The recent raft of recent stats and forecasts on smartphone sales and shipments confirm a buoyant outlook for devices and app downloads. Gartner, for example, reckons downloads could reach 4 billion this year alone, and rise to a whopping 21 billion by 2013. Meantime, smartphone device shipments are on schedule to surpass 390 million by 2013.

This is great news for developers who are lining up to capitalize on this mega-opportunity. But, before we break out the champagne, developers everywhere have to be clear about the current conditions of the marketplace, the best practices for app distribution and monetization, and the nuts and bolts of maximizing revenues and measuring real results.

This is where the new white paper from Bango – “ap(p)tly titled Make Money From Your Mobile Apps – comes in. In addition to some key web browsing numbers and trends, the white paper also outlines how developers can make the most out of their mobile apps by knowing who their audience is, what phones they have and how people interact with their apps.

I caught up with Ray Anderson, Bango CEO, to review the key takeaways, which include the surprising results of a road test of the Nokia Ovi and Android Market app stores.

Among the highlights:

KEEP AN EYE ON PROFIT: It’s business critical and it’s the responsibility of the developer. “The first thing you need to do is track responses to your campaigns to find out how much your responses are actually costing….Secondly, you should track your sales – it sounds logical, but you should track how much money you actually make from each sale, not just how many sales you get….So, if you track those two pieces, the cost of each marketing action and the amount of money you get as a result of them, then … you can figure out how much sales you’re making per marketing dollar and you can decide whether each particular campaign is worthwhile.”

ROAD TEST: The white paper documents the registration and payment procedures in the Nokia Ovi and Android market app stores. Both are long winded and complex (at least the first tie around). The refund policies and the fact people can download your apps without paying are also hard realities that developers should factor into their app sales and distribution strategies. The verdict: in both app stores the audience is restricted and the payment process is tedious. So, don’t rely solely on app sores to sell your apps. Another piece of advice: “If you’re finding that you’re not getting a very good yield on paying apps, then by all means get non-paying apps out. A lot of people still download non-paying apps and use them as an on-ramp to your methods of monetization later.”

Bango road test results: Nokia Ovi app store payment experience

CONVERSION: “The payment experience is the biggest impact on conversion rate and we have effectively a gold standard at Bango, we call the 91 percent level, which is the sort of yield you get when you have a good, straightforward payment experience that’s usually one click.” To date Bango is achieving it “on a lot of European operators and on Sprint in the U.S.” The more complex the payment experience, the more likely conversion will drop. “The payment experience is absolutely profound and getting a few more percent of yield can make the difference between a business model that’s profitable or loss-making, or it can make a difference between a business that can actually grow or is going to shrink.”

FREEMIUM: It’s early days, but the outlook for freemium is positive (particularly since it’s a model proven to be effective on the PC). “A lot of things are driving freemium. We know that the app stores are very driven to get out lots of apps. They’re more driven by volumes of apps and download numbers and the availability of apps than they are by making profit for the content providers at the moment, so that’s one reason why freemium is becoming very popular.”

SUPERMARKETS AREN’T SELLING: A provocative point the white paper makes: huge app stores are not really good for developers (or for consumers, for that matter). Why does Ray believe this? “First, the majority of these app stores, especially the device-based app stores, often run on the handsets and therefore they’re not well integrated with the way the Web works. So, it’s very difficult for social marketing systems and social links and so on to cross-link into pages of the store.” Another shortcoming: mobile device hypermarkets are not run to make the app vendors [developers] more successful or as successful as they could be. And they’re not really run to encourage consumer choice and let the consumers have what they want. They’re normally run with a sort of single-minded approach to making those devices more successful.”

WHAT’S NEXT AT BANGO?: Ray offers us a scoop. “One of the things we’ve discovered through deployment of our payment systems worldwide is that, while we’ve managed to connect dozens of mobile operators’ payment systems and we’ve managed to connect credit cards, there is a huge opportunity in markets where the operator isn’t offering payment to their consumers.” Against this backdrop, Bango has a project in the works that is aimed at “enabling another way of collecting payments to help content providers collect money and to help consumers pay money for the content they like, especially in areas , such as the emerging markets, where mobile operators aren’t yet collecting payments for consumers.

DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER HERE

Listen to the podcast here.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter.

Editor’s note:

In the run up to launch of the iconic iPad device it’s no wonder that the topic has come up in several recent mobile marketing meetings with clients and colleagues alike. The emotional bond – even obsession – with this device is understandable. But the need for hard-nosed business realism (particularly if you are a publisher or marketer aiming to delight your particular customer base or target demographic) is much greater.

Effective mobile strategies – whether the objective is to increase traffic to your website, market downloadable content/apps or simply deliver a mobile advertising campaign via text links or display banners – must have the consumer at the core.

Put another way, on a device as personal as a mobile phone, you don’t dare not to put the customer first. In practical terms this means making every effort to ensure what you offer (advertising, content, downloads) is a perfect fit with your customer base.

Part of this is about choosing the proper targeting parameters for your campaigns, a task that you can perform with the help of a number of solutions, including Bango Analytics. But it doesn’t stop there. You also need to be sure that what you are offering can be accessed and enjoyed by your target demographic. That is why knowing your customer and – more importantly – knowing what devices they use when they access your offer in the first place are critical.

DEVICES MATTER

I’ll explore the impact of the iPad later in this column. First, let’s look at how and why strategy and mobile must be aligned.

If the end-game is all about engaging the customer, then it’s clear that delivering super-charged content, which requires 4G connectivity, the newest Apple iPhone and ownership of a credit card, doesn’t add up if your target demographic is mass market youth (who rarely have credit cards and can just barely afford smartphones). Fine, if you want to target affluent individuals in North America or Western Europe. In other words, your device focus and target demographic have to be in sync.

We also know from Sizing Up The Global Mobile Apps Market, a recent report from Chetan Sharma Consulting, that sophisticated smartphones (such as the Apple iPhone) are the rage in North America and most of Europe. In Asia, however, featurephones are the norm. This has a direct impact on the apps and app store landscape in these regions.

The vast majority of apps are ad-funded in Asia, which makes business sense because most people in this region cannot generally afford to pay for apps. The popularity of operator-run app stores, catering to featurephone, not smartphone users, is staggering.

Clearly, as this report illustrates, there are distinct differences between what developers, publishers and advertisers must recognize and build into their mobile strategies.

Reams of reports have also been written about the differences between customer segments. I mentioned above that youth rarely make purchases with a credit card, which is why an iPhone-centric approach makes little sense if you want to attract youth. A great resource for information on marketing to youth is Mobile Youth, which has also posted some thought-provoking insights on youth’s current love affair with … BlackBerry.

Surprise!

DO SMART STRATEGIES FOCUS ON SMARTPHONES?

Despite the hype at industry conferences and the enthusiasm in the tech blogosphere, Vision Mobile, a leading strategic consultancy reminds us this week that Apple and Android are only a footnote in the global mobile market story, accounting for circa 1 percent of the global installed base of mobile handsets.

Meantime, new numbers from IDC and Strategy Analytics confirm that smartphone sales have surged. According to Strategy Analytics, global smart phone shipments in the first quarter increased 50 percent to 54 million, pushing Apple into the top three handset makers. It’s impressive growth, but not nearly as exciting if we remember that worldwide handset penetration is set to reach 5 billion (!) by the end of the year.

Put it into this perspective and, at present, smartphones shipped have accounted for only 18 percent of the total worldwide mobile phone shipments. And it’s not just about the iPhone. Strategy Analytics report that not all smartphone manufacturers compete in the same markets. Nokia and other manufacturers will compete in China, India and other emerging markets; and Motorola will focus on the U.S. and other mature markets.

Apple’s first-quarter mobile phone shipments totaled 8.8 million, accounting for market share of 16.4 percent in the global smartphone market. Still, calculated according to the total global handset shipments, Apple’s share in global mobile phone market has reached 3 percent.

And let’s not forget the gains made by RIM BlackBerry.

IDC reports that RIM entered the top five handset makers for the first time, pushing Motorola off the list of the world’s best-selling mobile phone makers. And remember this is all mobile phones and not just smartphones. IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker reported that 294.9 million mobile phone handsets were shipped in the first quarter.

The purpose of this section is not to claim any one phone model is better or cooler than another. I want to leave you with a checklist of what you need to factor into your formula for success. Namely, understanding the diversity of devices, the regional differences and the key requirements of your customer base are essential. Not including any one of these into your equation can be a fatal mistake.

iPAD: THE MAGICAL MOBILE?

Which brings me to the new kid on the block. We can debate whether the iPad will be the savior of the publishing industry. But we must be clear on whether it is indeed a mobile device. After all, it is somewhat larger than a phone and you can’t make calls on it.

On the other hand, the iPad uses the iPhone operating system and has an app store crammed full of familiar iPhone apps. The device is great for browsing the Web, and the latest version even has 3G mobile broadband capabilities. From a marketers perspective it follows that iPad can be slotted in right next to the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It’s the same device family and the same proprietary operating systems reusing the same end-to-end digital storefront, iTunes.

But, before marketers simply assume the same paradigm holds true for this new device (and that their same pages, apps and banner ads will be seen by iPad users as much as iPhone users), let’s note some characteristics that distinguish the iPad from everything else on the market.

Unlike mobile devices, the iPad is hardly an always-on, personal device. That is, not unless you have big pockets, purses or would like to run around like this chap.(Twitter pic courtesry of Paul Stamatiou and via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

For the rest of us, the iPad is more similar to netbooks, laptops and Kindles. What’s more, the iPad is not a communications device. So, all those ads that point at click-to-call pages simply won’t work – not even with the latest 3G version.

MOBILITY UNLEASHED

In my view, whether the iPad is mobile ultimately depends on your definition of mobile. Interestingly, the plethora of devices coming online and even aspiring to their own app stores calls on us all to re-think our definition of mobile any way.

Indeed, TomTom, a maker of personal navigation devices, recently threw its hat into the ring announcing its intention to create an app store of GPS-focused apps, content and services. Meantime, the report from Chetan Sharma Consulting foresees an explosion of app stores and offers for all devices and platforms that include cars (telematics), digital picture frames and weight scales (!)

Clearly, mobile phones are not the only game in town.

Nowadays mobile refers to any portable, connected device that gives you access to information and services.

Against this backdrop, our new, much wider definition would naturally include the iPad. That being the case, the pressure is now on publishers, developers and marketers to broaden their view of the market.

WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE

As I have pointed out, their market – and their mobility strategies – should not shut out other connected devices such as netbooks, ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle and handheld gaming consoles like the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable. And if your market focus is cars, digital cameras or the intelligent kitchen appliances that we’ve been talking about for well over a decade, it may be that the time is ripe to map out marketing for your app or service.

Mobility means many things and brings with it many opportunities. But be careful that you don’t lose focus while you try to take it all in. The key question to ask here is not: is it mobile? You must ask yourself: does my target audience use this mobile device to access my offer or interact with my campaigns? What’s more, if a large percentage of your audience does indeed use that device, then optimizing content and campaigns for that device is a business imperative.

To help put this into context, here are some numbers that shed light on the reach and popularity of these new connected devices. Nintendo has shipped well in excess of 100 million Wi-Fi enabled Nintendo DS handheld game consoles worldwide. That’s huge! But it only spells opportunity if your offer or campaigns targets a youth audience that’s heavily into games and entertainment.

Moving back to the iPad and similar devices, DisplaySearch, a company providing market research tracking electronic devices with displays, reports that over 5 million e-readers were sold in 2009, of which over 3 million were Amazon Kindles. Meantime, StrategyAnalytics estimates over 30 million netbooks were shipped worldwide in 2009. In comparison, Apple has just passed the 1 million iPads sold mark – a much smaller number, but not bad for just one month of U.S. sales. But compare that figure with the 294.9 million mobile phone handsets IDC reports were shipped in Q12010 and you’ll gain an entirely new perspective on this device and its significance in the global mobile marketplace.

INFORMATION IS POWER

So, before you rush to plan content, offers and campaigns that will allow you to dominate the fledgling iPad market, you need to be sure it’s worth the effort. You can only know for sure if you measure your traffic. This allows you visibility into the devices your target audience uses and how they interact with your offer.

Naturally, if the vast of majority of your customer base is using connected devices (iPads, Kindles, netbooks, games consoles), then you have to optimize your offer for this devices now. Likewise, if smartphones (iPhones, BlackBerry, Android) is topping the list, then you also need to react.

The point is: you can only get this valuable information by installing an effective mobile analytics solution like Bango Analytics on your website. It’s easy to set up and will tell you what mobile devices your customers are using, visibility that will also help you identify the main growth areas for your business. Only then can you make an informed decision on where to focus your effort and budget with confidence.

* * *
Andy is a leading authority in mobile web technologies, a self-confessed ‘gadgeteer’ and a supporter of connected mobile living. He has over 17 year’s Web experience and helped sponsor the first web conference at CERN in 1994. Andy was also responsible for the first integration of Web technology into a desktop GUI with IXI X-desktop, and introduced the world to the Web-based Desktop, the Webtop, at SCO. He designed the first browser-based remote application access solutions for Tarantella Inc., enabling applications from centrally located UNIX, Linux and Windows servers to be used over the Internet by mobile workforces. Andy is currently VP Product Marketing at Bango, a leading supplier of mobile Web analytics and billing solutions. Before joining Bango, Andy was Head of Marketing and Product Management for ANT plc, a leader in Web-based user interface platforms for the IPTV market. Prior to that, he was responsible for worldwide marketing at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. Andy holds a BSc in Computer Science from Staffordshire University. You can follow Andy on Twitter (@MrBov).

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter and client.

This is the first of a series of post in which we’ll review mobile advertising and search networks to give you a heads up on what you are going to find when you decide to run a mobile advertising or mobile search marketing campaign. We’ll review the same points in all of them, so you can quickly get an overview on how much effort and money you have to put in.

Can I set up my campaign online? Yes

How long does it take to set up? Less than 10 minutes.

Payment options: Credit and debit cards, but not those with chip and pin security

Minimum payment: There is no minimum; it will depend on how your campaign performs

Bidding options: CPC, with either a monthly budget or a daily budget so you can adjust for heavier traffic during a promotion.

Targeting:
• Day of Week
• Hours of Day
• Demographic : gender and age

But there is a tricky bit — read the FULL MOBISLIM BLOG POST HERE >>

At the end of January I was interested to see that Bango reported 83% of brands don’t use mobile specific analytics tools, leading to inaccurate data on campaign performance. But even more surprising, 27% of brands don’t measure at all! I know it would make life easier if you didn’t have to report on the performance of your mobile marketing campaigns, but surely real marketers would like to know?

Not wanting to know conversion rates or what to do to improve them seems a bit crazy to me?! The good news is it’s actually quite easy to accurately measure your mobile campaign conversions and best of all you can see the results a in couple of clicks.

So, how do you do it? The easiest and most accurate way I’ve found is to use Bango Analytics. If you already have a Bango Analytics account, log in (or sign up for a trial account) and follow these easy steps:

1. Pass the relevant campaign parameters on your destination URL when setting up your mobile marketing campaigns.
2. Add page tracking code to the relevant pages you want to track within your mobile site.
3. Once the campaign is running, go to your Bango Analytics account and choose the Campaign parameter report and filter by the relevant Campaign parameters and Page title where the conversion happens.

Voila! You can now see the number of conversions attributed to your campaigns.

Let’s go through a real example:

I set up a mobile campaign with the goal of getting visitors opted-in to receive my SMS updates and wanted to measure the number of conversions from each campaign.

To start with I ran two different mobile advertising campaigns, both pointing to the same landing page. When I set up the mobile ads I passed the relevant campaign parameters so I could identify which ad my visitors came from (Mobile Ad 1 or Mobile Ad 2).

To measure the number of conversions I had to find out how many unique visitors submitted their phone number and therefore landed on the Thank you! page (only visitors who opted-in would reach this page). To capture this information I put a line of page tracking code on the Thank you! page.

To view the results I went to the Campaign parameter report in my Bango Analytics account and filtered by Campaign parameters “Mobile Ad 1” and “Mobile Ad 2” and Page title “Thank you page” and that was it! I could see in a couple of clicks the number of conversions from each mobile ad campaign in real-time!

I could even calculate the conversion rates as Bango Analytics had recorded the total number of unique visitors from each ad campaign.

Bango – the mobile payments and analytics specialist – reports a 600% growth in traffic to mobile websites. The company analyzed traffic to a range of mobile sites over the last 12 months. Data was gathered by sampling across 50 million phone users worldwide who have accessed third party mobile sites through its platform.

The key findings from Bango’s annual mobile usage study record 6 times the number of visits to mobile websites, comparing December 2009 with the same month a year earlier. The average time on site is measured as 3 minutes, 21 seconds, averaged across user visits to all sites, compared with just over one and half minutes the previous year. The analysis also measured the average number of pages viewed per visit at 5 pages, up from just over 2 pages per visit twelve months before.

Over the last twelve months, these site-level figures have increased by an average of 230% compared to a year ago, with consumers visiting sites more frequently from their phones and browsing more pages over longer periods of time. The key categories for mobile browsing are news, sports and general media sites (including newspapers), mobile content downloads, social networking and retail sites.

“While industry attention has focused almost exclusively on mobile app stores, the inexorable growth of mobile web usage is the most profound trend of the last twelve months,” said Ray Anderson, Bango CEO. “This confirms the view that the single most important app on any mobile device is the browser.”

Smartphones driving growth of mobile web usage

Another key finding is that smartphones are driving the highest usage of the mobile web, with BlackBerry accounting for over 17% of the mobile devices recorded across sites. The number of visits by BlackBerry users also exceeds any other device.

According to Gartner, the top three devices for worldwide smartphone sales in 2009, in order, were Nokia, BlackBerry then the iPhone. Factoring in the relative sales growth across the different smartphone brands the data suggests that iPhone browsing has, if anything, slightly declined per user measured, which could be a result of consumers being directed towards apps instead of websites.

“The iPhone has distorted the perception of how users interact with mobile content and services,” said Anderson. “There’s a major European utility company running full page print ads to promote an iPhone app for reporting home meter readings. This shows an incredible misunderstanding of their customer base.”

Mobile Wi-Fi usage continues to grow

Bango’s analysis also reveals significant usage of Wi-Fi connections by phone users. Wi-Fi connections average at 23% of all connections measured by Bango, with some rich media sites averaging one-third of all connections through Wi-Fi. This suggests that consumers are increasingly aware of Wi-Fi on mobile handsets and will connect via Wi-Fi where available, motivated by speed and perceived cost benefits.

Sites that attract high percentages of Wi-Fi connected users include those that broadcast video, music and other streamed content.

“Mobile internet users are becoming more sophisticated when browsing,” remarks Anderson. “Bango is tracking more users switching regularly between connection types during a single day, depending upon the availability of Wi-Fi at home and work, or the convenience of a 3G connection while on the move.”

New territories appear in top browsing list

The US remains in first place of the top 20 browsing list, followed by the UK and India in third place. In addition, compared to a year ago, countries like Indonesian and China have moved up positions and now appear in the top 10. Another interesting finding is that countries like Kenya and Sudan are also starting to move up the list. This change is driven by the lack of fixed PC Internet connections, which means people rely on their mobile phones to access the Internet.

Distribution is no longer about being in the top 10 – almost impossible amongst such fierce competition and undocumented selection methods by store managers. It is now about maximizing distribution and revenues. This is precisely what a recent survey by Bango uncovered. Bango surveyed over 400 developers and content providers in the USA and Europe, and the results revealed:

• 45% of developers plan to monetize their apps directly, in other words outside the app store
• 48% think that although app stores will grow in importance in five years time, these channels will coexist alongside the mobile web
• iPhone tops the list, followed by Android and BlackBerry, for the most important handset/platform to develop an app for in 2010
• Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian also listed as an important development platform

This doesn’t come as a surprise, as fragmentation in mobile platforms increases the challenge of reaching a mobile audience. With mobile web browser capabilities continuing to improve many are starting to see the benefits of browser-based distribution, over which they have more control.

However, as a distribution channel, Nokia’s Ovi store lags behind and hardly gets a mention in the list. Despite their many attempts to develop a successful app store, the journey for Nokia to achieve this has been very testing. For consumers, as with many other app stores, the Ovi checkout process can be a frustrating experience. In order to purchase content, you must pre-register details on multiple pages to complete the task and make the payment.

Another absentee from the list is Vodafone’s “360″ app store. Vodafone is aiming to attract the attention of its 315million subscribers, but as of the date of writing, there are only a few devices supported – It recently announced that it expects 2 million 360-capable handsets by the end of March. As many developers know so well, fragmentation is a major headache and Vodafone – which supports the iPhone store, Google’s Android marketplace, the Ovi store and now its own app channel, will need to determine if yet another app store helps move more developers into the mobile marketplace.

What the Bango survey does show is that developers are already looking beyond the app store, and want to reach their customers directly. This is good news for the long-term prospects of the mobile industry and for the billions of customers who eagerly await the next best app.

Today I would like to share with you our latest work. In our effort to get our Mobislim mobile site ranking and SEO optimized, I found this blog post “The place to be: mobile search engines and portals where you should register your site” at mobithinking.com, which is just exactly what we needed for our mobile site mobislim.com. Thank you mobiThinking for sharing this with all of us! This is great information and I thought I would help to spread the word.

Not all the big operators and content sites uses Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft as default search , so they advise you to register with white-label providers such as Medio or Jumptap. Here is a list of search engines where you should register your mobile site

• Find.mobi: search for your site on find.mobi.
• Yahoo oneSearch: search for your site on yahoo.mobi; and submit site here.
• Taptu: search for your site on taptu.mobi; and submit site here.
• Seek4Wap: search for your site on Seek4Wap; and submit site here.
• Microsoft Live: search for your site here: live.mobi; submit site here.
• Medio Systems: submit site here.
• Jumptap: submit site here.
• Google: search for your site on google.mobi; submit site map here.

For lots more mobile search providers, see wapSwap (also includes directories and portals) and the excellent WAPReview.mobi.

There are countless mobile directories and portals of varying quality and depth of content, as well as geographical and vertical focus (check which ones allow/disallow adult content for example). Most have links to submit a URL from either the home page or from a particular category. Some may request a link in return. There’s a good list of directories of mobile and PDA sites on WAPReview.mobi (including some non-English speaking ones).

Here is a handful of directories to get you started:

• Zerorubbish.mobi: to submit a site you need to sign up.
• wapSwap, visit the relevant category and click on link to submit site.
• WAP Review – mobile sites: wapreview.mobi, yeswap.mobi; submit site for review here.
• Oh! Mobile – mobile site: oh.dirlink.mobi; and submit site here.
• dir.mobi; follow guidelines to submit site here.

See this very handy list of both directories and search providers with many direct links to submit your site from UK mobile agency We Love Mobile (thanks to Simon Liss for this).

I guess Tom and his SEO squad will be quite busy these days sending our site to all these search engines and directories. I will report back on how this helped to our rankings. We’ll use Bango Mobile Analytics referrer information to check how much traffic the search engines and directories are sending us, and best of all which keywords people are using to get to our site.

If you have more search engines and directories that we should be mentioning please let me know so we can give something back to mobithinking.

Follow Mobislim updates on twitter http://twitter.com/mobislim

It’s available for download at www.bango.com/whitepaper2 and you can see the results of the three ad campaigns featured in the white paper in detail on the accompanying Mobislim blog mobislim.wordpress.com, as measured by the Bango mobile analytics service.

Come and hear Peggy Anne Salz talk about this research at the AIME Seminar on April 2 in London. The topic of the evening seminar is “Mobile Advertising and the rise of Social Networking”. The folks from Bango will be there too so hope to see you then if you are in town.

Enjoy!

Many online businesses questioned by Bango admitted they do not know how much mobile-originated traffic is hitting their PC site. Bango’s research reveals that between 3-10% of on-line traffic to a PC website now comes from users entering web addresses on their mobile device.

Watch this video and find out more about traffic you never knew you had. Where they came from, what handsets they are using, what they did when they visited your site?

Find out more and how you can put that piece of code on your PC website to measure your mobile visitors at http://bango.com/mobiletracking

This ranking is produced by measuring the number of user visits to mobile websites from 208 countries identified by Bango.

The US is also in the pole position at the top of the mobile payments chart so the US folks are obviously hungry for content, as is the UK.

Only 5 countries in the Top 10 browsing charts are also in the Top 10 payments chart – USA, UK, Portugal, South Africa and Spain.

Key characteristics of countries in the Top 10 browsing chart:

• Advanced phones and 3G networks
• Lack of PC broadband infrastructure and access to internet predominantly via phones as in Indonesia and India
• Data inclusive plans make browsing inexpensive as in South Africa and increasingly the USA

Key characteristics of countries in the Top 10 payments chart:

• People have disposable income
• There’s reliable on-bill payment
• Payouts to content providers are high so businesses invest in marketing and delivering services in these services
• Average transaction value $3.82

Here are the Top 10 mobile browsing and payments charts:

Unfortunately, PC analytics tools only detect Smartphones because they rely on JavaScript to analyze the traffic. As Smartphones only represent 10% of installed base of mobile devices, you’re not going to be analyzing 90% of your mobile traffic. Here a dedicated mobile analytics tool from Bango looks at 3 months of traffic to a real mobile site – wap.mobislim.com to help you see the value in understanding how your mobile site is peforming. The Mobislim mobile site is a high-hearted look at weight-loss tips and you’ll see we run a number of mobile ad campaigns to the site and then analyzed how successful they were.

August was the first month for Mobislim on the mobile web and we closed the month with 1213 unique visitors, 4129 page views, 68% organic and 32% paid traffic from all over the world through Google and Decktrade (campaigns ran for two weeks only). South Africa was the country that brought most traffic (33.5%) followed by US (16.4%) and UK (9.52%). The top operators where Vodacom South Africa (16.5%), MTN South Africa (15.09) and O2 UK (3.20%). Top 3 devices were Opera Mini (7.29%) Samsung E250 (3.80%) Nokia 6300 (3.17%).

September was a busy month for the site as we ran 7 different campaigns, all with very small budgets (total expenditure $400). The month finished with 3,465 unique visitors that saw 11,493 page views, from which 65% came from organic traffic and 35% from mobile advertising.

The campaigns ran in Google, Decktrade and Mojiva for 3 days, mainly targeted to US and UK. The top countries by page views were US (27.1%), South Africa (20%) and UK (6.4%). The top operators were Vodacom South Africa (10.8%), Metro PCS USA (10.5%) and MTN South Africa (8%). It is very interesting that the fourth most popular operator was Satelindo Indonesia which represents 5,1% and in the top 10 it is Bharti Cellular India (2.13%) and Telgua Guatemala (1,76%).

Finally October reflects a slow down in the traffic. We saw a total of 827 unique visitors and 2905 page views, 80% from organic traffic and 20% from paid traffic. We ran 5 campaigns, for 3 days each, with the same expenditure by campaign as the month before, and again the countries targeted were US and UK. But the results speak for themselves…The campaigns were not as successful as the ones ran the previous month and the organic traffic has dropped dramatically.

The top 3 countries this month have been US, UK and India. The top 3 operators have been all for American networks, Metro PCS USA (7.6%) AT&T USA (6.3%) and Cricket USA (6.3%).

This is why it is so important to have a mobile analytics tool that gives you results in real time. I could have reacted earlier to the drop in traffic or I could have fine tuned the campaigns as they didn’t work as expected. Changes in trends and traffic are going to big difference to your business; when you invest just $400 a month in advertising is not a big deal, but let’s say you spend $5.000 in 3 different campaigns running for only 2 days, wouldn’t you like to know how your message was working by the hour? I would!

If you would like to see the traffic for these 3 months in more detail, then you can access our demo account where you can see all the Mobislim traffic as it happens. Just follow this easy steps:

1.Go to http://bango.com
2.In the login are your email would be demo@bango.com and your password demo
3.Surf the analytics center to get a real taste of Bango mobile analytics.