Mobile Trends for 2012
With the New Year just around the corner, I though it fitting to put together some of my thoughts on what’s next for mobile.
Gamification of the mundane:
One of the biggest mistakes that mobile marketers currently make is the quest to invent instead of innovate. Inventing a mobile experience that tries to create new behaviors can have a big impact, but the likelihood of success is very low. On the other hand there are many mundane activities that people do every single day that can use some innovation to spice up our lives.
For example, take Chromaroma. It leverages existing habitual actions that people do every day and turns it into a mobile game. Finding these habits or routines and leverage them to an online experience is very simple, but smart. You’re going to see this happening more and more in the next couple of years—routine, mundane daily tasks being transformed into mobile social games.
Geolocation awareness:
I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, but we’re going to see more and more mobile experiences that offer deals based on your geolocation; however, there are problems with relevancy and control on the users end. Mobile devices are very personal to users and offering deals that are close to them doesn’t mean they’re relevant or wanted. Identifying a person’s interest online and crossing the divide into the real world will be the crucial next step in geolocation awareness.
Foursquare’s “save to Foursquare” button is a good example of this. The differences of “save to Fourquare” and other buttons is that it reaches into the real world. If you’ve saved a restaurant review, for example, and you’re near that restaurant later (and have radar enabled) you’ll get a notification that the place is in your To-Do List.
A new type of window shopper:
Geolocation applications can be very powerful, but there is nothing more “local” than someone physically standing outside your shop. 2D barcodes, NFC and image recognition will play a big role here. Allowing passersby to purchase items while they’re window shopping, letting them save and capture items they want to purchase or research later, and giving them price comparisons for other shops near their geolocation with better deals will merge real world and online shopping like never before.
The combination of storefront window shopping, the advancement of mobile payments and social currency means there’s going to be a whole new meaning to window shopping.
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