Getting Mobilized

Good Mobile Web Design:

1 - Chipotle: chipotle.com

Chipotle’s web page is an example of consideration of proper mobile design. For starters they made sure to program the top toolbar to hold its place at the top of the page no matter how far down you scroll so that users are always able to easily access its features. What makes the design even more genius is that when you tap the icon for the toolbar, the tool bar opens in a horizontal matter & fills the whole screen and readers can easily read the extra large font for it on their small mobile screens. The webpage is properly programmed to fill the confinements of a mobile screen and is nicely segmented to keep the page looking clean and concise.

2 - Disney Parks Blog: disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog

Another example of a website designed with mobile in mind is the Disney Parks Blog. When you load the page. Each article is cleanly segmented into its own box when scrolling down the page. The article of each title is in extra large font to maximize readability on small mobile screens. Like Chipotle, the Disney Parks Blog was smart to have a toolbar that opens from the side and fills up the full screen. When you open up a blog post, the background stays formatted for a mobile screen and so the article text doesn’t go off screen.

3 - Asos: us.asos.com

The final example of great mobile web design I will use is for the retailer Asos. When you open up their homepage on a mobile device a pop up occurs at the bottom encouraging you to download & open their mobile app. This demonstrates that their mobile viewers aren’t forgotten as they’ve developed an app to ease mobile navigation. Still, their mobile web design is clean with a sidebar for category options and search bar & other functions at the top of the screen.

The visual is large & takes up the entire screen & it prompts you towards two simple options: men vs women’s clothing. Overall a very sleek look and its apparent their mobile audience was kept in mind.

Poor Mobile Web Design:

1 - Pinpics: pinpics.com

The premise of this webpage is supposed to be documentation/ archive of all pins ever created by the Disney company. When you load the page on a mobile device it might look okay at base value but then you realize that it is just a fraction of the normal webpage. If you pinch to zoom out, you can see the whole webpage and you realize that you cannot see a majority of the site functions/top toolbar when you load the page on mobile. Basic web functions such as the page’s search bar, about page, & privacy are all unintentionally hidden from view on mobile screens. You can also see how the background is not formatted to fill the screen thus leaving a majority of the screen with a white background. To better their website for mobile they should figure out how to make the webpage load scaled down for mobile to access site functions as well as to keep the background constant.

2- Rancho Palos Verdes Parks & Recreation: apm.activecommunities.com/rpv

This next example was set up using the Active Digital marketing company for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes and its parks and recreation facilities. It is obvious that there is no further configuration for mobile devices as the website just displays in full and adds white space at the bottom of the screen to fill the screen. None of its features are optimized for mobile viewing as everything on the page is proportioned to the normal website layout and thus tiny. By not taking mobile viewers into consideration, this page loses out on the opportunity for their interest by not making the page readable in the slightest.

3 - Fu Yuan Low Chinese restaurant: fuyuanlow.com

This final example of poor mobile web design is for a Chinese restaurant called Fu Yuan Low. The saving point of the site is that there is a top & sidebar menu to use for menu options. Otherwise it is clear that they have little regard for their mobile audience. The mobile website home page is entirely blank other than the name & a box saying it’s been around for 30 years (conversely the desktop website does contain other things). By not optimizing their mobile homepage for their audience, Fu Yuan Low deters mobile consumers from further doing business.

I encountered this mobile engagement when I was using the Safari web browser on my phone. I went to access the menu page for Mod Pizza and encountered the following on the bottom of the page. 

I thought it was a clear bold statement to have a title page of sorts for the menu with a simple picture & text and the only other thing on the page is an offer to learn more about their rewards program. Those who don’t care can then click through to the menu but the CTA on this opening menu page is to learn about their rewards . This is a clever tactic to divert traffic from a highly visited page (the menu) to this rewards program which ends up being a page that links to their mobile app (pictured below). They clearly thought this through as those accessing the website on a mobile device would obviously be the perfect target audience for their mobile app. I also like how they draw in audiences with the promise of a reward instead of blatantly blasting their app. Mod Pizza clearly defines the benefit for the audience- rewards- to incentivize them enough to download the app. In conclusion, I think this is a highly successful mobile engagement as they clearly thought through on how to best promote their mobile app by diverting traffic from the menu and drawing in customers with rewards.

I also wanted to includ this example of mobile marketing as it is a tactic I have not seen before or at least not commonly. On Tuesday night at 11:15PM I saw the following mobile ad on the social media platform Facebook. The mobile ad was from shopDisney and it was offering special discounts on certain amounts spent, but you had to spend and redeem these discount rates before 7AM the next day. I thought it was interesting that the target audience was obviously a late night crowd. I assume the company was either trying to incentivize more spending from a late night audience, testing to see whether a limited time deal would increase late night sales, or something else along those lines. I think that is a creative tactic to test out/ learn more about your late night audience/demographic.

YouTube was established first as a website and later on created a mobile app for viewers. Unlike the other three media platforms already mentioned, there is no chronological timeline that is central to usage. When looking at YouTube, there are a number of ways the website allows mobile marketers to promote their products. Upon opening the website there is always a wide form box at the top of the page that very big scale marketers buy into to display their content. The mobile app adapts this and has a placed ad spot at the top of the homescreen. When watching a video there are usually ads before (or for longer content, during) a video as well as a right hand sidebar that allows ad placement when watching on desktop. The mobile application loses neither of these as ads still play before videos on the app and the ads on the right hand column are directly placed below the video instead.

So far I have been talking about promotional space on the platforms that allow for marketers to promote their content and ads. It is here under YouTube that I will mention influencer marketing. While influencer marketing is definitely huge on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, these posts appear as all other paid for content does: on the newsfeed (and/ stories for FB & IG). YouTube influencer marketing is a bit different from the other three I have discussed as the platform is not primarily organized around a central newsfeed. So I wanted to point out that marketers also have an opportunity to promote their content IN influencers actual content with sponsored videos that will mention the company & its product. Again YES the other platforms I’ve discussed have influencer marketing but here it manifests in the content itself rather than the entire purpose of the content. As the promotion is IN the actual content the mobile app version does not lose out on this type of marketing either.

For further clarification think of how an influencer promoting a product on Instagram would take a picture with the product, so the product is the whole reason for the post. On YouTube influencers can create content completely unrelated to the product and then mention the product briefly. For example this video I have linked below by creator Anna Akana. The focus of the video is “How to get stuff done” while the promoted product she speaks about at the end is the Google Chromebook. While Akana does segue & try to tie the video focus into talking about the Chromebook, the Chromebook is not the central focus of the content. 

“How to get stuff done” by Anna Akana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kk5QxB9lWk

The first mobile marketing placed ad I encountered was for Spotify. Spotify was trying to promote their podcasts to the target audience which was music listeners, and perhaps more specifically Spotify users. The content of the tweet featured a simple sentence “Discover your new favorite podcast for free on Spotify” and used a special hashtag for the campaign “#PodcastsonSpotify”. The tweet also featured a video clip switching between images of available podcasts for listening. (which I am a part of). They had a clear and cohesive call-to-action which was “Listen now on Spotify” which when clicked opens up to another screen which then has a button that takes you directly to the Spotify application. Overall I thought this was a simple yet successful mobile marketing job and I especially like how the campaign was branded with their own hashtag.

The first advertisement I ran into on the Instagram platform was by The Coffee Bean and they were marketing their new maple products. The caption of the post read “Magnificently Maple. Hints of maple syrup blend with the deep flavor of caramelized brown sugar in this new fall favorite. Try it today.” The only text on the image said “Try it hot, iced, or blended.” The target audience for this post was coffee drinkers and maybe more specifically maple lovers. Visually this was a beautiful clean ad and the products looked very enticing. However I was highly confused as the caption & images were focused on the maple products, but the hyperlink was to their Santa Monica store. I was highly confused (as I don’t live near Santa Monica & haven’t visited recently) and was unclear if Coffee Bean meant these were only available at their Santa Monica location as they failed to mention. As beautiful as the visuals were and as much as I love coffee, I would consider this an unsuccessful mobile marketing attempt as the caption & visuals were completely different than the call-to-action for the post. I think this would’ve been successful if they had targeted this towards those who live in Santa Monica or have visited recently, but as I have neither lived nor recently visited Santa Monica it is unsuccessful in marketing this ad to me. Another way they could’ve bettered their attempt is carrying the new maple drinks through to the call-to-action and either link to a website page discussing the new drink line or providing a “find locations near me” link.

In this post I will be evaluating a Facebook mobile marketing advertisement in the style of the forum post discussion from this week. The company using marketing was TheLongHairs and they were using mobile marketing to try and sell their “hair ties for guys”. The target market for these is obviously guys with long hair as it states in the product name. An old professor of mine said the following about marketing: “If you don’t understand an ad, then you’re probably not the target market”. In this case I am definitely not in the target market but I did enjoy the content they provided. The advertisement was highly humorous and engaging, and I think the target market might be inclined to purchase just on the humor used in the ad alone despite the absolute absurdity that things such as hair ties could be distinguished by gender. Surprisingly I would in fact say, this is a successful marketing ploy due to the humor in the video.

Ad description: The advertisement is a two minute long video. The video can be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/YoLonghairs/videos/10101512946904381/

One of the main social media apps I use on a regular basis is Facebook. One success of the Facebook mobile app that mirrors the desktop version is ad placement that consumers will come across while scrolling down their public newsfeed. Facebook mobile is limited in layout so it makes sense that their mobile app primarily focuses on a streamlined newsfeed view. However, one of the biggest limitations I spot when comparing Facebook mobile to desktop is the lack of a sidebar. The Facebook desktop website has a right hand column and usually at the bottom will have ad placements. There is no right hand column for Facebook mobile and therefore the app misses out on this opportunity. So I conclude that Facebook mobile app has missed marketing opportunities when compared to the desktop version.

Below is a picture highlighting the right hand column placement of an advertisement that the Facebook mobile application is missing.