This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Targeting Tablets
Without going into a deep dive on the technical comparisons of various mobile devices, we can make a few basic observations that should help you further understand the devices that consumers use and how you can reach them through the most popular mediums.
Of course, we suggest you extend your mobile website or app presence to cover multiple mobile devices (and platforms) at once (more on this in Chapter 6, “Finalizing Your Mobile Launch”), but some devices clearly offer better reach and potentially broader access to your customers.
Tablets Attract Customers
More and more, tablets are becoming the digital space where mobile merchants find their customers. Optimizing your mobile website or app design and functionality to suit tablet usage makes sense when you realize that, according to a recent Apple report, the company’s iPad now outships the iPhone nearly 5 to 1 (due in large part to large shipments of the new iPad 2) and the iPod greater than 10 to 1 in global markets.
Q & A on Mobile Trends
Laura Chambers, Senior Director of PayPal Mobile, surmises where mobile is headed next—and how PayPal will play an important role in the coming changes for merchants.
Competition is heating up in the mobile payment space. What advantages does PayPal Mobile offer?
In a recent survey, consumers reported that they see us as the most trusted brand in mobile payments. This trust is driven by PayPal’s outstanding focus on security and consumers’ familiarity with paying through us on their mobile devices. Across the competitive landscape, some people miss the idea that to be a mobile payments company, you actually have to be a payments company first. This is a hard thing to do, but PayPal has been doing payments for over 12 years. We have a full set of risk and analytics tools, outstanding customer support, and over 100 million customers and merchants who favor us. So the transition to mobile payments is significantly easier for us than for companies coming from the device world only, or the carrier or search worlds.
Can you provide some meaningful statistics on mobile payments and the use of PayPal Mobile?
Three years ago, we did $25 million in mobile payment volume, and in 2011, we’re going to do well over $3 billion. We have over 8 million active users, and process over $10 million in mobile payments every day. This growth is being driven by the strength of our products and position, as well as the adoption of smartphones and the continuing improvement of mobile commerce and shopping experiences on mobile phones. People are simply becoming more familiar with making mobile payments, and we keep payments very easy and secure.
What will the development of so-called “proximity technology” and local shopping mean for PayPal Mobile?
Local shopping is a very exciting arena for mobile payments. The lines between offline and online shopping are rapidly blurring, and mobile is at the heart of that transition. Proximity technology, which includes technologies such as mobile near-field communication (NFC), Bluetooth, QR code scanning, Wi-Fi, and audio, is a great way to get devices to talk to each other. However, this is just a communication method. It’s much more important to focus on the holistic consumer experience. A “tap” of your smartphone is not that much simpler than a “swipe” of a card to make a payment, and it requires a change in behavior. So proximity technology alone will not radically change local shopping. But if proximity technology is combined with other value for consumers in a meaningful way, it could be revolutionary.
How is the development of mobile apps working on the PayPal developer open platform?
It’s going very well, because we’re offering developers a lot of flexibility. Previously, the only way developers could monetize their mobile apps was by getting users to download and pay for them. That obviously created friction for the users of those apps. Since we’ve developed the PayPal Mobile Payments Library, developers have found many ways to monetize their apps—and they’re innovating. We solved the payments problem for developers, so they can leverage payments from within their apps and don’t have to rely simply on up-front fees for downloading their apps.
What do you see in the future for PayPal Mobile and mobile payments?
Over the next two years, we’ll see massive changes in mobile payments, with many tests and trials of new ideas and technologies. Your wallet will be digital and available in the cloud wherever you are. Consumers will have access to a variety of payment methods, coupons, receipts, and more to make their mobile shopping a richer and better experience. In the next year, we’ll also be doing many programs with offline stores, bringing this holistic experience to the market. We’re going to keep innovating at PayPal Mobile to meet the new and growing needs of our merchants and their customers.
A Morgan Stanley survey also drove home the point that whether you share your mobile business via a smartphone or a tablet, the pair of mobile devices combined is projected to outship desktop and notebook PCs by nearly a billion units globally in 2011.
A recent e-tailing group survey showed that 68 percent of tablet owners say they used their devices to make a purchase compared with 48 percent of smartphone owners. This makes the point that even though consumers may access the Web via tablets less frequently than they do via smartphones, they’re buying on tablets more regularly.
The same e-tailing group survey noted that 88 percent of respondents rated their tablet shopping experience as somewhat to very satisfactory, compared with 73 percent of those using smartphones. Both numbers are encouraging for mobile business, and, apparently, the mobile device gaining the most customer attention is the tablet.
Tablets May Overtake Smartphones
Tablets may soon become consumers’ preferred mobile device over smartphones (outside of making calls, of course)—and a better mobile outlet for product and service displays—for several key reasons. Tablets have the obvious creature-comfort advantage over smartphones (not to mention laptops) when chosen for extended reading or viewing time in an easy chair. Tablets also offer increasingly higher-resolution displays or more engaging visuals; more rich content for mobile web browsing, videos, and e-publications; longer battery life (thanks to better processors); and more app marketplaces offering a wider array of options.
Tablets can be a boost to merchants who need to clearly display products in a highly visual way on their website or mobile app. For example, if you want to sell the fine details in, say, the high relief of collectible coins, tapping and zooming the image on a tablet can render more accurate detail. The same image enlarged on a smaller smartphone screen may actually further blur the specifics.
And as more merchants and developers create apps exclusively for tablets, specialty content will be in higher demand. Some have already made tablet apps showing classic print magazine ads with large, splashy photo spreads to “flip” through or catalogs with rows of product images for “window-shopping.” Such features may make the case for greater mobile sales through tablets.
This is not to say that tablets will entirely replace other mobile devices. Many consumers view tablets as an accessory mobile device. According to a Morgan Stanley report, 55 percent of potential tablet users do not expect their tablet to replace the purchase of other mobile technology platforms, such as a smartphone.
From your mobile merchant perspective, then, suffice it to say that optimizing your mobile business for today’s fast-proliferating tablets is the broad-minded and forward-thinking path to pursue.