"Mobile marketing is still in its infancy, and if it's ever to grow up, marketers will need metrics. The ability to measure and segment site visitors who are using mobile devices lags far behind the ability to slice and dice visitors using PCs.
One of the biggest barriers to getting effective mobile analytics is the mobile carriers--the massive companies that provide mobile phone service. They control much of the information that can be used to identify and track individual mobile Web surfers, and that information is not publicly available.
Below, find out more about mobile Web analytics, whether you need them, the challenges they present, and the value they can provide.
Do you need a WAP site?
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open standard for bringing the Internet to mobile phones and PDAs. Having a well designed WAP site gives mobile visitors an experience tailored to their device. Without them, mobile visitors are stuck with websites designed for PCs, which can be hard to navigate and use on a phone.
One way to determine if you need a WAP site is to analyze your website's traffic. If a significant portion is coming from mobile users, then you might want to consider building them a better experience.
"If 10% of your traffic is actually people from mobile phones and they're having a terrible experience, then that means that you're wasting 10% of your online usage. Considering how much marketers spend building that traffic and building that brand online, that is a real waste," says Adam Kerr, VP North America, Bango, a mobile analytics provider.
How Can I Measure It?
Website metrics are invaluable. They can point out problems with websites, measure the success of campaigns, and help guide investments in technology and advertising. Mobile website metrics have the potential to be equally valuable, but they work a little differently.
Challenges
> Cookies aren't effective
Web cookies--or tracking cookies--are a way for a visitors' Web browser and an analytics system to communicate. Cookies are often used by marketers to track their site visitors' behavior.
 | How cookies work for PC users Unique visitors receive a cookie when first arriving to a website to have their clicking behavior tracked. When the visitors return to the website, the cookie will identify them as repeat visitors. If a visitor deletes his cookies, he receives a new cookie when returning to the website and is marked as a "unique visitor." |
| Cookies for mobile visitors Cookies do not work as well on mobile browsers as they do for PCs. Some mobile browsers do not support cookies at all. Others will delete cookies when the phone is shut off. This makes cookies less-reliable when tracking mobile site traffic. |
> IP addresses aren't specific
IP addresses can reveal the location of individual PC visitors. The IP addresses of mobile visitors are much more general. The carriers do not reveal IP addresses down to an individual level, but instead release addresses that could represent millions of users.
The Undeletable Cookie
Some mobile analytics companies have avoided using cookies and IP addresses to track mobile browsers. They pool multiple sources of information and build partnerships with mobile carriers to track mobile visitors individually. Mobile analytics provider Bango uses such a strategy, Kerr says.
These systems can provide a much more long-term and accurate view of a visitors' behavior. Marketers using them get a much better picture of who is truly a unique visitor, who is a returning visitor and what their long-term behavior is like. It's like an undeletable tracking cookie.
| Carrier partnerships required It would be very difficult to build a continuous, long-term file of a mobile visitor's behavior without partnering with mobile carriers, says Mike Wehrs, President and CEO, Mobile Marketing Association. "[The information] is not generally accessible and it would take a tremendous amount of technical prowess to figure it out," he says. |
| Touchy legal issue Mobile analytics providers that handle information that could personally identify mobile users could be in uncertain legal territory. "You're now in the realm of personally identifiable information as soon as you start doing that type of stuff. And now you have a whole different level of legislative and regulatory oversight." "As recently as [February], the Federal Trade Commission re-released and further specified how private information needs to be handled. So it's definitely getting the attention of some of the civil groups, and it's gotten the attention of the FTC." (FTC report linked below.) |
Metrics Available
Mobile analytics systems can provide basic metrics such as unique visitor counts, page view counts and conversion rates. Here are two unique metrics that aren't used to track visitors from PCs and are specific to mobile:
| Carrier – visitor can be segmented by which company provides their mobile service. The top four US Mobile Carriers and their approximate number of subscribers, according to CNET News:
Verizon recently overtook AT&T in 2008 by acquiring Alltel, formerly the fifth largest U.S. carrier. | ||||||||||||||
| Device – segmenting by the type of phone Segmenting visitors by their device can provide exceptional insights. Phone capabilities vary greatly, and their pricing and features can provide insights into a customer's lifestyle. This can be useful for targeting offers. Here are the top 10 most-used mobile handsets in the US in Q3 2008, according to Nielsen.
"If you're dealing with lots of users who have high-end handsets, you can design your sites so it has better pages, more video content, it's got more music content, if that's appropriate. Whereas if you have lots of users who have basic hands sets then you'll probably want to keep the site relatively simple and low on graphics so they can load the site quickly on their cell phone," Kerr says. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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