow from 27.8% in 2008 to 35.1% by 2013.
• Nearly one in two shoppers for local products and services are using their smartphones.
• Over 50% of local searches for businesses happen on mobile devices. With 79% of smartphones users and 81% of tablet users reporting that they use their device for local searches.
• 50% of consumers who visit a store within a day of their local search use their smartphone. 34% of consumers who visit a store within a day of their local search use their computer and tablet.
• Consumer behaviour before visiting store and while in store: 1 in 3 searches smartphone occur right before consumer visit a store. 15% of in store activities involve conducting smart phone searches about a product or for price comparison.
• 4 in 5 consumers conduct local searches on search engines. 88% users use their mobile device and 88% users use computer and tablet to perform this searches.
• Consumers use their smartphone for local search to find business information like business hours (54%), direction to local store (53), local store address (50%). Consumers use their computer/tablet to find information like availability of product at local store (45%), business hours (42%), local store address (38%).
• Over 60% of smartphone owner access local content via app.
• 60% mobile consumers expect business to be within distance.
• 1 out of 3 smartphone users search specifically for contact info like phone number and driving direction.
• 63% people who do local searches typically buy within 1 hour. 66% mobile searches conducted in a store are used to help making purchasing decision.

People have now become more tech savvy and prefer to use their smartphones to find and search various things on internet. Gone are those days when people used to visit their nearest local store to buy something. Time has taken a big leap forward. Now people use internet to compare price and read reviews on their smartphone, tablet, laptop and mobile before going to buy anything. The above data shows that local searches have now gone mobile and use of smartphone is continuously growing for local search as it helps users to make better decision in buying things online or from local store. Now it has become essential for small business owners to optimise their business locally for mobile competitive advantage.

(This post is brought to you by an enterprise application development company providing custom web and enterprise mobile application development services to global business)

Ref:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140403171335-26818297-local-internet-marketing-statistics
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2343577/Google-Local-Searches-Lead-50-of-Mobile-Users-to-Visit-Stores-Study
http://searchengineland.com/report-mobile-traffic-to-local-sites-growing-faster-than-total-internet-now-at-27-percent-158139
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2265547/46-of-Searchers-Now-Use-Mobile-Exclusively-to-Research-Study

Native or Cross Platform Mobile App: How to Decide Which One is Right for Your Business

If you are in a business and still not developed mobile application for your business then it is time to go for that. As mobile tech has changed the way of communication, consumers are shifting from desktop to mobile. Mobile internet users are continuously growing. A research shows that 91% of USA adult population owns a cell phone and 61% of them smartphone users. It has been predicted that by the end of this year 1 billion smartphones will be sold which is double than the PC estimated to sell.

The above data shows that mobile tech is emerging as a new platform to boost your business. May be now you have turned up your mind and agreed to build mobile application but not sure which type of mobile app will be right for your business as mobile market is flooded with varied platforms.

Let us discuss here which type of mobile app you should go for, native app or cross platform.

Native App

Native mobile app is developed to be used on a particular platform like iOS or Android. It can run on a single platform. The key benefits of native mobile app are better user experience and reliability. To decide if native mobile app will be right for you just check the traffic status of your website. If your mobile traffic is limited to a specific mobile platform then you need to develop native app specifically for that platform.

Cross platform mobile app

Cross platform is basically developed to be used on all major mobile platforms like iOS, Android, Blackberry etc. Cross platform offers many benefits like greater reach, uniform look and feel, low development cost, easy marketing and more.

To decide if you need to go for cross platform app or not check your audience demographic on mobile devices. If business audiences come through all major mobile platforms then you need to develop cross mobile app. This write-up is limited to how to decide what type of mobile app you should go for. This does not describe about mobile website. This is helpful for you in case you are going to build mobile app. But before going to build mobile app you should check if your business needs mobile app or mobile website.

7 Amazing New Features in iOS 8 You Need to Know

The release of Apple’s new operating system has unleashed a bevy of new features and updates in an ongoing effort to improving user experience. Subtle changes can have a major impact on functionality, and Apple’s improvements have aimed to do just that. Available as a free upgrade to iPhone’s 4s and newer, here’s some of what you can expect!

-Photos

Apple’s photos now have a comprehensive searching method that allows you to search by time, location, date or album. You can even use a smart search function by entering keywords that pertain to the photo you are looking for.

Advanced editing features allow greater photo manipulation, as you can choose to manually adjust settings like brightness or shadowing.

-Typing

It’s been long overdue really. iPhone has not messed with the functionality of its keyboard since pretty much its conception. They have finally stepped it up a notch with the introduction of typing predictions that are so advanced it can even differentiate between the contacts you are messaging and adjust its predictions accordingly.

-Messaging

Now, a simple swipe or tap to your phone can easily send image, audio and video files. It is also possible to mute and exit group conversations, as well as quickly send locator maps to an acquaintance you are meeting. No more dreaded repetition by having to reenter an address into a search engine!

-Health Application

One of the proud revelations at this year’s Apple reveal, Home Kit will be available on iPhone’s 5s or newer! Installed motion processors get to use the new Apple Health App, which logs physical activity.

-Apple Pay

Another innovative reveal this year was Apple’s mobile payment system, called Apple Pay. An upgrade to iOS 8 system means you can start using this convenient wireless payment method on the iPhone 6 or 6 plus.

-Sharing

In a generous move by Apple, the new Family Sharing Feature allows a user to share pretty much any of their iTunes purchases, like books or movies with users they have approved.

-iCloud Drive

Similar to Google Drive or Dropbox, the iCloud Drive allows you to browse, edit and share files across different Apple Devices. Mac users beware however! You’ll have to wait until the OS X Yosemite operating system update is released later this year.

With such a diverse range of upgrades it’s kind of hard to choose our favorite (Although a speedier typing experience thanks to predictions is a definite contender). What are you most looking forward to, and why?

This post originally appeared at  here

(Omnie Solutions is an enterprise application development company providing custom web and enterprise mobile application development services for leading mobile platforms like iOS, Android, and Rim to global business. Follow Omnie Solutions on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn).

The Future of Mobile Application Development [Infographic]

Mobile apps are expected to grow exponentially in such areas as healthcare, mobile commerce, and object recognition, and with Gartner predicting a large-scale change in development practices, the need for a workforce of mobile application developers is here. The UAB Collat School of Business crafted a beautifully designed graphic outlining the impressive statistics surrounding the Future of Mobile Application Development.

University of Alabama at Birmingham Online

Why Your Business Needs Both Mobile Apps and Mobile Website?

In this technology era, you should be well aware of the fact that trends in technology are booming ahead at the speed of light. So you need to be well acquainted with latest trends in technology especially those who run consumer facing business. Simply relying on traditional pattern can be risky for your business. We all know that computers have now become almost obsolete. With the introduction of mobile technology the landscape of consumer behaviour and the way we do business has completely changed. Number of mobile users are now on rise and it has been predicted that by 2014 mobile internet users will overtake desktop users. Please have look at the below graphical presentation which clearly shows the rise in the mobile internet users.

And if we talk about smartphones then it will not be wrong to say that it has completely changed the consumer’s behaviour and they are using it for conversation purpose, online shopping and also for gamming. Number of smartphone users are rapidly increasing and it has been predicted that by the end of 2016 there will be 2.5 billion smartphones in the world, and according to the Juniper Research annual smartphone sales will surpass one billion per year.

After knowing about these trends, if you are still following traditional pattern then you are really making a big mistake. To exist in this competitive market you need to shift your business towards the mobility side Every business owner who is directly dealing with consumers can face many challenges while shifting their business over the mobile platform. The most common challenge is to decide which one out of mobile app or mobile business will be appropriate for their business.

Having developed both mobile app and mobile website for your business can give you a better competitive edge over your competitors.

Mobile App for Better Performance for Privilege Users

Mobile app for your business is essential for your regular usage because mobile app provides better mobile user experience. It is easily downloadable and accessible and does not require internet in most of apps cases. There is no need to access your business again and again via internet.

As per the details by Compuware it has been suggested that these days’ consumer preferences are totally in favour of mobile apps i.e. 85% ahead of the mobile websites. The most common reason for it is that these apps are more convenient (55%), faster (48%) and easier to browse (40%). The below snapshot shows the benefit of mobile apps vs. mobile sites.

Mobile Website for Better Engagement for new Users

Having mobile app for your business is fine but you should not neglect mobile website. Offering mobile website with mobile apps can give you better competitive benefits. In most of the cases new users are not much aware about your business and do not find it comfortable to download or install your business app. By offering access via both mobile apps and mobile website users can get the flexibility to access business websites without any restrictions. At last we can say that developing both mobile app and mobile website can require little more budget but building them can actually provide long term competitive benefits to your business.

(This information is brought to you by a web application development company providing custom web and enterprise mobile application development services to global business)

Google Glass App Development - Next Wave After iPhone App

The day when Apple launched iPhone no one would have ever imagined that it will revolutionize the mobile apps. Today more than 1.2 million apps are available in App Store with over 75 billion download apps. Google Glass which is a revolutionary device with many consumer and business capabilities is also picking up the similar trend. Google Glass is a wearable device which was developed

Yahoo Live Web Insights: Free Mobile App for Real Time Visitor Tracking

Online competition is becoming intense and every business wants to capture more and more number of consumers which are doing online shopping. Accessing the previous day data is very useful because it gives the business owners some analytics about what is being liked and what is not. However, in this current fast pace environment access the data which is 24 hours old is really not good enough. One has to monitor the real time data in order to grab hold of the current visitor on the website.

Smartphone Apps are Changing Consumer’s Shopping Behavior

Is mobile apps are changing the shopping behavior of customers? If we look at the recent studies then the answer is, yes! According to the recent studies, about 66% or 2/3rd of the US consumers are more likely to buy from the shop having a mobile app compared to the one which doesn’t have an app.

Hybrid Mobile App: Alternative Solution to Fill the Gap between Native App and Web App

Hybrid mobile app

With the increasing demand of the hybrid app, Gartner has stated by 2016 around 60% of mobile apps will be hybrid with the remaining 40% being split i.e. 30%-10% to web apps and native apps. Hybrid apps; as the name suggests is the heterogeneous source composed of the elements of native and web apps. It is usually written in a web-based code such as JavaScript, CSS and HTML like any other web application with an only difference that it runs on a device rather than a webpage or it runs inside a native container on a mobile device. In short, it is the combination of web technology and the native execution.

iOS Vs. Android: Which One is the Leader?

And the debate is still on between iOS and android which is better or superior? With the release of iOS7 there are many who claimed there is nothing which can beat this operating system and on the other hand, the Android lovers still think iOS is too basic and there is nothing fancy and innovative about it.

FireChat: Another Mobile App that Let You Chat Without a Data-Connection

It’s now a history where people used normal SMS for sending messages to each other when the revolutionary internet messaging called WhatsApp started not much earlier but just in June 2009. And after this launch; it not just changed the whole mode of communication over the smartphones but also affected the BBM messaging immensely. Nowadays even a BlackBerry owner uses WhatsApp to send messages.

Mobile Web Is Not Dead But Mobile App Will Rule the Future

There are many companies who are still in the dilemma whether to go for dedicated mobile apps or a mobile website? In the early stages of m-commerce there was a lot of debate over this topic – Mobile Apps VS Mobile Site. But with the emerging time, companies have understood the importance of mobile apps. Although it’s still primarily based on the need and requirements of the company to decide whether they should go with mobile website or mobile app.

Looking at the latest report submitted by Compuware suggests that consumer preference is strongly in the favor of mobile apps these days i.e. 85% ahead of the mobile websites. And the most common reason for it is that – apps are seen to be more convenient (55%), faster (48%) and easier to browse (40%). Below you can see the benefit of mobile apps vs. mobile sites –

If we check the status, a common person who uses mobile phones in daily purposes mostly for gaming, social media networking and bit of internet browsing for any information after calling and messaging and where messaging has gone to its another level which is again an application that uses your mobile internet and with this you can sent free messages all across the world e.g. WhatsApp, Line and Viber etc.

Twitter Acquires Cover, an Android Screen Locker - To Improve Its Mobile Services

 

Twitter has acquired Cover, an android screen locker app that lets you customise what apps you see and when. You can read more on how Cover works here.

“We’re excited to announce that we are taking a turn today as we bring the Cover team to Twitter to take these ideas even further” says on Cover blog post.

“Twitter, like Cover, believes in the incredible potential of Android. They share our vision that smartphones can be a lot smarter — more useful and more contextual — and together we’re going to make that happen. We’ll be building upon a lot of what makes Cover great, and we’re thrilled to create something even better at Twitter.”

Say Goodbye to E-Commerce and Get Ready to Welcome M-Commerce

 

 
Do you remember the time, when you use to go to the super market to buy products? Yes, we all do. Then with the popularity of telephone, people have started calling for home delivery then the time came when we all became too lazy to even call the super market and started using the concept of e-commerce. It looks like now we also have to say good bye to e-commerce because m-commerce is making its way at a very rapid pace in our lives.

Interesting Smartphone App Store Statistics [Infographic]

Smartphones are now important parts of everyone lives. We love to play games, use apps and think to do new and new things from mobile phone, this amazing infographic made to show the smartphone stats and app store stats of iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows phone. According to this
infographic, 53% of smartphone users play games daily and it's correct because I use to play games daily and 70-80% of apps downloads are from the game category, there are more amazing stats to show the Smartphone App Store Statistics, look into this and share your views in comments section below:

Cancer Can Be Cured By Mobile Game App - Play to Cure: Genes in Space

Cancer is one of the deadliest decease of this world which is affecting about 4.9 percent people all over the world. In order to effectively fight with this decease, the scientist at Cancer Research UK have developed an interesting game which will hook the players to the game while helping the scientist to analyze the genetic data which they have gathered in recent years. Play to Cure: Genes in Space is the world's first free mobile game that uses the collective force of players to analyze real genetic data and help beat cancer sooner," notes the game's description.

Mobile App or Mobile Friendly Website: 4 Helpful Points for Your Better Decision

Before you can estimate the advantage of a Mobile App vs. a Mobile Website it’s significant to understand the key differences between the two. Both Mobile Website and App are retrieved on handheld devices such as tablets and Smartphones.

Apple iPhone 5S Beats Samsung and Nexus in the Google Trends 2013

Even after Steve Jobs, the legacy of being unique and trend setter has been continued by the management of Apple Inc. This fact was again came into the light when Google trends 2013 has launched the list of “Top Consumer Electronics 2013”.

iPhone 5S topped the chart whereas second position was grabbed by Samsung Galaxy S4 and PlayStation was able to secure 3rd position in the list. Other products which were able to make it to the top list were Xbox, Nexus, HTC one, iPad Air etc.

Why You Should Invest in IBM Worklight Whereas PhoneGap is Available at No Cost

About IBM Worklight there are many assumptions that show it is quite similar to PhoneGap as many enterprises and customers are still confused as why they should go for this highly paid tool as some other tools are available completely free of cost. It is quite obvious for the enterprises to raise this question but they should not only be concerned about its expenditure but what matters is what one gets after spending on it ROI i.e. return on investment.

However there lies much of difference between IBM Worklight and PhoneGap.

How Market Share And Use Of Cell Phones Is Increasing (Infographic)

Keeping Mobile phones or Mobile devices in today’s world is no big deal. In current age, people have more than one mobile devices at their home and even personally they own more than one mobile device. Due to portability and usability, smartphones have been wildly adopted at an increasing rate over the last few years. This infographic includes the market share and the use of these mobile device; the market share of the operating systems and device owners by age etc.

Questions That Help You Make Decisions on Your Mobile App

Mobile applications add value and style to businesses. With smart mobile devices getting popular by the day, it is wise to go with the changing trends. However, building mobile applications for businesses involve quite an amount, research, and time. Here are a few rudimentary questions that can help you find your way in the complex world of mobile applications. Although your app developer can suggest you a few solutions, most of them are biased. They either recommend a mobile platform they are familiar with or simply suggest you things that could escalate their profits. This is why learning some of the basics in app development will help you choose the right path when it comes to building an app for your business.

4 Insider Tips To Get Your Mobile App Development Campaign Noticed

One of the biggest challenges in successful mobile app development right now is getting noticed amidst the various products available. In 2013 the number of people using mobile phones for the Internet, surpassed those making use of computers, laptops or tablets for internet access, and companies that can develop successful apps really can integrate properly into the digital environment. Here are four important tips that will get your app noticed.

1. You Are Not Trying To Win a Design Award

Sure you have to maintain a certain standard when it comes to aesthetics, and style plays a big part of how readily your app will be consumed, but ultimately it is functionality that is the most important part of what the app does. The experts also warn against adopting skeuomorphic design, or designing an app to resemble something exactly as it is in real life. Flat designs are far more sophisticated and upmarket. By now people know that digital imagery is not real, so there’s no point in trying to fake it.