March 28

App development to the service of user’s needs

Previously we’ve seen the necessity of new strategies to take your business to the next level. we’ve highlighted the importance of the digital presence of  businesses to engage consumers, generate more market share and profit. Since we live in a digital era, data collection, as well as feedback, are key features every business need to integrate into its daily operation processes to determinate and adapt strategies to the target audience. Due to the massive usage of smartphones and mobile devices, billions of people are contributing to the increasing amount of existing big data

Let’s go a bit more in-depth with one of the strategies proposed which is the development of Mobile App and some risks people normally don’t take into consideration.

Mobile App development

 According to Comscore (siwick,2013), as of June 2013, mobile devices accounted 55% of time spent interacting with online retail outlets. Mobile interactions take place via mobile apps specially designed to fulfill specific users demands such as shopping, entertainment, information and social interactions.  Currently, there are around 1.5M apps in each one of the most used platforms Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store. With this amount of different types of apps, it’s important when developing yours, to fit it to your market goals and market niche. Past studies have shown that product value is one of the important factors in promoting app usage and purchases.

     These are the steps you will need to take to develop your app:

    1. Research: first thing is to have an idea of what you want to offer, which problem will be able to solve for your target audience. An effective way to know what your audience wants is to analyse your buyer persona’s behaviour
      patterns, doing so, you will be able to identify customers lifecycle, gain clarity towards developing the app and the use customers will make of it. Despite your app can be similar to others, you want yours to be unique in a specific way, so you have to ensure the viability of your idea. Don’t forget to research and analyse your direct competitors to know mistakes you should avoid
    2. wireframing: this process it’s going to help you know and understand functionalities of the app you want to develop. An initial brainstorming of possible features that fit with the purpose of the mobile app and adapt them to users special needs. Including too many features can result in a very costly process.
    3. Technical Assessment: Mobile apps have different requirements depending on platform and format, so you need to make sure that back-end systems will support the functionality
    4. Prototype: build a prototype ASAP, that will help you to know how the app works and flows. This stage of the development will help you have a better insight of the direction the project is taking. You can test the prototype on stakeholders and get feedback from them.
    5. Design: To enhance customers engagement, firms can design branded apps with features that offer different touchpoints at various stages throughout the customers journey. UX and UI designers will take part in this phase using blueprints as a guide to envision the final product. Your budget will condition the timeframe the design process will take. Addition of visual elements will increase possibilities of your UX  being original.
    6. Develop: After you are done with the design, now it’s time to test and fix functionality. One of the best ways of testing an app or any techy product is through a focus group, since they’re  the public that will use the app, so you can get a good feedback and see if the app is ready to be released
    7. Integrate analytics into app: Analytic tools will help you to collect info about users behaviour
    8. Testing: Testing the app through the whole development process will help you keep the fina costs low. The intentionality of testing an app is to see compatibility, security, usability and performance. Once the app has passed the users acceptance test, you know is ready. Net step is a Beta trial to receive feedback about real life functionability.
    9. Deployment:  Last step is to submit the app and get feedback from users. That feedback will help you introduce updates into new versions. Make sure you have enough resources to maintain the product.

Now that you know the necessary to develop an app for your business, don’t forget that there are also risks related to app usage. First of all we have become more dependant on our smart devices, meaning that a huge amount on time spent in front of our devices and sharing our personal information through the internet. You can get more information by clicking on the following link

 mobile app risks management 


References

Ashwini, A. (2017). What Are The Various Phases Of Mobile App Development?. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/swlh/what-are-the-various-phases-of-mobile-app-development-4f0a1748e619 [Accessed 19 Mar. 2019].

boyd D, e. and P, K, K. (2019). Branded Apps and Their Impact on Firm Value: A Design Perspective. [ebook] Available at: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=1a73f707-6d5e-4635-8c95-a5b98f96621b%40pdc-v-sessmgr05&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=134550812&db=buh [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

lindner, d. (2019). 5 Risks Introduced by Mobile Apps. [online] Bankinfosecurity.com. Available at: https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/5-risks-introduced-by-mobile-apps-p-1406 [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

 

 

 

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December 13

CHOOSE THE BEST FOR YOUR SKIN

 

A brief History about Dove

Dove is a Canadian company that has been selling beauty products for more than 60 years. Their main target market is all type of women above 18 years with a good awareness of skin care and good purchasing power.  Dove main objective is to fight the fake perception of women beauty that we are being sold by media. Dove doesn’t use Photoshop, just real life women so every woman can identify herself with Dove models. They go beyond with their Dove self-esteem project, designed specially to address women daily issues with their look.

Dove’s first product was the beauty bar, and from there new products like body wash, body lotion, facial cleaners, deodorants and  shampoos.

A study carried out by dove shows that 8 out of 10 women don’t feel confident with the way they look, so they opt out of daily activities.

 

Doves buyer personas

 

Customer’s journey

 

Dove vs competitors 

The effectiveness of websites:

 

There is four approaches we use to analyse customers behaviour when purchasing online. Those approaches comply with attraction since is the first thing will help a customer to decide whether continue on the website despite the product they are looking for. Secondly the website should inform broadly about the services or products they offer to make the customers journey easier, with clear description of products, accessibility  to payment methods and so on. What makes a customer choose one brand or another depends on the positioning of the brand. Meaning that the customer will feel more attracted if there is a variety of products, good merchandising and offers including membership discounts like student discount or >25 discount.

Dove website doesn’t sell their products directly. it’s a B2B company which have agreements with various retailers like ASDA, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s etc. On the website products are very easy to find with the description of the product and a valoration of the product based on customers experiences. Dove competitors use the same method of purchasing through their websites.

From the positioning perspective, the layout of Nivea website is better since it’s easier to access to all their products with fewer clicks than Dove’s. Therefore, customers experience is more engaging.

When customers go to a website they need to be attracted about the advertisement and banners. Dove keeps it simple, using a single image of a model with no advertising or banners at all. just the categories such as baby Dove, man care and their famous self-esteem project.  On the other hand Nivea and Olay websites are full of banners that can make customers want to check other products that could be of their interest.

For any organisation in terms of reach to the buyer force, social media it’s key part of the marketing strategy because potential buyers can track in real time the new arrivals and the organisation can analyse their behaviour. Analysing Dove and its competitors social medias we can see clearly a advantage and better acceptance in the main social medias such as facebook instagram and twitter.

Website traffic comparison

DOVE Vs OLAY


DOVE VS NIVEA


The charts show a clear winner when it comes to website traffic. Dove is ahead with 2.5 M, i second place we have Olay with a total of 821.09K visits. Third position is for Nivea with 163.73K visits.

in both Olay and Nivea, the activity is very stable comparing to Dove which is more fluctuate.

 

bibliography

Dove UK. (2018). Welcome to Dove. [online] Available at: https://www.dove.com/uk/home.html [Accessed 5 Dec. 2018].

Nivea.co.uk. (2018). Always there for me: NIVEA. [online] Available at: https://www.nivea.co.uk/ [Accessed 5 Dec. 2018].

Olay.com. (2018). Skin Care Products and Tips | Olay. [online] Available at: https://olay.com/en-us [Accessed 5 Dec. 2018].

behadur, n. (2018). How Dove Tried To Change The Conversation About Female Beauty. [online] HuffPost UK. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940 [Accessed 5 Dec. 2018].

Bhasin, H. (2018). Dove Competitors – Personal Care & cosmetic Competitors Of Dove. [online] Marketing91. Available at: https://www.marketing91.com/top-dove-competitors/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2018].

SimilarWeb. (2018). dove.com Traffic Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.similarweb.com/website/dove.com?competitors=nivea.co.uk [Accessed 7 Dec. 2018].

SimilarWeb. (2018). dove.com Traffic Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.similarweb.com/website/dove.com?competitors=olay.com [Accessed 7 Dec. 2018].

Mangukiya, P. (2018). Social media by the numbers [Infographic]. [online] HuffPost. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/piyush-mangukiya/social-media-by-the-numbe_b_9757926.html [Accessed 10 Dec. 2018].

randolph, m. (2015). Dove Social Media Analysis Summary. [online] Her Marketing Blog. Available at: https://hermarketingblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/dove-social-media-analysis-summary/ [Accessed 11 Dec. 2018].

 

 

 

 

 

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment on CHOOSE THE BEST FOR YOUR SKIN
November 19

Game of media

 

Game of thrones has a great impact on social media, and brandwatch used that impact to promote G.O.T season 4 in New Zealand involving people in a popular discussion on social media about one of the most heated characters, King Joffrey. The outcome of the campaign was 43 million people sharing opinions around 143 countries. This results shows more than 800,000 interactions with the social campaign, the importance of data collection and the power of social media for digital marketing. Brandwatch is one of the world’s leading social media monitoring and analytic platform  providing its clients with the necessary tools to analyse conversations, therefore  they can make better business decisions based on data collection.

Nowadays people are  connected worldwide through social media and other communication platforms, that allows important companies to make great decisions using our personal opinions on those social media interactions.

 

 

 

https://www.brandwatch.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandwatch#/media/File:Brandwatch_Logo.png

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