Joe Wikert's DisruptorFest

Maximizing mobile micro-moments

Google recently published a document entitled Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. You can download the PDF here. It’s a quick read and worth a close look.

I’ve long felt the publishing industry is too focused on simply delivering the print experience on digital devices, something often referred to as “print under glass.” That strategy has created new revenue streams over the past 10 years but it’s not the end game. Mobile represents opportunities for new methods of engagement and discovery; that’s precisely what Google’s document outlines with plenty of interesting stats.

For example, the document notes that “we check our phones 150 times a day” and then reminds us that each session is barely a minute long. That might be an average length but I’ll bet the mean is even shorter. How often do you pull your phone out for only a quick, 10-20 second peek at your email inbox or news? That’s probably my typical session length and based on what I see around me I’m confident it’s the case for plenty of others as well.

So what about that oft-used scenario of pulling the phone out to read an ebook while standing in line at the grocery store? That’s clearly something publishers fantasize about but consumers rarely, if ever, do. It’s more info snacking and short, bite-sized pieces of content that are consumed in most of these mobile sessions.

That trend isn’t changing anytime soon. As the Google doc states, in the past year mobile sessions have increased 20% while session time has decreased 18%. We’re shifting from longer desktop sessions to shorter mobile sessions.

Google asks this very important question: How does your brand perform on keywords searches that are vital to your business? Don’t just focus on search results ranking, btw. You may appear at the top but does the resulting link take a visitor to a terrific mobile experience? Responsive design is part of that but the more important point is that the destination page is constructed with content or a call-to-action perfectly designed for those 10-20 second mobile session bursts.

What does a great, mobile-optimized destination page look like? For one thing, it’s probably a single screen requiring no scrolling on even the smallest of phones. If you can’t deliver on that promise you need to focus on giving the visitor a reason to provide their email address for more details. Again, everything should be designed for an extremely short user session.

On page 8 Google says that that video how-to searches are still on an extremely steep growth trajectory. They’re up 70% year-over-year and far from plateauing. Your business is probably built around written content, but if you’re in the how-to space you’ve got to think about how to remain relevant as more solutions are discovered via mobile searches and delivered in video, not written, format.

Take a few minutes to read and highlight elements of Google’s report. There’s a lot of terrific information here and I guarantee it will both inspire you as well as force you to think about the importance of reframing your brand around mobile. There’s so much here, in fact, that I want to revisit the document in next week’s article. So stay tuned for part two where I’ll highlight several other important points as well as share a use-case for how mobile can complement, not replace, print.

Three lessons from comScore’s latest mobile apps report

comScore recently published a 15-page report on the state of mobile apps. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but if you don’t have the time, here are the three big takeaways for content publishers:

Mobile apps are the new digital engagement king. Prior to 2014 the combination of desktop plus mobile browser was where digital engagement was happening. Now mobile apps are the leader, but there are some caveats. 75% of a user’s time is limited to four apps. Given that trend, what’s the likelihood your new app will replace one of those popular four? The key here is to make sure your content plays well and is seamlessly integrated with the apps that are already attracting all the eyeballs.

Mobile is just one critical element of a device-agnostic strategy. Digital engagement on the desktop isn’t dead. In fact, according to the Comscore report it’s up 1%. OK, that’s not exciting growth but it’s important to note that desktop engagement is holding its own...for now. So while the combination of apps and mobile browsers represent 60% of total digital engagement, the 40% represented by desktop is still significant enough to warrant attention. Does the user experience change when a customer shifts from consuming your content on a phone to a tablet or desktop? Don’t treat any device/platform as a second-class citizen. Even though mobile apps have all the momentum it’s important to make sure you’re not forcing your customers to learn a new UI when they switch from one device to another. (Hint: Think HTML presentation/consumption.)

Downloaded and then forgotten. An earlier report from Nielsen indicates consumers typically use 23-27 apps per month. If you’re like me your phone already has a heck of a lot more than 27 apps on it. And I’ll bet you’re downloading several new apps every month, but for the most part you’re probably still using the same ones over and over. So we’re all a bunch of app hoarders. We download a new app, maybe open it once or twice and then abandon it. Remember that old saying about how it’s easier to sell something new to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one? Someone who has already discovered and downloaded your app is closer to engaging with your content than someone who may not even know the app exists. So what are you doing to remind (or incent) inactive users to open and take advantage of that app they downloaded?

What if DRM Goes Away?

TOC Latin America was held last Friday in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires. Kat Meyer, my O'Reilly colleague, and Holger Volland did a terrific job producing the event. As is so often the case with great conferences, part of the value is spending time with speakers and other attendees in between sessions and at dinner gatherings

Last Thursday night I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Kat, Holger and a number of other TOC Latin America speakers. We discussed a number of interesting topics but my favorite one was asking each person this question: What happens if DRM goes away tomorrow?

The DoJ suit against Apple and five of the big six has led to a lot of speculation. One of the most interesting scenarios raised is that if the government is intent on limiting the capabilities of the agency model, publishers need to figure out what other tools they can use to combat the growing dominance of Amazon.

Charlie Stross is right. DRM is a club publishers gave to Amazon and then insisted that Amazon beat them over their heads with it. So what if we woke up tomorrow and DRM for books disappeared, just like it has (for the most part) with music?

I was unable to reach a consensus at that dinner, but here's what I think would happen: Initially, not much. After all, Amazon has a lot of momentum. If current U.S. estimates are accurate, Amazon controls about 60-65% of the ebook market and B&N is second with about 25-28%. That only leaves 7-13% for everyone else. And if you've been buying ebooks from Amazon up to now, you're not likely to immediately switch to buying from B&N just because they both offer books without DRM. On the surface Amazon's and B&N's ebooks use incompatible formats, mobi for the former and EPUB for the latter. But that's where it gets interesting.

Converting from mobi to EPUB (or vice versa) is pretty simple with a free tool like Calibre. I've played around with it a bit, converting some of the DRM-free ebooks we sell on oreilly.com. I didn't do those conversions to get our books in other formats. After all, when you buy a book from oreilly.com you're buying access to all the popular formats (mobi, EPUB and PDF, as well as others), not just the one format a device-maker wants to lock you into. I did the conversions because I wanted to see what's involved in the process.

If you've ever used Microsoft Word to save or convert a .doc file to PDF you'd find it's just as easy to go from mobi to EPUB in Calibre, for example. But just because the tool is available does that mean if DRM goes away we'd suddenly see a lot of Kindle owners buying EPUBs from B&N and converting them to mobi with Calibre? I doubt it. Those Kindle owners are used to a seamless buying experience from Amazon, so unless there's a compelling reason to do so, they're not likely to switch ebook retailers. And that leads me to the most important point...

Creating the best buying and reading experience is one way any ebook retailer can steal market share from the competition. Amazon has a pretty darned good one, that's for sure, but there's plenty of room for improvement, IMHO. I'm not convinced any ebook retailer has pushed the envelope on innovation and exciting new features in their devices or reader apps. In fact, these enhancements seem to move at a glacial pace. So what if B&N (or anyone else, for that matter) suddenly invested heavily in reader app functionality that puts them well ahead of the competition? And what if some of those features were so unique and innovative that they couldn't be copied by others? I'd much rather see a competitive marketplace based on this approach than the one we currently have where the retailer with the deepest pockets wins.

Innovation is better than predatory pricing. What a concept. The iPod revolutionized music, an industry that was highly fragmented and looking for a way forward in the pre-iPod days. The iPhone turned the cellular market on its head. Think about how significantly different the original iPod and iPhone were when compared to the clumsy MP3 players and flip phones that preceded them. I believe today's crop of ebook readers and apps are, in many ways, as clumsy and simplistic as those MP3 players and flip phones. IOW, we haven't experienced a radical tranformative moment in the ebook devices and app world yet.

Of course all of this innovation I'm dreaming of could happen today. We don't need to wait for a DRM-free world. Or do we? Amazon has no incentive to innovate like this. They already have a majority market share and it's only going to get larger when the DoJ dust settles.

This is more of a rallying cry for B&N, Kobo and every other device and ebook retailer. If DRM goes away tomorrow nothing much changes unless these other players force it to. But why wait till DRM disappears? It might not happen for a long time. Meanwhile, the opportunity to innovate and create a path to market share gain exists today. I hope one or more of the minority market share players wakes up and takes action.

Content Lessons Learned from NHL GameCenter LIVE

I'm a huge hockey fan and even though I pay Comcast extra for the NHL Network I only get to see a few games a week, most of which don't interest me. I want to see my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, but they're not on the cable channels frequently enough. I'd like to have access to every Penguins game and the only option for that is NHL's GameCenter LIVE subscription. It costs $169 though and, being a cheapskate, I resisted signing up...till now.

I coughed up $169 over the weekend and I'm glad I did. Now that I've used the service for a few days I've discovered there are a number of lessons GameCenter can teach those of us who manage other types of content:

The ongoing value of the direct sale -- When you sell direct you capture 100% of the transaction. There's no middleman. So now the NHL has a direct relationship with me and I'm no longer some unknown customer with Comcast in the middle. The NHL now has an excellent opportunity to upsell to me, especially since they'll quickly discover my preferences.

Trust your customers -- I was amazed to discover that I could use my GameCenter account on more than one device at the same time. That means I can watch one game on my iPad while another is playing on my computer. I'm assuming this means I'll be able to share my account with my son (who's also a big NHL fan). If so, we could both watch the same or different games simultaneously. That was a very pleasant surprise, btw, as I expected them to lock the second device out. Think of this as the equivalent to a DRM-free ebook. I'm sure the NHL doesn't want me posting my account credentials for anyone to use but their system is loose enough to surprise and delight. I can't wait to watch two games simultaneously (on different devices) when a couple of good ones are on at the same time! Btw, this is how all types of content access should work. But with all the restrictions and limitations we encounter every day in the digital world I was blown away to see how liberal GameCenter's access policies are. This makes me like them and their product even more. Trust is an amazing thing, isn't it? :-)

Make sure your content is available everywhere (including direct!) -- This sounds so obvious but it's so frequently overlooked. Sure, some of the NHL content was available to me via cable but I wanted more. Are you only making your e-content available on the "big" sites? Are those sites reaching all your potential global customers? Probably not. Once again, that's why you need a strong direct sales presence and the ability to serve that content globally.

Make sure it's on every platform -- I can watch games on any of my devices. That includes Mac, Windows, iPad, Android phone, and yes, even my Blackberry Playbook. Are all of your ebooks available in EPUB, mobi and PDF? Those are the key three today and if your content isn't available in all of those formats you're definitely missing some platform opportunities. More importantly, when a customer buys your product do they receive it in all those formats? Unless you're selling it directly as a multi-format product (like we do on oreilly.com) I'll bet the answer to that is no. Don't force your customers to buy mobi today and epub separately tomorrow, for example. That's irritating. Give them all formats in one transaction. This once again underscores the importance of having a strong direct channel. After all, you're probably safe assuming the big e-tailers are only going to offer the format that best suits their needs, not the customer's.

Pricing shouldn't be a race to the bottom -- At first that $169 price tag sounded awfully rich to me. But the more I looked into the service the more I realized it's actually quite reasonable. That's mostly because the NHL is delivering a very high quality product without the limitations found in other services (e.g., MLB's AtBat). All the games I care about are featured and the video is somewhere between standard and high def; pretty remarkable considering it's coming in via wifi. Every ebook doesn't have to be $9.99 or less. Consider your product's overall value proposition before you give in to the pressures of a low-priced solution.

Visit the "Digital Petting Zoo" at TOC NY in February!

I strongly recommend everyone in publishing acquaint themselves with the latest digital gadgets. After all, if you're not familiar with the devices your customers are using how can you possibly relate to their user experience? It's hard keeping up with all the devices and platforms out there though. And that's precisely what your friends at O'Reilly's Tools of Change (TOC) conference are here to help with. (Actually, this idea is way too good to be my own...we can all thank my conference co-chair, Kat Meyer, for coming up with it.)

I'm pleased to announce that during TOC NY in February we'll have a special area set aside where you'll get to experience all the latest gadgets firsthand. For example, if you're an iPad owner who's never had a chance to test drive an Android device, we've got you covered. But it's more than just the devices themselves that we'll be showcasing in our "digital petting zoo." We plan to feature some of the most innovative and game-changing apps, ebooks and other e-products in this space at the event.

So even as I type this post, Kat and I are reaching out to all the device/platform vendors to make sure they're well represented in the zoo. We're also on the lookout for cool apps and ebooks, especially ones that may have somehow slipped below our radar. If you know of one or you've helped develop one you'd like to nominate for inclusion in the zoo email me with the details.

I'll be serving as the zookeeper for the event, so if you're planning to attend TOC NY, please be sure to stop by and say hello. Speaking of which, sign up now to secure the best TOC registration rate possible!