According to mobiThinking, In 2009 there were over 5.3 billion mobile subscribers and over half a billion had a smartphone. In 2011, 85% of those mobile subscribers will have web-enabled smartphones. That’s a huge spike in web-enabled mobile users. Although many companies have adopted some of the latest trends of smartphones, there are 3 things that they have not fully capitalized to their full potential. These 3 areas of opportunity can easily help your business adopt to the fast-paced mobile world and improve your customer’s experience:

NFC capabilities: Get enrolled now!

Most of all retailers and small business have a merchant Point of Sale machine that handle debit and credit card transactions, and now is the time for those machines to get upgraded to handle the onslaught of NFC enabled mobile phones that will be soon shipping within the next 2 years. Be ahead of the curve and get signed up or upgrade soon. This will not only give you a competitive advantage over other retailers but it will keep customer satisfaction high, as many consumers will be eager to try this new form of payment.

Get Proactively Involved with E-Coupons and Rewards.

Many consumers are shifting their shopping from actual stores to online retailers like Amazon or eBay, and they do so because they have great confidence that they will get a better deal online then they would at the store. Therefore, when they’re met with a tempting deal at a store, they hesitate and choose to look it up and buy it online. Actively applying discounts and reward points will give that customer an emotional sensation to buy now, rather then later, will help your business win that sale immediately. E-Coupons and rewards can be used in conjunction with NFC enabled phones and apply automatic discounts and reward points when an enabled NFC phone is used as form of payment at the register. Such a feature is being rolled out with Google’s own offering of Google wallet and I recommend you take immediate action to differentiate yourself before it becomes the norm. Remember be proactive, not reactive. Customers always love to be rewarded without having to chase down discounts.

Compatible Websites: Make your website compatible to mobile web browsers.

Many of the huge retailers have already jumped on board with creating specific mobile applications pertaining to their company for the two larges phone ecosystems: Android and the iPhone. However, not everyone has an Android or an iPhone so creating many different types of applications for each specific mobile operating system can be expensive and time consuming, especially for smaller businesses. In addition, with the large pool of applications between Android and iPhone, only 1 of 4 applications downloaded actually get used. Therefore, when creating website for your company, make sure that your site is mobile browser friendly. Make things simple and accessible to customers without having them to zoom in on a page that’s meant for your laptop on a small 4 inch portable screen. In addition, if your website requires the user to fill out a form — for example loan applications — please make it mobile friendly. I can’t tell you how many times I started to fill out a form on my phone but just quit because it was just too much work.

Some of these tips sound like common sense but it will make you wonder why it isn’t a uniform standard across many retailers and companies. The truth is that the most of these initiatives will eventually become standard, but the key to your business is to be ahead of the curve and give your customer that friendly mobile experience and satisfaction they haven’t felt anywhere else.

Source: mobiThinking

Do you own a Smartphone? Email, text, IM clients/ colleuges from anywhere at anytime? Check out these 8 rules to Smartphone etiquette and see how badly you are misbehaving.

1. Be considerate: If you are contacting a client after hours ask if they are free to talk. Just because your friends may immediately respond to IM’s or texts doesn’t mean your client wants to. Have the same expectations as you would from an email correspondence.

2. Remember the concept of “business hours”: Follow the weekday 7am-9pm rule. Not everyone wants to speak to you late night or on weekends, you must respect that.

3. Only contact the people you talk to regularly: Texting a colleague that sits next to you is totally acceptable. Texting a client you rarely speak to is not.

4. Put your phone away during face-to-face meetings: There is nothing more annoying then having a conversation with someone who is constantly checking their cell phone. If you can’t focus during a 30min meeting what kind of impression does that give your potential clients.

5. Texts and IMs should be reserved for simple, non-critical topics: If your texts is longer then a sentence or requires deeper communication send an email or schedule a call.

6. Be wary of abbreviations and emoticons: Be aware of whom you are texting, if you would not include LOL or a smiley face in an email to them why would you via text message.

7. Never send sensitive information: Hackers can easily obtain this information and cause severe damage.

8. Stay professional: Be sure to still use spell check and write professionally via text as you would by email. Remember you are still conducting business.

Believe it or not the increase in smartphones has also impacted the online gaming market. Emarketer is predicting the revenues for mobile gaming are going to see a 19% increase this year, versus last year. With the accessability of gaming sites and also the creation of mobile apps, many individuals AND application designers have made the move into this online industry. The free apps available to consumers will probably see more success, but the eventual move to more paid downloadable apps could see more joining the bandwagon (because there might be more perks with a paid application versus the free applications). So with more and more starting to utilize gaming sites, does this mean potential regulations of the industry like it is with casinos and such?

Looks like we all have yet another reason to get “addicted” to our phones!