A recent report by Nielsen Smartphone Analytics revealed that in June 2011 Android smartphone users spent twice as much time using mobile apps than they did using the mobile web. While this is only one month of data for one smartphone OS, there are important implications for marketers.
Above all, it illustrates the degree to which your company website is no longer the foremost platform for information dissemination. As more and more individuals — and businesses — adopt smartphones (and tablets) as their primary communications tool, the more mobile app use will become ingrained behavior. Coupled with the social media tsunami, this app tidal wave threatens to render obsolete the idea that your company website is the place where customers and prospects go to learn about and interact with your company. This, in turn, has significant implications for content and message development — what worked for the PC-based website environment almost certainly won’t work for an app.
Moreover, this data points to the need for strategic thought about what role a mobile website should play in the customer experience/sales process as opposed to the role played by social sites and apps. For the near term, each platform (PC-based web, mobile web, app, even email, direct mail, and phone) will continue to have its place across the customer lifecycle. But it is vital that companies begin to chart out the kinds of interactions they want users at different stages of the lifecycle to have and what, then, is the best platform for delivering those interactions.
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