Category Archives: Mobile

To Buy or Not to Buy: The Touchy Subject of Mobile ECommerce

A recent report from Akamai indicates that users have little patience when it comes to making purchases on a mobile device. Here are just a few of the stats:

  • While almost half of all consumers browse via their phones, only 1 in 5 complete transactions on mobile
  • Optimal load times for peak conversions ranged from 1.8 to 2.7 seconds across device types
  • Just a 100-millisecond delay in load time hurt conversion rates by up to 7%
  • Bounce rates were highest among mobile shoppers and lowest among those using tablets

But there may be more behind this than just slow load times. We also have to consider what modes we’re in when we’re interacting with our mobile device.

In 2010, Microsoft did a fascinating research project that looked at how user behaviors varied from desktop to tablet to smart phone. The research was headed by Jacquelyn Krones, who was a Search Product Manager at the time. Search was the primary activity examined, but there was a larger behavioral context that was explored. While the study is 7 years old, I think the core findings are still relevant. The researchers found that we tend to have three large buckets of behaviors: missions, explorations and excavations. Missions were focused tasks that were usually looking for a specific piece of information – i.e. looking for an address or phone number. Explorations where more open ended and less focused on a given destination – i.e. seeing if there was any thing you wanted to do this Friday night. Excavations typically involved multiple tasks within an overarching master task – i.e. researching an article. In an interview with me, Krones outlined their findings:

“There’s clearly a different profile of these activities on the different platforms. On desktops and laptops, people do all three of the activities – they conduct missions and excavations and explorations.

“On their phones we expected to see lots of missions – usually when you use your mobile phone and you’re conducting a search, whatever you’re doing in terms of searching is less important than what’s going on with you in the real world – you’re trying to get somewhere, you’re having a discussion with somebody and you want to look something up quick or you’re trying to make a decision about where to go for dinner.

“But we were surprised to find that people are using their mobile phones for exploration. But once we saw the context, it made sense – people have a low tolerance for boredom. Their phone is actually pretty entertaining, much more entertaining than just looking at the head in front of you while you’re waiting in line. You can go check a sports score, read a story, or look at some viral video and have a more engaged experience.

“On tablets, we found that people are pretty much only using them for exploration today. I had expected to see more missions on tablets, and I think that that will happen in the future, but today people perceive their mobile phone as always with them, very personal, always on, and incredibly efficient for getting information when they’re in mission mode.”

Another study, coming out The University of British Columbia Okanagan, also saw a significant difference in behavioral modality when it came to interacting with touch screens. Assistant Professor Ying Zhu was the principal author:

“The playful and fun nature of the touchscreen enhances consumers’ favour of hedonic products; while the logical and functional nature of a desktop endorses the consumers’ preference for utilitarian products,” explains Zhu.

“Zhu’s study also found that participants using touchscreen technology scored significantly higher on experiential thinking than those using desktop computers. However, those on desktops scored significantly higher on rational thinking.”

I think what we have here is an example of thinking: fast and slow. I suspect we’re compartmentalizing our activities, subconsciously setting some aside for completion on the desktop. I would suspect utilitarian type purchasing would fall into this category. I know that’s certainly true in my case. As Dr. Zhu noted, we have a very right brain relationship with touchscreens, while desktops tend to bring out our left-brain. I have always been amazed at how our brains subconsciously prime us based on anticipating an operating environment. Chances are, we don’t even realize how much our behaviors change when we move from a smart phone to a tablet to a desktop. But I’d be willing to place a significant wager that it’s this subconscious techno-priming that’s causing some of these behavioural divides between devices.

Slow load times are never a good thing, on any device, but while they certainly don’t help with conversions, they may not be the only culprit sitting between a user and a purchase. The device itself could also be to blame.

How We Might Search (On the Go)

As I mentioned in last week’s column – Mediative has just released a new eyetracking study on mobile devices. And it appears that we’re still conditioned to look for the number one organic result before clicking on our preferred destination.

But…

It appears that things might be in the process of changing. This makes sense. Searching on a mobile device is – and should be – significantly different from searching on a desktop. We have different intents. We are interacting with a different platform. Even the way we search is different.

Searching on a desktop is all about consideration. It’s about filtering and shortlisting multiple options to find the best one. Our search strategies are still carrying a significant amount of baggage from what search was – an often imperfect way to find the best place to get more information about something. That’s why we still look for the top organic listing. For some reason we still subconsciously consider this the gold standard of informational relevancy. We measure all other results against it. That’s why we make sure we reserve one slot from the three to five available in our working memory (I have found that the average person considers about 4 results at a time) for its evaluation.

But searching on a mobile device isn’t about filtering content. For one thing, it’s absolutely the wrong platform to do this with. The real estate is too limited. For another, it’s probably not what we want to spend our time doing. We’re on the go and trying to get stuff done. This is not the time for pausing and reflecting. This is the time to find what I’m looking for and use it to take action.

This all makes sense but the fact remains that the way we search is a product of habit. It’s a conditioned subconscious strategy that was largely formed on the desktop. Most of us haven’t done enough searching on mobile devices yet to abandon our desktop-derived strategies and create new mobile specific ones. So, our subconscious starts playing out the desktop script and only varies from it when it looks like it’s not going to deliver acceptable results. That’s why we’re still looking for that number one organic listing to benchmark against

There were a few findings in the Mediative study that indicate that our desktop habits may be starting to slip on mobile devices. But before we review them, let’s do a quick review of how habits play out. Habits are the brains way of cutting down on thinking. If we do something over and over again and get acceptable results, we store that behavior as a habit. The brain goes on autopilot so we don’t have to think our way through a task with predictable outcomes.

If, however, things change, either in the way the task plays out or in the outcomes we get, the brain reluctantly takes control again and starts thinking its way through the task. I believe this is exactly what’s happening with our mobile searches. The brain desperately wants to use its desktop habits, but the results are falling below our threshold of acceptability. That means we’re all somewhere in the process of rebuilding a search strategy more suitable for a mobile device.

Mediative’s study shows me a brain that’s caught between the desktop searches we’ve always done and the mobile searches we’d like to do. We still feel we should scroll to see at least the top organic result, but as mobile search results become more aligned with our intent, which is typically to take action right away, we are being side tracked from our habitual behaviors and kicking our brains into gear to take control. The result is that when Google shows search elements that are probably more aligned with our intent – either local results, knowledge graphs or even highly relevant ads with logical ad extensions (such as a “call” link) – we lose confidence in our habits. We still scroll down to check out the organic result but we probably scroll back up and click on the more relevant result.

All this switching back and forth from habitual to engaged interaction with the results ends up exacting a cost in terms of efficiency. We take longer to conduct searches on a mobile device, especially if that search shows other types of results near the top. In the study, participants spent an extra 2 seconds or so scrolling between the presented results (7.15 seconds for varied results vs. 4.95 seconds for organic only results). And even though they spent more time scrolling, more participants ended up clicking on the mobile relevant results they saw right at the top.

The trends I’m describing here are subtle – often playing out in a couple seconds or less. And you might say that it’s no big deal. But habits are always a big deal. The fact that we’re still relying on desktop habits that were laid down over the past two decades show how persistent then can be. If I’m right and we’re finally building new habits specific to mobile devices, those habits could dictate our search behaviors for a long time to come.

Who Owns Your Data (and Who Should?)

First published January 23, 2104 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Lock backgroundLast week, I talked about a backlash to wearable technology. Simon Jones, in his comment, pointed to a recent post where he raised the very pertinent point – your personal data has value. Today, I’d like to explore this further.

I think we’re all on the same page when we say there is a tidal wave of data that will be created in the coming decade. We use apps – which create data. We use/wear various connected personal devices – which create data. We go to online destinations – which create data. We interact with an ever-increasing number of wired “things” – which create data. We interact socially through digital channels – which create data.  We entertain ourselves with online content – which creates data. We visit a doctor and have some tests done – which creates data. We buy things, both online and off, and these actions also create data. Pretty much anything we do now, wherever we do it, leaves a data trail. And some of that data, indeed, much of it, can be intensely personal.

As I said some weeks ago, all this data is creating a eco-system that is rapidly multiplying and, in its current state, is incredibly fractured and chaotic. But, as Simon Jones rightly points out, there is significant value in that data. Marketers will pay handsomely to have access to it.

But what, or whom, will bring order to this chaotic and emerging market? The value of the data compounds quickly when it’s aggregated, filtered, cross-tabulated for correlations and then analyzed. As I said before, the captured data is its fragmented state is akin to a natural resource. To get to a more usable end state, you need to add a value layer on top of it. This value layer will provide the required additional steps to extract the full worth of that data.

So, to retrace my logic, data has value, even in it’s raw state. Data also has significant privacy implications. And right now, it’s not really clear who owns what data. To move forward into a data market that we can live with, I think we need to set some basic ground rules.

First of all, most of us who are generating data have implicitly agreed to a quid pro quo arrangement – we’ll let you collect data from us if we get an acceptable exchange of something we value. This could be functionality, monetary compensation (usually in the form of discounts and rewards), social connections or entertainment. But here’s the thing about that arrangement – up to now, we really haven’t quantified the value of our personal data. And I think it’s time we did that. We may be trading away too much for much too little.

To this point we haven’t worried much about what we traded off and to whom because any data trails we left have been so fragmented and specific to one context, But, as that data gains more depth and, more importantly, as it combines with other fragments to provide much more information about who we are, what we do, where we go, who we connect with, what we value and how we think, it becomes more and more valuable. It represents an asset for those marketers who want to persuade us, but more critically, that data -our digital DNA – becomes vitally important to us. In it lays the quantifiable footprint of our lives and, like all data, it can yield insights we may never gain elsewhere. In the right hands, it could pinpoint critical weaknesses in our behavioral patterns, red flags in our lifestyle that could develop into future health crises, financial opportunities and traps and ways to allocate time and resources more efficiently. As the digitally connected world becomes denser, deeper and more functional, that data profile will act as our key to it. All the potential of a new fully wired world will rely on our data.

There are millions of corporations that are more than happy to warehouse their respective data profiles of you and sell it back to you on demand as you need it to access their services or tools.  They will also be happy to sell it to anyone else who may need it for their own purposes. Privacy issues aside (at this point, data is commonly aggregated and anonymized) a more fundamental question remains – whose data is this? Whose data should it be? Is this the reward they reap for harvesting the data? Or because this represents you, should it remain your property, with you deciding who uses it and for what?

This represents a slippery slope we may already be starting down.  And, if you believe this is your data and should remain so, it also marks a significant change from what’s currently happening. Remember, the value is not really in the fragments. It’s in bringing it together to create a picture of who you are. And we should be asking the question – who should have the right to create that picture of you – you – or a corporate data marketplace that exists beyond your control ?

Google Holds the Right Cards for a Horizontal Market

First published January 9, 2014 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

android_trhoneFunctionality builds up, then across. That was the principle of emerging markets that I talked about in last week’s column. Up – then across – breaking down siloes into a more open, competitive and transparent market. I’ll come back here in a moment.

I also talked about how Google + might be defining a new way of thinking about social networking, one free of dependence on destinations. It could create a social lens through which all our online activity passes through, adding functionality and enriching information.

Finally, this week, I read that Google is pushing hard to extend Android as the default operating system in the Open Automotive Alliance – turning cars into really big mobile devices. This builds on Android’s dominance in the smartphone market (with an 82% market share).

See a theme here?

For years, I’ve been talking about the day when search transitions from being a destination to a utility, powering apps which provide very specific functionality that far outstrips anything you could do on a “one size fits all” search portal. This was a good news/bad news scenario for Google, who was the obvious choice to provide this search grid. But, in doing so, they lose their sole right to monetize search traffic, a serious challenge to their primary income source. However, if you piggy back that search functionality onto the de facto operating system that powers all those apps, and then add a highly functional social graph, you have all the makings of a foundation that will support the ‘horizontalization” of the mobile connected market. Put this in place, and revenue opportunities will begin falling into your lap.

The writing is plainly on the wall here. The future is all about mobile connections. It is the foundation of the Web of Things, wearable technology, mobile commerce – anything and everything we see coming down the pipe.  The stakes are massive. And, as markets turn horizontal in the inevitable maturation phase to come, Google seems to be well on their way to creating the required foundations for that market.

Let’s spend a little time looking at how powerful this position might be for Google. Microsoft is still coasting on their success in creating a foundation for the desktop, 30 years later.  The fact that they still exist at all is testament to the power of Windows. But the desktop expansion that happened was reliant on just one device – the PC. And, the adoption curve for the PC took two decades to materialize, due to two things: the prerequisite of a fairly hefty investment in hardware and a relatively steep learning curve. The mobile adoption curve, already the fastest in history, has no such hurdles to clear. Relative entry price points are a fraction of what was required for PCs. Also, the learning curve is minimal. Mobile connectivity will leave the adoption curve of PCs in the dust.

In addition, an explosion of connected devices will propel the spread of mobile connectivity. This is not just about smart phones. Two of the biggest disruptive waves in the next 10 years will be wearable technologies and the Web of Things. Both of these will rely on the same foundations, an open and standardized operating system and the ability to access and share data. At the user interface level, the enhancements of powerful search technologies and social-graph enabled filters will significantly improve the functionality of these devices as they interface with the “cloud.”

In the hand that will have to inevitably be played, it seems that Google is currently holding all the right cards.

What’s Apple’s Plan for 2014?

First published January 2, 2014 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

apple-storeWhen new markets open, value chains first build up, then across. Someone first creates a vertically integrated experience, and then the market opens up as free competition drives efficiency. This is the challenge that currently lies ahead of Apple.

Apple has been the acknowledged master at creating seamless vertically integrated experiences. They did it with the personal computer. They did it with music. They did it with mobile. They did it with tablets. The advantage of working within a closed value chain is that you control every aspect of the experience. You can make sure that everyone plays nice with each other.

The challenge is that at some point, as adoption heats up, you simply cannot scale fast enough to meet market demand. Open competition drives horizontal competition, which drives down prices. The lack of control up and down the chain introduces some short-term user pain, but eventually the dynamics of an open market overcome this and the advantages of having several companies working on an opportunity outweigh the disadvantages.

Apple loves early markets. Or, at least, they have in the past. Under Jobs, they had a knack of creating an elegantly integrated experience that was carefully crafted from top to bottom within the walls of Cupertino. The vision and obsession with detail that defined the Jobs era was a potent combination when it came to building vertical experiences. Somehow, Apple was able to open new markets over and over again, seemingly at will. They were able to bridge Geoffrey Moore’s “Chasm” – by making new experiences painless enough for the front end of the adoption bell curve. As markets rode up the curve, markets turned from vertical to horizontal, driving a decline in margins and prices. This is where Apple tended to kick out and look for the next wave to catch.

But that was then, and this is now. As mentioned, Apple doesn’t do very well when markets turn horizontal. They depend on high margins. Only once, with the Mac, were they able to come back and stake out a respectable claim in a horizontal market. And they almost disappeared in the process. The number of dependent circumstances that would be required to repeat that trick is such that I doubt they’re eager to go down the same path with the iPhone or iPad.

In the year end summaries, many are talking about a seeming anomaly –  that despite Android’s massive market share dominance over iOS (81% vs 12.9%, according to a recent Forbes article) it’s Apple that’s ringing up the holiday sales with mobile shoppers (23% vs Android’s paltry 5%).  This becomes more understandable when you put it in the context of a vertical market that is becoming horizontal. Shopping experiences are still much less painful on iOS. And, you have a user base that is much more comfortable with mobile ecommerce because they’re on the leading edge of the adoption curve. They’ve had a mobile device for a number of years now. Android users, in general, tend to be further back on the curve. As the benefits of Darwinian competition redefine the mobile marketplace along more horizontal lines, those ecommerce numbers will revert to a more natural balance, but it will take some time.

As this inevitable change in the marketplace happens, the question then becomes, “What does Apple do next?” Can they find the next wave? And, if they do, does an Apple without Jobs still have what it takes to create the vertical experience that can open up a new market? There are plenty of opportunities – the two most notable ones being connected entertainment devices (the much-rumored new generation of Apple TV) and wearable technology (iWatches, etc).

Apple has always been known for keeping their cards glued against their chest. In 2014, it remains to be seen if they have anything amazing up their sleeve.

Pursuing the Unlaunched Search

First published November 29, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Google’s doing an experiment. Eight times a day, randomly, 150 people get an alert from their smartphone and Google asks them this question, “ What did you want to know recently?” The goal? To find out all the things you never thought to ask Google about.

This is a big step for Google. It moves search into a whole new arena. It’s shifting the paradigm from explicit searching to implicit searching. And that’s important for all of the following reasons:

Search is becoming more contextually sensitive. Mobile search is contextually sensitive search. If you have your calendar, your to-do list, your past activities and a host of other information all stored on a device that knows where you are, it becomes much easier to guess what you might be interested in. Let’s say, for example, that your calendar has “Date with Julie” entered at 7 p.m., and you’re downtown. In the past year, 57% of your “dates with Julie” have generally involved dinner and a movie. You usually spend between $50 and $85 dollars on dinner, and your movies of choice generally vacillate between rom-coms and action-adventures (depending on who gets to choose).

In this scenario, without waiting for you to ask, Google could probably be reasonably safe in suggesting local restaurants that match your preferences and price ranges, showing you any relevant specials or coupons, and giving you the line-up of suggested movies playing at local theatres. Oh, and by the way, you’re out of milk and it’s on sale at the grocery store on the way home.

Can Googling become implicit? “We’ve often said the perfect search engine will provide you with exactly what you need to know at exactly the right moment, potentially without you having to ask for it,” says Google Lead Experience Designer Jon Wiley, one of the leads of the research experiment.

As our devices know more about us, the act of Googling may move from a conscious act to a subliminal suggestion. The advantage, for Google and us, is that it can provide us with information we never thought to ask for.  In the ideal state envisioned by Google, it can read the cues of our current state and scour its index of information to provide relevant options. Let’s say we just bought a bookcase from Ikea. Without asking, Google can download the user’s manual and pull relevant posts from user support forums.

It ingrains the Google habit. Google is currently in the enviable position of having become a habit. We don’t think to use Google, we just do. Of course, habits can be broken. Habits are a subconscious script that plays out in a familiar environment, delivering an expected outcome without conscious intervention. To break a habit, you usually look at disrupting the environment, stopping the script before it has a chance to play out.

The environment of search is currently changing dramatically. This raises the possibility of the breaking of the Google habit. If our habits suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar territory, the regular scripts are blocked and we’re forced to think our way through the situation.

But if Google can adapt to unfamiliar environments and prompt us with relevant information without us having to give it any thought, the company not only preserves the Google habit but ingrains it even more deeply. Good news for Google, bad news for Bing and other competitors.

It expands Google’s online landscape. Finally, at this point, Google’s best opportunity for a sustainable revenue channel is to monetize search. As long as Google controls our primary engagement point with online information, it has no shortage of monetization opportunities. By moving away from waiting for a query and toward proactive serving of information, Google can exponentially expand the number of potential touch points with users. Each of these  touch points comes with another advertising opportunity.

All this is potentially ground-breaking, but it’s not new. Microsoft was talking about Implicit Querying a decade ago. It was supposed to be built into Windows Vista. At that time, it was bound to the desktop. But now, in a more mobile world, the implications of implicit searching are potentially massive.

A Decade with the Database of Intentions

First published September 27, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s been over 10 years since John Battelle first started considering what he called the “Database of intentions.” It was, and is:

The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind – a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture. And it has the potential to be abused in equally extraordinary fashion.

When Battelle considered the implications, it overwhelmed him. “Once I grokked this idea (late 2001/early 2002), my head began to hurt.” Yet, for all its promise, marketers have only marginally leveraged the Database of Intentions.

In the intervening time, the possibilities of the Database of Intention have not diminished. In fact, they have grown exponentially:

My mistake in 2003 was to assume that the entire Database of Intentions was created through our interactions with traditional web search. I no longer believe this to be true. In the past five or so years, we’ve seen “eruptions” of entirely new fields, each of which, I believe, represent equally powerful signals – oxygen flows around which massive ecosystems are already developing. In fact, the interplay of all of these signals (plus future ones) represents no less than the sum of our economic and cultural potential.

Sharing Battelle’s predilection for “Holy Sh*t” moments, a post by MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan this Tuesday got me thinking again about Battelle’s “DBoI.” A recent study by Google and EA showed that using search data can predict 84% of video game sales.  But the data used in the prediction is only scratching the surface of what’s possible. Adam Stewart from Google hints at what might be possible, “Aside from searches, Google plans to build in game quality, TV investment, online display investment, and social buzz to create a multivariate model for future analysis.”

This is very doable stuff. All we need to create predictive models that match (and probably far exceed) the degree of accuracy already available. The data is just sitting there, waiting to be interpreted. The implications for marketing are staggering, but to Battelle’s point, let’s not be too quick to corral this simply for the use of marketers. The DBoI has implications that reach into every aspect of our society and lives. This is big — really big! If that sounds unduly ominous to you, let me give you a few reasons why you should be more worried than you are.

Typically, if we were to predict patterns in human behavior, there would be two sources of signals. One comes from an understanding of how humans act. As we speak, this is being attacked on multiple fronts. Neuroscience, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology and a number of other disciplines are rapidly converging on a vastly improved understanding of what makes us tick. From this base understanding, we can then derive hypotheses of predicted behaviors in any number of circumstances.

This brings us to the other source of behavior signals. If we have a hypothesis, we need some way to scientifically test it. Large-scale collections of human behavioral data allow us to search for patterns and identify underlying causes, which can then serve as predictive signals for future scenarios. The Database of Intentions gives us a massive source of behavior signals that capture every dimension of societal activity. We can test our hypotheses quickly and accurately against the tableau of all online activity, looking for the underlying influences that drive behaviors.

At the intersection of these two is something of tremendous import. We can start predicting human behavior on a massive scale, with unprecedented accuracy. With each prediction, the feedback loop between qualitative prediction and quantitative verification becomes faster and more efficient. Throw a little processing power at it and we suddenly have an artificially intelligent, self-ssimproving predictive model that will tell us, with startling accuracy, what we’re likely to do in the future.

This ain’t just about selling video games, people. This is a much, much, much bigger deal.

The “Field of Dreams” Dilemma

First published May 3, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There’s a chicken and an egg paradox in mobile marketing. Many mobile sites sit moldering in the online wilderness, attracting few to no visitors. The same could be said for many elaborate online customer portals, social media outposts or online communities. Somebody went to the trouble to build them, but no one came. Why?

Well, it could be because no one thinks to go to the trouble to look for them, just as no one expects to find a ball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. It wasn’t until the ghosts of eight Chicago White Sox players, banned for life from playing the game they loved, started playing on the “Field of Dreams” that anyone bothered to drive to Ray Kinsella’s farm.  There was suddenly a reason to go.

The problem with many out-of–the-way online destinations is that there is no good reason to go. Because of this, we make two assumptions:

–       If there is no good reason for a destination to exist, then the destination probably doesn’t exist. Or,

–       If it does exist, it will be a waste of time and energy to visit.

If we jump to either of these two conclusions, we don’t bother looking for the destination. We won’t make the investment required to explore and evaluate. You see, there is a built-in mechanism that makes a “Build it and they will come” strategy a risky bet.

This built-in mechanism comes from behavioral ecology and is called the “marginal value theorem.” It was first identified by Eric Charnov in 1976 and has since been borrowed to explain behaviors in online information foraging by Peter Pirolli, amongst others. The idea behind it is simple: We will only invest the time and effort to find a new “patch” of online information if we think it’s better than “patches” we already know exist and are easy to navigate to.  In other words, we’re pretty lazy and won’t make any unnecessary trips.

This cost/benefit calculation is done largely at a subconscious level and will dictate our online behaviors. It’s not that we make a conscious decision not to look for new mobile sites or social destinations. But unbeknownst to us, our brain is already passing value judgments that will tend to keep us going down well-worn paths. So, if we are looking for information or functionality that would be unlikely to find in a mobile site or app, but we know of a website that has just what we’re looking for and time is not a urgent matter, we’ll wait until we’re in front of our regular computer to do the research. We automatically disqualify the mobile opportunity because our “marginal value” threshold has not been met.

The same is true for social sites. If we believe that there is a compelling reason to seek out a Facebook page (promotional offers, information not available elsewhere) then we’ll go to the trouble to track it down. Otherwise, we’ll stick to destinations we know.

I believe the marginal value theorem plays an important role in defining the scope of our online worlds. We only explore new territory when we feel our needs won’t be met by destinations we already know and are comfortable with.  And if we rule out entire categories of content or functionality as being unlikely to adapt well to a mobile or social environment (B2B research in complex sales scenarios being one example) then we won’t go to the trouble to look for them.

I should finish off by saying that this is a moving target. Once there is enough critical mass in new online territory to reset visitor expectations, you’ve increased the “richness” of the patch to the point where the “marginal value” conditions are met and the brain decides it’s worth a small investment of time and energy.

In other words, if Shoeless Joe Jackson, Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, Happy Felsch, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin all start playing baseball in a cornfield, than it’s probably worth hopping on the tractor and head’n over to the Kinsella place!

Look at the Big Picture in 2012

First published December 29, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Another year’s pretty much in the can. And because I’m working on idle this week, trying to catch my breath with my family before plunging headlong into 2012, search marketing falls somewhere behind the recent releases on Netflix and trying out the new Wii game on the list of things preoccupying my mind. So, don’t expect any salient and timely search news from me!

When I look back on what has preoccupied me over the last 12 months, I will say that much of it has been spent “stepping back” and trying to look at the bigger picture. As online interactions have taken a bigger and bigger chunk of our lives (you’ll notice that both of the recreational options I mentioned have online components woven into them), trying to understand how our actions play out against a broader online backdrop has been the thing I think about most often.

We digital marketers tend to take that “bigger picture” and break it into pieces, trying to make sense of it by focusing on one small piece. Digital marketing lends itself to this minute focal depth because of the richness of each piece. Even the smallest chunk of an online interaction has a lot to explore, with a corresponding mound of data to analyze. We could spend hours drilling into how people use Linked In, or Twitter, or Google+ or Facebook.  We could dig into the depths of the Panda update or how local results show up on Bing and never come up for air.

But think back to what, at one time, was another holiday season pastime. Some of us remember when we used to get a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. You’d dump out all 5,000 of those little photographic morsels and then begin to piece it together into a coherent image of something (usually a landscape involving a barn or a covered bridge). Success came not only from examining each piece, but also in using the image on the boxtop to help understand how each piece fit into the bigger picture. Without understanding what that bigger picture was supposed to look like, you could examine each piece until the cows came home (again, often a topic for jigsaw art).

So, much of my 2011 was spent trying to understand what the picture on the top of the puzzle box was supposed to look like. What would ultimately tie all the pieces together?  In physics terms, I guess you could say I’m been looking for the Unified Field Theory of online marketing. And you know what I realized? You won’t find it by focusing on technology, no matter how cool it is. Foursquare marketing or search retargeting or hyperlocal optimization are all just pieces of a much bigger puzzle. The real picture emerges when you look at how people navigate the events of their lives and the decisions they must make. It’s there where the big picture emerges.

A few weeks ago I was speaking to a group of marketers about the emerging role of mobile.  This was no group of digital slouches. They knew their mobile stuff. They had tested various campaign approaches and honed their tactics. But the results were uneven. Some were hits, but more were misses. They knew a lot about the pieces, but didn’t have the boxtop picture to guide them.

My message (for those who know me) was not a surprising one: understand how to leverage mobile by first understanding how people use mobile to do they things they intend to do.  Don’t jump on a QR code campaign simply because you read somewhere that QR codes are a red-hot marketing tool. First see if QR codes fit into the big picture in any possible way. If you do that, you might find that QR codes are a puzzle piece that actually belongs in another box.

After delivering my sermon about the importance of understanding their respective big pictures, I asked my favorite question: “How many of you have done any substantial qualitative research with your customers in the past year?” Not one hand went up. This was a group of puzzle assemblers working without any boxtop picture to guide them.

If you want to sum up my past year and fit it into one final paragraph for 2011, it’s this: Understand your customers! Spend a good part of 2012 digging deep into their decision process and their online paths. Make it personal. Stalk if necessary. Ask questions that start with “why.” Observe. Make notes. Broaden your online reading list to include blogs like Science Daily, Futurity, Neuroscience Marketing and Homo Consumericus. At some point, the bigger picture will begin to emerge. And I bet it will be much more interesting than a landscape with a barn and some cows in it.

Bye Bye Big Box, Hello Digital

First published November 3, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

My friend Mikey (whom you may remember from the “Mikey Mobile Adoption Test”) and I were recently driving through our hometown, past a long row of new big-box retail locations that have recently sprung up.

I, somewhat exasperatedly, said, “Who the hell is going to buy all this stuff?”

Our town’s population is only 120,000 but we seem to have a huge overcapacity of retail space, with more going up all the time, thanks in part to a development-hungry First Nations band with plenty of available real estate.

Mikey replied, “Well, the town isn’t getting any smaller and people need to shop somewhere.”

That, and a recent article by MediaPost reporter Laurie Sullivan, got me thinking. Do we? I mean, do we need to shop “somewhere,” as in a physical store location?

I paused, and then replied, “I’m not so sure. I buy a lot more things online.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A few days later, I was in a presentation where someone showed digital marketing growth projections for local advertisers on a slide. The growth over the next few years was relatively moderate: about 5% to 6% year over year. This despite the fact that the current penetration rates were well short of 50%.

Put it all together and I can’t help wondering whether we, collectively, are “sandbagging” our local digital growth potential. Modest growth projections assume fairly linear trends in the future. We use past adoption and extrapolate these into the future. Statistically, it’s probably the rational thing to do, but it doesn’t take into account the possibility of a dramatic shift in behavior. For example, what if we’ve reaching a tipping point where, as Sullivan notes, it’s just a lot easier to shop online than to actually hop in your car, drive across town and then try to navigate through a 25,000-square-foot massive retail location?

That’s the way things tend to go in real life. We don’t incrementally change behaviors, we change en masse. And when we do, we trigger massive waves of change that deconstruct and reconstruct the marketplace. I suspect we’re getting close to that tipping point.

Personally I, like Sullivan, find the physical act of shopping a royal pain in the tuchus.  Recently, my wife and I decided to go buy some coasters, those little squares that go under cups on your coffee table. Indiana Jones has embarked on less daunting quests. When we finally found them I reckon that, accounting for my wife’s and my time at fair market value, those coasters cost somewhere around a thousand dollars. All this for a six-dollar set of coasters that I don’t even particularly like (don’t tell my wife)!

We’re to the point now where shopping should be painless — a search, click and buy, then relax and wait for FedEx to deliver. Even local shopping can become massively more efficient through mobile technology. At some point, we have to realize that going to huge retail stores that are built to maximize per visit sales rather than enable you to find what you’re looking for is a horribly inefficient use of our time. And when we do, the current retail paradigm is flipped on its pointy little head. The net impact? Those modest growth curves suddenly shoot for the sky!

And all those big-box stores that Mikey and I drove by?

Perhaps bowling will make a sudden comeback. I know several great locations for an alley.