Data, User Experience and the Promise of Mobile Attribution

The main priority for top search engines, social networks and review sites today is staying on top of consumer habits. Brand marketers and their partnering solutions providers have an understanding of the fact that users today are multi-screen, omni-channel and overall highly Mobile. But to truly put consumer habits in context and fulfill the promise of mobile attribution, we have to get to the root of what matters: mobile user data and user experience.
Mobile User Data

The strategies to enhance the mobile user experience are disparate, so execution and tracking user interaction proves to be a challenge for a variety of advertisers. To solve this, Marketingland reported last month that Foursquare introduced a new advertising attribution product that concretely measures foot traffic to physical store locations. Shifting away from being compared to Social Media adversaries like Facebook, Foursquare is pivoting to serve as a layer for mobile data.

Outside of ad-targeting, mobile user data is a core asset that every brand has at their disposal. Understanding and unlocking the value of this data can help develop personalized, contextualized and enhanced UX strategies and drive foot traffic. It’s all about effectiveness, and mobile data can potentially better position marketers to strategize a seamless search experience and attribute more in-store visits based off of these strategies.

User Experience

Since the landscape of brand visibility is continuously evolving, we have noted a few recent industry shifts demonstrating that optimizing for the user experience, while often a daunting, is an inevitable must for ultimately tracking attribution. Below are a few key UX strategies to consider:

1. AMP - Google has started giving the opportunity to have faster-performing article pages using its new AMP feature. On the backend, the AMP project eliminates portions of web page Javascript and can deliver up to what Google says is 85% faster mobile page speed than previous performances. So why was this a priority for Google? With mobile users, expectations of speed, fluid and accurate data retrieval are high, no matter when or where they may be searching from. While AMP is focused on high traffic publishers, brand marketers should take note that at this point, Google’s John Mueller has indicated that at the moment AMP is not a ranking signal, but an opportunity to become more mobile friendly. It’s only a matter of time until AMP finds a way to support richer, location-based drivers like store locators and local pages to virtual storefronts and bring in brick-and-mortar traffic.
   

2. Right Rail Ads - Ad placement is also starting to directly impact user experience on search. We recently reported that Google had removed ads in its right rail column, increasing the volume for highly commercial queries on top of the organic pack and search results. This has a direct correlation with how mobile users are directing their attention to organic listings on both desktop and mobile. And most importantly, this impacts the way other players in the search game (namely Bing) are working on their end to enhance the user experience and absorb more search share. Now, the opportunity is in shifting spend toward ads and/or revisiting SEO tactics to attain the highest organic above the fold or first mobile screen.

3.  Deep Linking-For brands who have already started running in the Mobile race with proprietary apps, deep linking should be a priority. What some call “the new frontier of SEO,” app indexing and deep-linking local content for seamless user search discovery is what mobile-minded marketers should consider shifting their strategy toward in order to connect with customers, who spend 18x more in apps than the mobile web (Comscore reports). The Google App Indexing API and Apple Search APIs are increasingly indexing in order to deliver mobile web value, and brands can capitalize on this opportunity.

The promise of mobile attribution directly speaks to marketers’ ability to unlock the value of their mobile data, develop effective UX strategies and attribute the success of those strategies to physical store visits. With Brandify Mobile, we’re helping brands do just that. Mobile Attribution Insights gives marketers the ability to answer top-level inquiries about local search ROI as it relates to mobile visitors. If you want to learn about who is walking in to your locations, and how you can bring in more customers,  it’s time to become your brand’s Chief Location Officer.

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