Carriers have been smart when it comes to data plans — they’ve adapted plan offerings to consumer usage. It’s time for their phones to follow suit.
Consumers no longer think about how much data their game or video meme is eating up in the moment since they’ve been able to purchase affordable data plans to suit their needs. As a result of these plans, roughly half of our phone sessions are spent “killing time.”
Smartphones, however, have not adapted to these new usage trends. Rather than offering up easy ways to stay entertained, the smartphone’s potential to better serve users still has two critical flaws:
- Promotion bias. Unlocking the phone simply promotes the last app used. This last in, first out (LIFO) “logic” has remained largely unchanged for over a decade.
- Choice overload. If unlocking doesn’t display the last app, the phone merely reveals a sea of icons – the sheer number of which is more than most users can process. So, users tend to recall favorite apps or fall back on whatever app is top of mind. Psychologists refer to this phenomena as choice overload.
The current metrics focus masks the opportunity
The two factors above are lost on even the biggest of mobile players. Consider the new emphasis app stores are placing on retention as a key metric. Both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store favor apps that feature high retention and usage rates. But, as we’ve just illustrated, today’s retention metrics unfairly mask the user effort required to cut through the device’s promotion bias and choice overload. For many categories, this makes the retention metric only loosely reflective of appeal.
More useful metrics would focus on how well our “smart” handsets proactively give us what we want when we pick them up. Verto Analytics and Phoenix Marketing International (PMI) collected and analyzed detailed logs of device usage from 1,000 Android users over four months to develop and understand these new metrics. Here’s a sample of what was found and what it means to the current smartphone:
- 33% of all device unlocks find the home screen, creating either immediate choice overload or the need to swipe, tap, or search for the desired app.
- 16% of all device unlocks find an app that is immediately closed within 2 seconds, creating the same need to swipe, tap, or search.
- PMI defined a new index, First Screen Stickiness, as for how likely an app or category is to be used versus immediately closed when found as the first screen after unlock compared to the average app.
- Applications that provide immediate experiential ROI – with updated feeds providing a variety of easy engagement choices tend to have high First Screen Stickiness Indexes: first screen content delivery (618), games (270), Snapchat (205), Facebook (172), and email (167).
- Narrow, task-specific apps/categories tend to have lower First Screen Stickiness Indexes: search (91), shopping (86), phone (80), and calendar (77).
All of these metrics point to the massive opportunity to make the phone unlock experience more engaging and proactive, boosting the device’s average First Screen Stickiness. In other words…
It’s time for a smarter smartphone
We know much more is possible from the smartphone. Carriers and OEMs will soon start using artificial intelligence (AI) beyond what we’re currently experiencing with Siri and Google Assistant. New user interfaces will drive improved experiences that better recommend content and apps in any moment.
Today’s phones already proactively tell us where our cars are parked, how to get home, and if it’s going to rain today. In the future, our AI-driven phones will learn our likes and daily schedules and serve up content appropriately. They’ll deliver content we love when we have the time to enjoy it – like our team’s baseball scores in the morning, email when we get to the office, and world news during our coffee break. By combining artificial intelligence with these new analytics, First Screen Stickiness will improve dramatically.
How carriers can seize the day
There’s ample opportunity for carriers to seize this moment and make the most of it, but they’ll need to move fast to create new experiences with new partnerships before someone else fills that void. Carriers should immediately:
- Intersect your subscribers’ journey at relevant points. Here are several possibilities: 1) At unlock (the precise moment the phone should know that someone may be looking for engaging content), 2) Swiping right from the homescreen to find a screen that shows local events, trending news, sports scores, weather updates and favorite apps, 3) On the lockscreen, or 4) Having new browser windows present search recommendations based on the user’s interests.
- Find trusted, quality publishing partners to provide the content that keeps users entertained. There’s no need to buy. Just cut deals.
Rolling out these new experiences can yield increased revenue from new inventory, audience development fees from publishing partners, and from marketing directly to their subscriber base.
The bottom line here is this: carriers have caught up and done a great job with data plans. The phones are improving, but they still have some legwork to do if they’re going to respond to what users want.
So, carriers, the opportunity is yours to seize if you want it. Create mobile experiences that help your subscribers get what they want in every moment of their mobile lives. Carpe diem! The effort will be more than worthwhile.
Greg is a 20+ year veteran of interactive marketing and advertising. He has held leadership roles in areas spanning the areas of business development, corporate strategy, campaign optimization, research, and advertising sales. Prior to Mobile Posse, Greg was COO at VoodooVox where he lead advertising sales and all sales, marketing and PR operating functions.
Before VoodooVox, Greg was Founder and President of Soapbox Marketing, a consultancy that helped brands strategize, design, launch, and measure best-practice digital word-of-mouth campaigns. Greg was part of the Executive Leadership team at Organic Inc., as well as founder of the Internet Media consulting practice for The Yankee Group. At The Yankee Group, Greg specialized in advising Fortune 500 clients on interactive marketing and advertising. A one-time engineer, Greg started his career building and testing interactive services at GTE Research Labs.
