Mobile Internet users use WhatsApp instant messaging application more frequently than any other social networking app.  WhatsApp is an instant messaging platform which allows users to send images, video and audio media messages as well as location using integrated mapping features. As of 2015, worldwide mobile phone internet users were 52.7 percent. In 2017, figures suggest that more than 63.4 percent of mobile phone users will access online content through mobile devices. Recently, WhatsApp shared their milestone of crossing one billion users. As of February 2016, nearly one in seven people in the world use WhatsApp each month. Currently, WhatsApp is the number one social networking tool. Almost anything and everything can be shared on WhatsApp. Hence, most website builders have started adding the share option on the website to not only boost website traffic but also improve content engagement. The button allows visitors to quickly send or share an article with their friends in real-time while they are reading the article.

Buzzfeed were the first to integrate the WhatsApp share button on their mobile site. After the addition, they observed that there was a shift from public sharing, such as via Twitter – and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. to more private or “ephemeral” media which got them more clicks than the share-to-Twitter button.

How to add WhatsApp icon in your website?

addtoany
AddToAny is a social share button plugin. It has now added WhatsApp button into their sharing services. Works great for almost all types of websites. However, by default it just shares the title of the post and the URL. not the text. So you might need to tinker the code a bit to share text.

Pros:

1. Shows up only on smartphones
2. Looks good
3. No coding needed
4. Gels well with your other social share buttons

Cons:

1. Shares only Title and URL. Does not share text or excerpt.

whatsapp-sharing
This is the best one so far. This is a WhatsApp specific sharing button. Works great and is free. Best part is you can actually select what text needs to be shared. Also, it shows up only on smartphones.
You need to download the sourcecode and upload it on your website. So, you might not be able to use this button on sites where you don’t have a hosting.

Pros:

1. Can share text/excerpt and customized content
2. Shows up only on smartphones
3. Looks good

Cons:

1. You would need to host some sourcefiles on your server. A little more techie.

JetPackaddon for WordPress
If you are using JetPack sharing for your WordPress blog, you can now add WhatsApp share button along with other sharing services. For this, you have to install a separate plugin WhatsApp Sharing Button for Jetpack. Activate it and you will have a new WhatsApp share button on your JetPack share dashboard.

This again shares the title and url and not the text or excerpt.

Pros:

1. Shows up only on smartphones
2. Looks good
3. No coding needed

Cons:

1. Shares only Title and URL
2. Does not share text or excerpt.

Manual WhatsApp Share button
If you want more customisation or you want to share actual text and/or excerpt from your blog, you can easily create your own WhatsApp share button/link. It is as simple as adding a hyperlink. No script.

To add a WhatsApp share link use the following code.
<a href=”whatsapp://send?text=YOUR TEXT HERE“>Share via WhatsApp</a>
Just change the text in ‘Italics’ to your requirement.
To use a button simply replace the hyperlink using a button image.
However do note that this link/button will show up on desktop as well.

Pros:

1. Can share text/excerpt and customized content
2. Fully customisable

Cons:

1. Shows up everywhere – even in desktop. You can use script to hide it on desktop.
2. A basic coding needed
3. Needs to be added manually every time

References:

Statistics and facts on mobile internet usage
Why You Need to Add a WhatsApp Share Button
Will it be possible to integrate WhatsApp’s share button on a website and share different content to my WhatsApp contacts using WhatsApp Web from a desktop?

There maybe a few businesses for whom going app-only makes sense, but they may be few and far between. For others, going app-only may be a necessity rather than a choice. For the vast majority of businesses, it will make perfect sense to use their web presence to connect with and enage with their audience.

Here are a couple of reasons why we make this recommendation:
a) Computer users are still a large number: this number may not be growing as fast, but a very high percentage of users still access the Internet and perform searches to find what they want through their computers. Why risk missing out on them?

b) Just building a mobile app doesn’t guarantee adoption: It is not enough to build a mobile app; it needs to be marketed just as hard and smartly to ensure that enough people download the app and then start using it. The magnitude of this challenge is much harder than many people think.

We recommend that a business should first start with a responsive web site so that it can cater to users who surf the Internet using both computer and mobile devices. Subsequently, if it makes sense for the business, opt for a mobile app.

In a nutshell, go mobile, but don’t go mobile-only. At least, not yet.

Image Source: ecumen.in

SearchMetrics lists some of the big winners and losers in the battle for visibility in the US following the mobilegeddon update. The prominent losers include the social site Reddit, Fool.com, NBCSports.com. One of the world’s leading SEO/ inbound marketing sites, Moz.com is also reported to have been affected by this update (not officially verified). An article on TFM&A insights indicates that Wikipedia and even the BBC may have taken a hit for not being mobile friendly.

India’s leading online retailer, Flipkart.com is likely to have been impacted by this update.

Mobilegeddon is one of the rare Google algorithm updates about which Google had given a strong heads-up back in February.

These are early days yet, and the dust is yet to be fully settled on this one. Over the next few months and weeks, we can expect to see mobile traffic to websites facing some flux. Marketers, especially targeting the consumer segment, can ill-afford to ignore the mobile search segment as part of their marketing mix, as search volume via mobile devices continues to rise. In fact, 2015 is touted to be the inflexion point where mobile search will overtake desktop search.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Team

We gratefully acknowledge the image source: thecodelesstravelled.com.au

What impact has the frequent “flux” with organic search traffic (SEO traffic) had on your traffic? How do you keep your website immune to the vagaries of Google algorithm updates?

Plancess website is quoted often by several third-party vendors and affiliates due to the authentic and genuine information it provides. In fact, Plancess was the eLearning website listed by the top career portals on the day of JEE Main 2015 for providing answer keys, text/video solutions and paper analysis.

How important is mobile traffic to you now (and going forward)?
[VT]: Nearly 45% of our website traffic is via mobile and tablet devices- thats close to 10000 visitors on a daily basis! We expect mobile traffic to go further up as we recognize this global trend. So, we have made PlancessJEE.com mobile-compatible / responsive- easy to read and interact on any screen-size and interface.

To enhance the user experience to the fullest, not only have we optimized our website for mobile devices, we also look into the browser and technology being used. Based on a deep understanding of our users and their usage patterns including operating systems, screen resolutions and several other variables, we have identified the exact pain points of users when using our website. We use this understanding to prioritize fixes and enhancements that can help users get the most from the website.

Please describe in more detail how you analyse user behaviour.
[VT]: We do this with A/B testing or multi-variate testing (MVT) using various tools. We look at heat map analysis and in-page analytics to give a leading indicator of what changes would work best. We implement the “challenger-champion” approach. Any new development is first introduced as a challenger to a certain section of the audience- and if the value addition to business as well as user experience via the challenger is more than our champion, only then we make the necessary changes through out. This way, the bulk of our traffic is always having the best experience out there.

Looking ahead, what is your mobile strategy going forward?
[VT]: Going forward, we’re building more products with a mobile-first mindset such that the product itself is designed in a way that can be engaging for mobile users. This is in-line with the overall strategy at Plancess to keep useful content front and centre of our offering. We aim to provide
the best intellectual experience, rather than having a mobile app without top-notch content.

In this regard, we’re building a module based eLearning approach via an Android/iOS application, and an assessment platform to complement the user learning. Further, we’ve identified some really amazing indicators of tracking user behaviour on this mobile app – which is not only customized for the right technology, but will also serve as a personal dashboard. It will provide a completely unique experience for every individual using the app and help them derive genuine value out of the product. We’re going to launch these within the next few months.

What advice would you give to start-ups in relation to quickly scaling up traffic acquisition?
[VT]: Digital marketing is not as easy as it seems to be- and it is not because of the tools that it is based on, but because of whom the marketing is subjected to. At Plancess, we believe that our users are not only intelligent and motivated, but also extremely dynamic. They can judge right from wrong- and are increasingly connected. Best quality content and user experience are critical. A happy customer is worth a lot more in today’s world. I would suggest the following do’s and don’ts for marketers trying to scale up traffic acquisition.

Do
a. Build content – original and authentic information
b. Offer great user experience – customer-centric as opposed to product-centric
c. Provide pre-sales and post-sales service- small gestures go a long way
d. Look for and develop referral/social traffic

Don’t
a. Engage in Black-hat marketing – be it with SEO or making false-claims, etc.
b. Focus on short term gain at the cost of long-term relationship with users – they’ll know (as will Google!)
c. Lead with a sales-driven approach instead of user value addition (counsellor approach)

What are the major challenges you face currently in relation to your online marketing efforts?
[VT]: – Finding new channels that can perform as well as our existing channels
– Going on a commission per sale as against to commission per lead with our affiliate partners
– Reaching newer audiences/ geographies: bulk of our website traffic is from tier 1/tier 2 cities but we really need to penetrate the interiors of the country to become a household name for students preparing for JEE.
– Online merchandising – many of our users still don’t have access to online banking and hence depend on parents. Hence a lot of sales have to be closed offline (COD) as against completing the transaction online.

How do you see online marketing evolve in the next couple of years?
[VT]: With growing Internet penetration, online marketing will undoubtedly provide the vital interface for firms to their target customers. Also, the growth in mobile phone usage enables easier reach to users. From a user perspective, access to information will become much easier and convenient. Users will be more informed, mobile and self-aware.

From a marketing perspective, it is the time for customer centricity overshadowing product centricity. In the eLearning realm, with most academic resources being available online, education is going to become a hot space with companies fighting for large ‘traffic-share’ instead of just having a strong ‘market-share’.

Recognising this, we are betting on providing the best content rather than the best technology – because in the long run, the value that users derive from our product will be the key differentiator critical to our success.

The new Atlas solution will use “people-based marketing”, moving away from the use of cookies which is the prevalent method to serve and measure advertising. “Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world. People-based marketing solves these problems,” writes Erik Johnson, Head of Atlas, on the Atlas blog.

Atlas Solutions is a Facebook company, after the latter acquired it from Microsoft for a reported $100 million in 2013. Not only will Atlas use data from Facebook to help advertisers with their targeting, but the data available to Facebook from different users of the Atlas platform is likely to be used by the social network to develop or customise its offerings.

The question is whether Atlas can become a viable competitor to Google’s DoubleClick solution.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau

“This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun. Users will get access to offers and merchandise they can’t get anywhere else and can act on them right in the Twitter apps for Android and iOS; sellers will gain a new way to turn the direct relationship they build with their followers into sales,” writes Jain in the aforementioned blog post.

Users who ‘tap’ the buy button will then be shown additional details of the product and expected to enter the payment and shipping information to complete the purchase.

Twitter has also updated its privacy and security policies to accommodate the requirements of offering such functionality.

Offering transactional services such as online buying within the platform is a logical extension to Twitter’s business, from its predominantly-advertising based revenue model that it currently has. If this test turns out to be successful enough for Twitter to roll out the feature more widely, both in terms of geography as well as additional merchant partners, we could see online retailers worldwide taking a lot more to Twitter not only for online marketing but also driving sales.

-NetMarketer Editorial Team

The key details of the event are given below:

Date: 26 – 29 Jun 2014
Location: The Lalit, Grand Palace, Srinagar
Objective: To exchange collective ideas for peer-to-peer networking and discuss the framework required to create, measure, and optimize digital advertising experience.
Speakers: To be announced

Participation at this event is by invitation only. To request for a special invitation, please mail: latika@iamai.in

For more information, click here:

To avail of the mobile credits, users need to simply register with Cash On Apps and download apps they like. Users earn credits for all apps they download, and can redeem them as mobile recharge. They could also earn bonus credits by successfully inviting their friends to join the Cash On Apps network.

Targeting users throughout India, Cash On Apps has no limit on the number of credits that can be earned. C.R. Venkatesh, Dot Com Infoway’s CEO, said, “The idea of free mobile recharge is one of the most sought-after benefits for mobile users. We created Cash On Apps to give users an innovative platform for browsing new apps, and earning mobile credits along the way”.

“As a higher number of downloads enhances developer credibility, Cash On Apps is ultimately beneficial for the user as well as individual app creators. Essentially, it puts great apps on the fast track to success, while rewarding their users and getting apps into their hands faster. In the future, we plan to introduce options to redeem the earned credits as iTunes credit, Amazon credit, PayPal credit, and movie tickets,” added Venkatesh.

Cash On Apps combines the two most important things in the mobile world – useful apps, and mobile minutes.

The campaings won the Gold for ‘Best In-app advertising’ and Bronze for ‘Best Mobile Advertising Solution’. Mob-Ex Awards recognises excellence in mobile marketing by felicitating companies that have leveraged mobile platforms, through distinct mobile marketing strategies.

Vdopia recently surpassed a record 10-million unique viewers in India (as per ComScore Video Ad Metrix). The company, which is headquartered in Fremont, CA and has an office in India, reportedly grew 100% in 2013.

According to a company release, the Remarketing DSP provides the self-serve benefits of a traditional DSP model together with the ROI and scale of remarketing. Key features include native dynamic creative optimization, advanced audience segmentation, and built-in performance optimization. Advertisers will have the flexibility to self-manage their campaigns using the platform or leverage Komli’s campaign management and optimization expertise.

Komli’s VP of Remarketing, Ashwin Puri says that remarketing will soon be one of the largest channels for digital performance advertising and therefore the medium required greater transparency and control for advertisers.