Content area
Full text
'Wearables like Google Glass and iWatch add yet another layer of convenience. ... '
While smartphone technology has been around since the early 1990s, it was Apple's release of the iPhone in 2007 that made it cool to be "smart." Today, according to Pew Research Internet Project's January 2014 research, more than 90% of American adults have a cellphone-58% have smartphones. Others put the adoption much higher. Regardless, there is no question that the use of smartphones is on an upward spiral. Marketers have taken notice and reached out to consumers through a wide range of mobile advertising options, from pop-up ads and videos to native advertising, in-app advertising, and more.
Peggy Anne Salz is an expert in mobile search, mobile marketing, and mobile technologies. She is the founder of MobileGroove and the co-author of The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps. Despite the easy-to-understand focus on the technology, though, Salz says that marketers whose focus includes basic customer engagement have an edge. Technology, she says, "should not cloud the issue or the core of what we're discussing here, which is, 'How do I connect with my customers?'"
In 2014, she saw a shift back to the basics. "The discussion has finally moved on, and we're completely focused on the user experience and user interface. The user is finally central where they should have been from the start-but it took us a while."
THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Mobile exploded in 2014. In fact, Monetate's "Ecommerce Quarterly Report" (EQ2 2014) indicates that mobile traffic increased 120% during the past year, overtaking traffic from tablets, which grew by only 35 % (desktop traffic, as might be expected, was relatively...