Kony

Write Once, Run Everywhere Mobile Technology

BEST PRACTICES FOR TAKING YOUR BRAND MOBILE

WHITE PAPER Mobile Application Development of Consumer-facing Apps

Spring 2011 SUMMARY

With 234 million Americans age 13 and older using mobile devices, its clear the mobile revolution is upon us1. Worldwide mobile phone sales increased 25% in the third quarter of 2010, while smartphone sales shot up 96% in the same period2. In fact, smartphones now represent 17.3% of all phones sold and more than 49.1 million Americans own one. Consumers continue to adopt mobile technologies at a breakneck pace and mobile internet users are expected to surpass desktop Internet users in ve years3.

Devloping Secure Mobile Applications, Forrester Research and Kony Solutions, 11/2010 Competitive Landscape: Mobile Devices, Worldwide, 3Q10, Gartner, 11/2010 3 Morgan Stanleys Mobile Internet Report, 12/2009
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Best Practices for Taking Your Brand Mobile

INTRODUCTION
The ever-changing mobile landscape has created a mess of many, resulting in a challenging mobile marketplace for companies to navigate. This unique, complicated and costly problem has caused consumer-centric organizations to be unclear as to how to best balance the cost of developing and deploying mobile offerings across multiple devices with the need to reach the widest range of consumers in order to generate the greatest return on their mobile investment. Given the rapid consumer adoption of mobile technologies, those brands without a clear mobile strategy to go mobile or expand their mobile presence in 2011 will risk missing out on significant branding and revenue opportunities. Mobile phones offer greater reach to more consumers than any other channel. Consumers have also come to expect brands to offer highly functional mobile applications. In order to remain competitive in todays marketplace, brands that fully leverage the features and capabilities of the mobile realm will be poised to succeed in this arena.

This paper will explore how companies can leverage this growing medium to expand their reach, increase brand awareness, offer consumers more touch points and create additional revenue streams. We will focus on best practices for creating a comprehensive mobile strategy for companies looking to either develop their initial mobile offering or expand their current mobile presence in 2011. This document will explore how to develop a comprehensive mobile strategy that offers ubiquitous deployment to reach the maximum number of consumers in order to attain significant ROI and improved brand awareness in a cost-effective manner. We will also examine the business advantages in creating and deploying a comprehensive mobile portfolio that engages current and prospective customers.

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Write Once, Run Everywhere Mobile Technology

Develop a Long-Term Mobile Strategy

The mobile landscape is increasingly fragmented. New devices, operating systems, mobile features and functions are introduced daily. As such, its important for companies looking to go mobile or expand their mobile presence in 2011 to create a comprehensive, long-term mobile strategy in order to eectively future-proof their investment. Without a clear strategy in place, each introduction of new operating systems, features or devices, can cause a ripple eect of new development needs, management, additional costs and resources.

Dene Audience
The rst step in developing a comprehensive mobile strategy is to determine your audience. Determining your target market will help to clarify who your mobile portfolio should reach and, further down the line in the development process, the features and functions, devices, operating systems and channels necessary to engage this audience.

Its important to have a comprehensive understanding of the demographic and psychographic prole of your audience in order to eectively reach them. Understanding how your current and prospective customers interact with brands on their mobile devices is essential. In addition, determining whether there are any operating systems and/or devices preferred or used more frequently by your target audience, is valuable. For most consumer brands, given the mass consumer audience, there is no single device or even several devices that capture their market. This poses an interesting challenge of having to deal with the entire breadth of the mobile marketplace. However, as we will discuss, choosing the right development environment can eliminate this challenge. Its also essential to understand how target consumers prefer to interact with brands on their mobile devices. As consumer adoption of mobile devices has increased, their interactions and relationship to these devices has evolved as well. In recent years, consumers have come to feel that their mobile interactions are highly personal and private. The average age of a brands target consumers can also dene the direction of a mobile oering. While adults under the age of 50 are most likely to be mobile phone users, with 93% owning a mobile device, more than 78% of adults over the age of 60 are now mobile. The way these audiences use their mobile devices is vastly dierent, as is the way they interact with brands on these devices. Recognizing consumer usage habits is crucial to developing a competitive mobile portfolio.

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Best Practices for Taking Your Brand Mobile

Dene Goals
Determining the goals for a brands mobile portfolio is truly the most important aspects of strategy development. Key components of goal-setting for a mobile portfolio include: Consumer Adoption Revenue/M-Commerce Return on Investment Consumer Information and Intelligence

Its important for companies to be clear on which segments of their target market are expected to adopt the various portions of the mobile portfolio and in what time frame. This information will help to determine the overall deployment strategy. At the outset of mobile strategy development, determination of revenue expectations for the mobile portfolio is essential. Not all mobile oerings include revenue generating opportunities, so its important to determine whether your brand will oer m-commerce or transactional functionality or if the oering will solely be for awareness and brand management purposes. Further, its important to determine whether the revenue generating opportunities will include driving new sales outside of the application, in-application sales or advertising sales opportunities or to drive consumers to a retail location or other online property for a transaction to take place. Once this is determined, the goals for annual and quarterly revenue generation can be determined, as well as the specics of the deployments and the appropriate timeline. Another important piece of the strategic planning process is determining the expected return on investment for your mobile investment. As with any business endeavor, it is imperative to project a timeframe for return on the initial investment, as well as additional capital investments to be made down the road. One other part of the goal setting process is to determine the consumer intelligence your company can mine or extract from this endeavor. Like most technologies today, mobile applications can be designed to gather pertinent consumer information regarding usage habits, demographics, interests, etc. Mobile applications can serve as a powerful tool for brands to glean this type of information about their customers, however this should be considered during the planning process as it needs to be built into the application during the development phase.

Determine Channels
Not all channels, such as mobile web, SMS/MMS, native applications, tablets and desktop applications, are appropriate for all audiences. Once a brand had determined the target audience for its mobile portfolio, its important to research the channels most used by this demographic. In order to have an eective mobile deployment, brands must engage with consumers in the way that they wish and provide them with a value-added experience. In terms of penetration, 78% of smartphone users accessed their browser in April 2010, while 80% accessed applications. In comparison, only 19% of feature phone users accessed their browser, with just 17% accessing applications. While smartphone users are driving growth in browser and application access, both of which have increased more than 111% in the past year, feature phone users still make up nearly half of all users accessing mobile browsers and apps.

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Write Once, Run Everywhere Mobile Technology

Understanding where consumers are most apt to receive and access information is important in the strategy development phase. Determining the various aspects of a mobile portfolio is easier and more eective when brands understand how their consumers wish to be reached.

Determine Devices and Operating Systems

By the same token, not all devices and operating systems are appropriate for all brands and developing dedicated applications for multiple devices or operating systems can be cost-prohibitive if not approached correctly. With the everchanging mobile marketplace, there are increasing options for consumers to choose from. For many consumer brands, a ubiquitous mobile strategy reaching across all channels and devices is generally most eective, given the breadth and depth of consumer mobile engagement. However, for other more specic functions, such as business-to-business, particular operating systems or devices may be more relevant to that audience.

Prepare for the Unexpected

As the market continues to change and more mobile device, operating systems, features and functions are continually introduced, it becomes increasingly challenging for brands to develop eective plans for their mobile deployments. With each new device thats introduced, consumer brands are tasked with having to address the consumers porting over to that device. This is a costly, time consuming endeavor. The best way for brands to address this issue is to leverage a future-proong platform. The Kony Platform is proven to future-proof a mobile portfolio through its proprietary Write Once, Run Everywhere technology. This single application denition enables a mobile oering to be developed just once and deployed across all mobile channels and operating systems on the market. It also allows for rapid updating and management across all devices, including those just

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Best Practices for Taking Your Brand Mobile

introduced. Without leveraging this type of technology, each new device or operating system introduced can quickly make existing oerings obsolete. The costs associated with continually updating and managing these can be astronomical.

Major Device/OS Releases

CREATE A MOBILE OFFERING PEOPLE WANT TO USE

When developing a mobile strategy, once the target audience has been determined, its important to get a clear understanding of what that audience is looking for in a mobile oering. The adoption of a brands mobile application is essential to its success, so developing an application that people want to use couldnt be more important. In considering this, a good rst step is to review what competitors in this market are doing. Its important to understand what your consumers have available to them, what already has signicant adoption and integration with consumers. You can learn from your competitors successes and failures, and determine what you can oer thats unique. In addition, asking your customers directly what mobile implementation they would be most likely to adopt or like to see your brand oer is a great way to gain insight into the market opportunity and develop a clear strategy. Determining the overall purpose of the mobile portfolio is key; considering this for the end-users perspective will help to validate the brands assumptions and ideas. Each aspect of the mobile portfolio should serve a specic purpose, not just for the brand, but the customer as well. The idea is to have each customer and potential customer adopt every portion of the mobile portfolio relevant to them. For this to occur, each facet needs to have a specic purpose and fulll a certain need.

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Write Once, Run Everywhere Mobile Technology

Determine the Features and Functions

The insight into what your consumers are looking for and already have available to them will help to determine the features and functionality of a brands mobile portfolio. The mobile industry is constantly innovating in terms of adding new features and functions to devices and applications. When considering the breadth of features available, its important to keep your mobile goals in mind, as well as the target audience. Its easy to get caught up in the coolness factor, but if your target audience is women over the age of 60, an augmented reality application may not be as eective as an SMS campaign, considering only a small percentage of this audience have smartphones. There are several key aspects of consumer engagement to consider when determining the functionality of a mobile portfolio: Encourage Customer Loyalty Ensure Usability Encourage Sales

Customer Loyalty
Oering a mobile application that encourages customer loyalty can take many forms. For brands with existing customer loyalty programs, this can mean oering the same program with the ease-of-use of mobile. For brands creating a new program, there are opportunities to design an engaging program, such as integrating location-based promotional programs or creating SMS/MMS promotional and coupon campaigns or personalized shopper loyalty programs. This may also include integration with external social media programs that encourage mobile coupons and tips, including FourSquare or Facebook Places.

Ensure Usability
Ensuring that every piece of your brands mobile portfolio is highly usable and functional is essential to a successful mobile program. Consumers are most interested in applications that simplify their lives, are easy to use, add value or oer unique experiences. The convenience and immediacy of mobile is something consumers both value and have come to expect in their daily lives. Oering them something that meets these requirements is the best way to ensure active usership and rapid adoption. During the initial mobile feeding frenzy, brands rushed to be the rst in their industry to launch a mobile oering, without much consideration of long-term strategy or goals. In addition, since mobile features and development were still in the initial stages, the functionality of a mobile oering could not always be guaranteed and appropriate eld testing was not conducted. Consumers experienced frustration with malfunctions within native applications, unreadable mobile websites and bugs as a result of poor mobile development. It was initially thought that having a mobile oering, despite any issues with functionality, could only be considered a positive and wouldnt negatively aect a brand. However, a recent study found that 38% of online adults are dissatised with branded apps and nearly 70% agreed that a mobile app that isnt useful or easy to use contributes to a negative perception about a brand.4 The same study found that almost a third (32%) of users have told other people about a bad experience with a mobile application, and 13% said they have avoided downloading applications from a brand or company because of a previous negative experience with an application from the same provider. Additionally, the study found that only 18% considered a brand name in deciding whether to download an app. Ease-of-use was a more important factor than brand name alone.
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New Study Finds Mobile Application Users Prefer Usability and Good User Experience Over Brand Names Alone,

Harris Interactive, 11/2010

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Best Practices for Taking Your Brand Mobile

Dissatisfaction with applications stems in part from users high expectations. Approximately three-quarters of users believe a companys mobile app should be easier to use than its website.6 These ndings reinforce that a malfunctioning or even hard-to-use mobile oering can actually negatively aect an overall brand image, not just mobile adoption. In addition, ensuring the application coding, server set-up and back-end systems are in place to prevent any functionality or security aws will increase the potential for consumer adoption and solidify the success of a mobile oering.

Encourage Sales and Revenue Generation

Based on the previously determined revenue generation goals, the functionality of the brands mobile portfolio can be determined. Functions of the mobile portfolio may include m-commerce or transactional features, which need to be planned prior to the design phase. In order to optimize these capabilities, brands should leverage a third party expert in order to ensure the best possible functionality, as well as compliance with all industry security standards. Oering consumers functionality such as an easier way to pay bills, buy products, make account withdrawals and transfers, is a good way to ensure adoption and provide a brand with additional, low-cost revenue streams.

Integrating with Third-Party Features and Functions

With so many options on the market today, consumer adoption of mobile oerings has never been more competitive. While focusing on ease-of-use is important, oering cutting edge technologies is also a good way to increase consumer adoption. As such, any opportunity to leverage the native device features, including cameras, video or GPS capabilities, are a great way to increase consumer usage and adoption. By the same token, integrating with third party functionality, such as social networking platforms or barcode scanners, is a simple and ecient way to create value-added functionality without additional investment of time and development costs. In particular, integrating with social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, foursquare and LinkedIn, can oer brands a cost-eective method to add value and awareness. These programs prompt users to share information with their personal networks regarding a brand, increasing potential conversions and adoption by friends, family or colleagues in your customers network.

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Write Once, Run Everywhere Mobile Technology

Working with and managing these third-party vendors to integrate additional features and functions into your mobile application can be a challenging and time-consuming process. Many brands benet from leveraging a dedicated mobile application platform for development and that can also integrate these outside features. Using a commercial mobile application development platform can streamline the process and contain costs, as well as mitigate future maintenance and management issues.

ENSURE THE SECURITY OF YOUR MOBILE OFFERING

Fullling the consumer mobile market opportunity requires enhanced security due to the rapid pace of adoption. The security of your brands mobile portfolio is a key consideration in the strategy development phase. With more than 12 million Americans actively using mobile banking services last year, according to nancial-services research rm Celent, a security gae can cost a brand millions in revenue, as well as erode consumer trust and decrease mobile application adoption. Its important to be aware that each application within a mobile portfolio has a dierent risk prole, related to the features and functions it leverages, as well as the operating system and channel it is optimized for. Having this intelligence will help determine the appropriate way to allocate security resources. In addition, regular auditing and reviews of a brands mobile portfolio will help to identify any potential areas of concern early and ensure that customers data remains safe and secure. These audits are best conducted by an outside vendor that specializes in oering mobile security, and should include vulnerability scanning, penetration testing and security code reviews. In addition, brands looking to circumvent potential mobile security issues should consider leveraging a single code base for the development and maintenance of a mobile portfolio, rather than developing new code for each individual device and channel. The massive amount of code generated with an individualized strategy is not only unwieldy and expensive to develop and maintain, it is also a high security risk. However, a single code base streamlines the coding process, reducing the risk of code aws that can lead to security blunders and application malfunctions. This unique approach also enables ubiquitous deployment across multiple devices, operating systems and channels, without sacricing functionality.

CONCLUSION
The mobile marketplace is changing so rapidly that its nearly impossible for companies to keep up on their own. In order to oer consumers an engaging mobile portfolio without breaking the budget, brands should leverage vendors that specialize in mobile strategy, development, deployment and management. By working with a vendor that stays ahead of the mobile chaos, brands can focus on their business innovations rather than becoming mobile delivery experts. The opportunities for consumer brands in the mobile marketplace are signicant, but so are the risks. Getting mobile right in 2011 couldnt be more important for consumer brands; without a strategic mobile presence that adds value for consumers, brands risk disengagement and revenue loss. Following the best practices outlined in this paper will help brands to stay relevant and maximize their mobile investment in 2011.

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Best Practices for Taking Your Brand Mobile

About Kony Kony enables enterprises to oer consumers and employees feature-rich mobile applications in less time and at lower costs than any other solution. Leveraging a Write Once, Run Everywhere single application denition, applications are designed and developed just once, in a device-independent manner, and deployed across multiple channels, including native applications, device-optimized mobile web, SMS, web gadgets, kiosks, and tablets. Konys unique platform is proven to future-proof a companys mobile investment by enabling applications to be changed once for all channels, ensuring faster adoption of new operating systems and standards as they are introduced, while eliminating maintenance, upgrade and future development costs. For more information, please visit www.kony.com. Connect with Kony on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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rev. 05-2011