With over 770 million GPS-enabled smartphones, location data has begun to permeate the entire mobile space. The possibilities for location-based services on mobile go beyond consumer-facing apps like FourSquare and Shopkick. It’s powering advertisements, and many other services — from weather to travel apps.
There are many opportunities emerging from this new local-mobile paradigm, including location-enabled mobile ads, search, and features that boost engagement for apps.
App or Site?
We used to debate whether businesses should opt for a mobile site or a mobile app, but now most marketers realise that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ and that the two options don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Yet all too often apps are launched without full consideration to the functionality that will be most appealing and useful to customers.
What Customers Want
More than anything else, consumers want to be rewarded with exclusive offers if they download a retail app. This is closely followed by the ability to make a purchase in-app and a loyalty scheme. A store locator tool and a reserve-and-collect function are also important.
For businesses needing to deliver mobile commerce services, these trends present a fundamental challenge. Whether it is providing personalisation, location-based services or capturing and analysing live data from mobile devices the result is a huge volume of data. And, as we know, large data volumes and the performance of mobile devices don’t ordinarily mix.
None of these opportunities will be fully realised without exceptional mobile performance. In this market, the consumer experience is king and failure to act now may quickly damage the prosperity and agility of your business tomorrow.
The Need for Speed
To improve speed and performance, organisations need to reign in their application developers to reduce the size of data sent over the network. Better yet, they need to develop apps that only send the right data to the application. There is no need to send replicated or out of date information that only clogs the network and comes at a cost.
When it comes to a technology strategy, incorporating the three capabilities below will allow companies to differentiate and make a marked difference on the functionality and offers delivered to customers. The technology exists to be able to:
1. Identify redundant, aged data and removing it from the two-way stream of communication, so that only the latest relevant data is moved around the network. This also has a highly positive net effect on network bandwidth and infrastructure requirements
2. Intelligently and dynamically update data in transit
3. Support ‘intelligent reconnect’, i.e. if connection is interrupted, your servers automatically re-instate when you are back in signal.
Bet365
Bet365 is a good example of this technology in action. Their intelligent data distribution technology has proven a major driver for the growth of in-play, and the betting Company claims it has enabled them to increase their product range, improve its capabilities, reduce latency and increase coverage.
It has also allowed bet365 to develop a live odds banner advertising system that utilises the same in-play data. This is where the true scalability of the push technology comes into its own. Between the banner advertising system and the in-play system it handles somewhere in the region of two million concurrent users at peak times.
Maximising your mobile data distribution system for scale and guaranteeing consistent delivery will help to boost customer loyalty and ensure your business stays ahead of competitors.
Mobile device performance is paramount and the need for real-time data vital. Can your business afford to wait any longer?
By Sean Bowen, CEO at Push Technology.
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