Monday, September 14, 2009

Mobile Handset Features Strongly Affect User Engagement

As you might expect, less-developed handset features make ease of mobile Web navigation a key issue for feature phone owners, while smart phone owners are less concerned. That said, speed of page loading is the top issue for both smart phone and feature phone users.

On the heels of a study that suggests less ad engagement with mobile advertising by smart phone users, another study suggests nearly-identical levels of engagement with Internet activities. The studies do not contradict each other, but merely suggest that high levels of engagement with mobile content do not necessarily lead to high levels of engagement with mobile ads.

A study by Chitika, a Massachusetts-based online advertising network, suggests mobile users are approximately half as likely to click on an advertisement as non-mobile users. The findings are based on a sample of 92 million impressions.

The new InsightExpress study found that 68 percent of smartphone users reported feeling positively engaged while using the mobile Internet, second only to the 70 percent of users who were positively engaged while on a computer.

Only 47 percent of feature phone users reported positive mobile site engagement, as you might expect, given the more-limited capabilities of feature phones, compared to smart phones.

These results indicate that smartphone users are as engaged with mobile Internet content as those who are browsing the Internet on their computer. The Chitika results suggest that, for any number of reasons, mobile advertising is not yet optimized.

When mobile Internet users were asked to identify the top three elements that most influence their decision to return to a mobile Internet site, they said the top three issues were the speed at which the site loads, the ease of navigation on the site and the quality of the content on the site itself.

Service providers largely control the first variable, site designers and handset manufacturers the second variable and content providers the third.

Among mobile Internet users, several small but telling differences were revealed when comparing smart phone owners to feature phone owners. While both groups prioritized the speed at which a mobile site loads, smart phone users looked next at the quality of the content, ranking ease of navigation as less important.

In contrast, feature phone users found ease of navigation almost as essential as their number one concern, how fast the mobile site loads.

These differences can be explained by the limited navigation capabilities available with feature phones, making simple interfaces an absolute necessity. Smart phones, with their advanced browsers and inputs, allow for more complex page navigation.

Mobile Web site features that had the least impact on a users decision to make a return visit were the absence of advertising, the ability to personalize, and the number of links, videos or images on the site.

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