Group items tagged

The earthquake that devastated Haiti nearly two years ago was followed by a massive relief effort that was supported in part by millions of dollars in donations by people who used mobile phones to text $5 or $10 to disaster aid groups.

Mobile giving has also gotten religion -- literally. Some churches in Los Angeles and parts of Arizona have recently tested systems that allow their members use cellphones to make their Sunday-morning offerings virtually, instead of dropping coins, bills or envelopes in a plate passed down the pew.

Many disaster aid campaigns have relied on contributions of fixed amounts, such as $5 or $10, via texting, with wireless carriers dropping the texting fees and collecting the donations to distribute to charities. But new tools make it possible to make more generous donations via an SMS message or a smartphone app linked to a credit card or other account, Plank said.

Though studies are showing that only a small percentage of Americans have actually used QR codes, many mobile marketing experts are warning companies not to give up on the technology just yet, and that they should seriously consider working them into their marketing strategies for this year.

The fact is that while the majority of Americans may not have used the barcodes yet, it doesn’t mean that they won’t do so in the future.

Data from Forrester has shown that 5 percent of the people in the country have scanned a QR code, which represents approximately 14 million consumers. These individuals are most likely to be male, young, and affluent. While some may believe that this means that the opportunity for the codes is too narrow, others disagree.

The smartphone shopping share rose from 13.3 percent in Q1, to 15.1 percent in Q2.

During the same time period, sales made through social media dropped to 1.9 percent, from having been 2.4 percent. The mobile marketing numbers from the Online Retail Sales Index from IBM showed that the overall positive feeling regarding social media fell to 18.6 percent from 25.1 percent.

These digital coupons are often used as an incentive to encourage mobile consumers to scan a QR code or interact with an NFC-based advertisement.

55% of mobile consumers in the U.S. are interested in receiving mobile coupons, especially through interaction with NFC technology. The report notes, however, that only 10% of consumers have ever received a coupon.

Proximity based, action oriented marketing solutions saw an exponential growth to its demand last year, and a Smith’s Point Analytics report is now suggesting that it may bring this market to the $2.3 billion mark by the year 2016.

According to the report’s author, Peter Crocker, “QR codes and proprietary 2D barcodes are popping up everywhere and we estimate that outside of Japan, 164 million unique codes will be created in 2012.”

64 percent of American consumers can remember seeing television ads that included social media and QR code symbols such as those for “likes” on Facebook.

33 percent of consumers in the United States have gone on to interact with the social media that was shown on television after having seen it.

This survey included 1,000 respondents. Most of those participants said that they had noticed the use of social media on television and were aware of the ways in which they could interact with those various social networks, including the “Like” symbol for Facebook (42 percent), QR codes (28 percent), the Hashtags for Twitter (18 percent), and Shazam symbols (9 percent).

# Mobile searches increased by 400% in 2011. # 70% of all social networkers are also online shoppers. # Over 50% of ecommerce store visits occur when consumers are logged onto Facebook. # 68% of businesses plan to integrate social media marketing with their e-mail marketing. # Conversion rates are 105% higher for consumers that interact with ratings and reviews.

Nielsen found that – not terribly shockingly – the way in which the smartphones were being used and whether QR codes were scanned had a great deal to do with what the person was hoping to buy and where he or she was shopping.

the most popular place for mobile shoppers to use digital coupons was in grocery stores.

41 percent said that they’d used their devices for those discounts at grocery stores, while another 41 percent said that they’d used them in department stores, and 39 percent said that they had redeemed coupons with their smartphones at clothing stores.

99% of the top 100 U.S. magazines utilized QR codes in the first quarter of 2012. QR code use in this sector is up 288% over the same period in 2011, showing that publishers are beginning to take the codes more seriously. The report notes that these magazines used at least one QR code, which could be associated with advertising, service promotions, or exclusive digital content that is a companion to the magazine itself.

Per ScanLife’s recent 2012 quarterly report consumers are scanning a lot more now, by about157% from this same time last year.

Today, more consumers are attached to smart phones and other such devices than they have ever been in the past. This has created an opportunity that businesses have been unable to ignore. QR codes have been identified as an effective way to reach out to these consumers, and many companies have begun using the black and white barcodes to promote goods and services. These companies have found that using QR codes can be tricky, however, with many failing to utilize them effectively.

Adobe Flash is officially no longer available for Android devices. This raises a tough question for Web developers: whether to support Flash at all, and how to migrate a Flash investment for the next-generation of Web users.

Web developers have responded by moving away from Flash. Since last year, Flash usage on Web sites has declined from 27% to 23%, according to W3Techs. In comparison: Microsoft's Silverlight barely moves the needle with deployment of 0.3%, just above Java's 0.2%. JavaScript is used by over 92% of sites. HTML5 is reportedly in active use on 34% of the top 100 Web sites.

Adobe is hoping developers and users will adopt the Adobe AIR (“Adobe Integrated Runtime”) format, which extends many of the core Flash technologies in a cross-platform framework for deploying Web applications. AIR is available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Microsoft recently launched their updated, all-in-one, QR Code and Tag reader, that also has the ability to interact with NFC (Near Field Communication) technology.

The new Microsoft Tag app can not only scan QR codes and Tags but it also can read Near Field Communication triggers too.

-- "Mobile Commerce Sales" increased up to 684% with the average being 204%

-- "Store Locator Visits" increased as much as 2,042% with the average being 1,506%

-- "Average Order Value" was as high as $228 with the average being $102

20.1 million mobile phone owners in the U.S. used their devices to scan a QR code in the three-month average period ending October 2011. In the big scheme of things, this isn’t a large number. However, the number of people using QR codes is expected to grow.

1. Reinventing the Shopping Experience

2. Enhancing the User Experience

Online retail sales were about $60 billion in 2011, roughly 15% of total retail sales, according to Forrester. That is up 2 percentage points from 2010 and 9 percentage points from 2005.

Mobile is currently only 2% of online retail sales, or about $6 billion.

About 16% of consumers use mobile devices to look up product information, 30% use them to look up store hours and 23% use them to locate a store.

URLs are out, and QR codes are in. With technology advancing daily, people want things instantly and effortlessly. QR codes do exactly that.

An article in USA Today laid out the process in three short steps. First, download a free QR code reader application to a smartphone. Many Android, Nokia and Blackberry phones come with QR code readers pre-installed.

Did you know that the U.S. now has more wireless customer connections than people? There are currently estimated to be 327.6 million active wireless customer connections in the U.S. The nation’s population is estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to be roughly 312 million. This means that today there are now more active broadband tablets, cell phones, and mobile devices than people in this country.

If you represent a big brand or even a medium size business, you should take this as a strong signal that if you don’t have a mobile strategy now is the time to figure one out. Right now, you are potentially missing out on a consumer base that is accessing the mobile Web in masses and is growing rapidly.

Google Android: 38.1% Apple: 26.6% RIM: 24.7% Microsoft: 5.8% Symbian: 2.1%

With 40 percent of smartphone owners browsing the Internet more frequently on their phones – using their devices to make holiday charity donations and buy gifts online – it only makes sense to ensure mobile purchases are available anywhere at any time.

The No. 1 thing is brand cohesiveness. Use the same URL on mobile as on your desktop site, as opposed to m. or .mobi. All it takes is a simple redirect script.

product reviews and testimonials, which could even be presented in the form of videos. Additionally, incentives like discounts for an opt-in for future communication and for taking a survey or participating in a poll.

It posts regular usage updates, and its latest shows QR code scanning in Q2 was up by 39 per cent on Q1, with 1D barcode scanning up 41 per cent.