Mobile Analytics: A Personal Story

"The mobile phone is the most personal device you’ve got, aside from your keys and your wallet," observed Bob Schukai during his X Change session on mobile technology a few weeks ago.

By way of illustration he had each discussion participant tell a story about our own favorite mobile feature or technology. The stories were as unique as the individuals in the room, but they all fit into the idea that mobile is "personal." I can't resist; here's my story:

I live in a dense, urban neighborhood in San Francisco. Like a fair number of this city's residents, I don't own a car. I love the fact that I can get around locally and do most of my daily business by taking the subway, riding my bicycle, and walking.

When I do need a motor vehicle I use a car-sharing service called Zipcar. They've got cars all over San Francisco - all over North America, actually - that I can rent on the spot for an hourly fee. The closest Zipcars live 3 blocks from my house, which isn't bad considering how impossible it is to find parking here. Once I've made a reservation all I have to do is wave my magnetic membership card in front of the car; the doors unlock and the keys are inside. Gas and insurance are included. I get in and drive away.

Here's where mobile technology enters the story: Zipcar has a great mobile web site. Once I log in on my phone's browser I'm able to make, extend or cancel car reservations. This is incredibly convenient because I might not know I want to extend a reservation until I'm actually out running errands, without access to a desktop computer. If my car is available I can extend my reservation and pay my fee with a few clicks on the mobile web site. Every time I do this I think, "Zipcar just made money, AND they made me a happy customer."

Their mobile technology even amazes me when things go wrong. I recently reserved a pickup truck so I could move some furniture. When I went down to get it, though, the truck was missing - the guy who reserved it before me had failed to return it.

Right there in the parking lot I launched Zipcar's mobile site, found their customer service information, and clicked on the phone number. It auto-dialed on my phone (wow!), and when I got connected the system was smart enough to link my phone number with my Zipcar account number (wow!). I was so amazed that I almost forgot how mad I was. The customer service rep quickly found another truck for me in a nearby lot and I was on my way. I remain a happy customer.

Since I measure online behavior for a living I can't help but wonder if, how, and to what end Zipcar is tracking their mobile site usage. Are they optimizing mobile sales conversion rate? Are they watching satisfaction ratings for customers who use mobile features? Perhaps. If they're not now they will be in the future.

That's my story. Half the people in the world now have mobile phones, says Bob Schukai, and each one of us has a story. We are beginning to use the mobile web to purchase things, to locate things, to get customer support, to get entertained, you name it. As web analysts we must take note; mobile analytics is poised to play an important role in this revolution.

[See also my post on real-world challenges of mobile analytics.]

Comments

[Greg Harris]

June,

I could not agree more. Mobilytics is mobile specific analytics that tracks everything from campaign to conversion. While there is still not a lot of "commerce" being done on mobile, there is still very much a need to track goal conversions and to evaluate your ad spending.

And by the way, we do track campaign click-throughs using URL codes. We do not require unique landing pages or campaigns to be setup beforehand.

Thanks for bringing the mobile analytics message out to the people...

Greg Harris

[Andy Bovingdon]

Hi June, ZipCar is such a cool idea for city living and it looks like their mobile site is up there with NextBus (http://www.nextbus.com) as a killer mobile app in San Francisco.

It is good to see ZipCar doing the right things by linking their customers phone to their account. This is one common mistake Bango often sees on mobile - many sites ask people to register or login to get access to a personalized services. This step is a blocker to most visitors and a totally unnecessary.

Bango Analytics (http://bango.com/analytics) and Bango Payment (http://bango.com/payment) both offer an automatic user identification service (the Bango Identifier) which provides a live unique ID that is easily associated with account information and other local data - after all, as you mention, with over half the worlds population with mobile phones - this is about people and delivering a personal experience.

By the way, as one of the leaders in mobile web payment, I'm not sure I agree there is not a lot of "commerce" being done on mobile, we see lots of people paying for stuff all over the world via operator billing, PSMS, Credit Cards or PayPal. It's a very vibrant and fast growing space.

Andy Bovingdon.

[June Dershewitz]

Greg and Andy, thanks for your feedback. I see that you've got a healthy debate going about the state of mobile commerce.

In my experience - as in my example - mobile commerce tends to be most natural when the mobile site is tied to an existing customer profile where billing has already been set up. In other words, first I must visit a traditional web site, create an account, and enter my credit card info. Then I go to the mobile web site and log into my existing account. The commands I issue from the mobile web site can now be billed against my account. In the future I believe that mobile commerce will cease to be so complex, but it works today as described above.

As a point of clarification, Zipcar does not tie mobile site login to phone number (but that's a good idea). Rather, they tie call center to phone number.

Oh, and I love the NextBus mobile site - I use it nearly every day.

[Jacques Warren]

I've had an iPhone for almost two months now. With all it does, I truly believe that using a computer to access the Net will be somehow seen as passé soon... At least, the computer won't be the device of choice to do what we need to do on the Internet.

[Greg Harris]

Andy,

Sorry for late reply. Been busy staying ahead of Bango as the most accurate analytics product for mobile :).

Actually I was referring to buying physical products that get shipped. Of course there is mobile commerce being done.

Not many people are buying computers or office supplies from their mobile phone.

Greg