Cross-posted on the Official Google blog

The Guide to the App Galaxy, which we showed off last week at Google I/O, is designed to help mobile app developers—regardless of platform—navigate the complexities of launching an app and building a business on mobile. As you maneuver through the "galaxy” using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you’ll get the basics about app promotion, monetization and measurement—with tips from Google as well as successful developers.

There’s no exact blueprint for mobile app success and no developer’s journey is the same, which is why The Guide to the App Galaxy contains different advice and best practices from developers around the world. Here are some key insights from developers who have successfully built a business on mobile:

Rovio Mobile
Making money on mobile is not black and white—there's actually a lot of color. There are a number of business model options that aren't exclusive to any particular platforms.

Best, Cool & Fun Games
Offering your app for free lowers the barrier for users to download and try your app. The free version of Ant Smasher went viral because players could easily recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.

The Weather Channel
Don't forget to think beyond mobile. If you have a website or even a television channel, you can cross-promote your app with banner advertising or in-show mentions to drive downloads.

If you’re a developer who has successfully navigated the App Galaxy and launched your own app, you’ve probably picked up some tips of your own. Share your insights by creating your own journey and sharing it with your friends. We might even feature your story on The Guide to the App Galaxy.

The Guide to the App Galaxy is currently available in English, Japanese, Korean, French and German. We’re continuing to expand the guide to other developers around the world with new languages and new content like case study journeys. For more information about our solutions for mobile app developers, visit www.guidetotheappgalaxy.com/about.

Posted by Lauren Usui, Product Marketing Manager

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my first Google I/O as a Googler and speaker. It was a high-energy event and lots of mobile developers interested in building a business on mobile stopped by our Office Hours. Additionally, the videos from two sessions we hosted are now available:
  

Don’t Just Build a Mobile App. Build a Business.

Learn how to build a business on mobile apps so you can quit your day job. Walk away with an understanding of app business basics and how to use house ads for app promotion, mediation to optimize in-app advertising revenues and analytics to measure real ROI.

  

Implementing Money Making SDKs

Watch our experts integrate the Google AdMob Ads SDK across Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. Learn integration tips and tricks so you can start making money from your app today.

   

If you didn’t get a chance to catch all the announcements and excitement in-person or via the live-stream, we hope you’ll get a chance to experience it by visiting the Google I/O website.
 

Posted by Wayne Pan, Software Engineer for Mobile Display Advertising

We’re always looking for new mobile insights to help advertisers better understand the mobile environment, build their brands and grow their businesses on this platform.  Today, we’re announcing that we’re teaming up with Digitas, an integrated brand agency, to deliver original mobile marketing insights and usage research.  The initiative will combine original Google and Digitas search and marketing data to forecast trends, inform investment strategies, and drive the creation of mobile optimized websites.  Below is the the first of many outputs from this collaboration -- specific insights from Mother’s Day 2011.

Mother’s Day is the second largest U.S. consumer spending holiday1. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the mobile device has become a trusted shopping companion for many users and this Mother’s Day consumers once again turned to mobile to help them find the perfect gift for mom.  Google analyzed both mobile and desktop search behavior in the days leading up to Mother’s Day and here’s some initial findings:

• On Mother's Day 2011 (May 9th), 33% of Google search queries on the term “flowers” came from mobile devices.
• Mobile search queries for "flowers" both on Mother’s Day 2011 and in the week leading up to the holiday increased by over 100% compared with the same periods last year.
• In the week prior to Mother’s Day desktop searches for “flowers” increased from Monday to Friday, then declined on the weekend, while mobile queries steadily increased all week and maxed out on the weekend.  While this is in line with general mobile/desktop usage trends, on the weekend of Mother’s Day, the increase in mobile searches on “flowers” was much higher that usual, as last minute shoppers scrambled to find a bouquet for mom.
• Google searches on “mother’s day gifts” were relatively consistent across mobile and desktop suggesting that perhaps flowers were the last minute purchase of choice for many Mother’s Day shoppers.

Relative to last year, Mother’s day shoppers looking for flowers

relied more heavily on mobile.

Mobile technology is clearly changing the way businesses engage their consumers.  In response to Mother’s Day activity, Rich Lesperance, Heads of Online Marketing at Walgreens, commented: “Mobile is critical to our long-term goals of reaching customers and building relationships.  Our shoppers are busy and on-the-go, and mobile is the gateway to provide them information, access and service when they need it. This is especially true for last minute shopping around important holidays like Mother’s Day.”

Over the course of the year, our collaboration with Digitas will look at a range of mobile trends to better understand how the advancement of mobile technology and smartphone adoption impacts consumer behavior.  We look forward to sharing them with you.

1National Retail Federation survey, April 2010

Posted by: Torrence Boone, Managing Director, Google Agency Business Development

Today, we’re pleased to launch the first in our new Mobile Insights series, featuring expert views from members of our mobile ads business. Welcome this week’s guest author Erin Schultz, Senior Specialist, Mobile Ads, with contributions from Melissa Moody, Sales Development Manager for Travel. They share their thoughts during Travel & Tourism Week.

Let’s imagine you’re stranded on a trip and need to book a last minute flight or hotel. At a time like this you fully appreciate the power of the mobile web and mobile search. As consumers embrace their phones for all types of activities, we’re seeing mobile devices play a increasingly important role in the travel sector.

We like to think about travel in five stages from: dreaming of that perfect vacation; researching it; booking the trip; experiencing the place; then, sharing the experience with family and friends. Mobile now plays an essential role in this process. In fact, industry analysts at eMarketer predict the number of US consumers using mobile devices to research travel will climb from 19.7 million in 2010 to 29.7 million in 2012.

Mobile devices make all five stages of the travel process more accessible and more robust for consumers. It also opens opportunities for marketers.

• Dreaming: Westin Hotels & Resorts created a display campaign on The Weather Channel’s app. It invited users to "Tap here to warm up," planting the seed for the dreaming user to begin planning their travel with Westin to warmer climes.
• Research: At Google we’re seeing 19% of all hotel queries conducted on mobile devices.
• Booking: Giving users an easy way to book on the spot is crucial. Scott Durchslag, President of Expedia.com revealed "70% of people searching on a phone are looking for a single room, for a single person for a single night that same day." (2)
• Experiencing: Features such as reviews, translation, “scan and go” check-ins for flights, and  location maps make the travel experience easier.
• Sharing: A study we conducted with Ipsos/OTX indicates that 49% of travelers report making travel plans based on the experiences and reviews of others. (3)

Many travel marketers are scaling up their mobile advertising investments, but for some, this remains uncertain territory. Here are four tips you can use to get started.

1. Use location extensions to provide travelers with the opportunity to view ads that are more relevant to their locations. According to Priceline, 82% book within a day of arrival, and 58% are within 20 miles of their hotel. (4)
2. Secure bookings with Click-to-Call. In a Google case study, IHG in Europe noted that by adding mobile creative and Click-to-Call with their mobile revenue increased over 91% YOY. They also found that 40% of their mobile revenue was driven by Click-to-Call.
3. Drive app downloads through click-to-download ads. This functionality allows users to install apps in two easy clicks.
4. Anticipate growing use of tablet devices and make sure you’ve developed a strategy to reach potential customers on tablets. View our recent blog post to learn how.

The mobile marketing industry is young and the window of opportunity is wide open, especially for travel brands. Now is the time to travel to an increasingly popular destination for consumers: the mobile platform. Has your brand taken travel mobile? We’d love to hear about your success in the comments below!

Posted by Erin Schultz, Senior Specialist, Mobile Ads.

Sources:

1. ‘Mobile Travel Takes Off’, eMarketer, March 2011.

2. Scott Durschlag, President, Expedia.com, March 2011.

3. ‘The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users’, Google, Ipsos/OTX, May 2011.

4. Priceline Press Release, September 2010.

Recently we looked at how to test content on mobile to maximize user engagement. Today we want to take this one step further and share how variations in design can influence click-through behavior.

That creating a mobile-specific site would result in a better customer experience seems intuitive, but that’s only half the battle. How do you decide what your site should look like? Which calls-to-action are most compelling to mobile customers? How do layout and language affect engagement? To find out, we worked closely with Amit Shah who leads the mobile and social media efforts at 1-800-Flowers to test a series of landing pages with different layouts and call-to-action elements.

First 1-800-FLOWERS created pages to compare performance of click-to-call and click-to-store buttons. They also tested how the position of call-to-action buttons and their text (“Shop now” versus “Mobile deals”) can affect engagement. Pages with a product image and a single call-to-action were tested to understand how imagery and simplicity perform against multiple call-to-action options.

Adjusting the length of descriptive text allowed a comparison between calls-to-action above and below the “fold” to discover the impact of scrolling. Finally they contrasted offer types to find how percentage discounts perform against dollar discounts.

This experiment unearthed a number of key findings about landing page features and how they influence click-through behavior to help with your own design decisions:

1. Keep calls-to-action above the fold. Offer language should be brief to maximize screen real estate. The landing page with long descriptive text requiring scrolling received a 57% lower click-through rate than all other test pages.
2. All landing page elements should be clickable to make it easy for smartphone users to engage through touch. In the test, 45% of clicks came from the flower image or 1-800-FLOWERS logo.
3. Include a product image to grab user attention and make it clickable to your mobile store. Pages with a product image received 26% higher click-throughs.
4. Offer language can have an impact on performance. The “10% off“ click-through rate was 19% higher than the “$5 off” alternative. Testing different offer language will help you identify what appeals most to your mobile customers.

Have you improved user engagement on mobile by optimizing your website? We want to hear from you! Email mobile-optimized@google.com to share your story.

Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, tablets are becoming a popular device with engaged, tech-savvy consumers. So we’re pleased to announce that we’re developing new targeting options to help you better connect with this audience. To give you greater control over your AdWords ads, we’re changing the way you can target tablet devices.

In the next couple of weeks, the “Networks and Devices” section of your Settings tab within your AdWords account will include a new targeting option titled “Tablets with full browsers.” While you’ve been able to specifically target Apple iPad devices in the past, the new capability will enable you to easily target your ads to the entire tablet device category. In addition, you'll be able to select more precisely the types of devices and operating systems on which your AdWords ads will show. For example, to display your ads on the Apple iPad, you’ll be able to choose “Tablets with full browsers” as your device targeting setting and “iOS” as your operating system setting. Tablet targeting will be available initially for Apple devices only, but we'll expand ad serving to other specific devices in the near future.

Once this capability is available in your account, your ads will automatically start running on tablet devices and no further action will be necessary on your part. If your campaigns were specifically targeting Apple iPad devices, you may notice an increase in impressions and costs as we include more tablets in our ad serving options. If you don't want your ads to appear on tablet devices, you’ll be able to specify this preference in your device targeting settings by following these step-by-step instructions.

For now, only standard text and image ads can be shown on tablet devices. So please make sure your landing page renders properly on tablet devices, as our system will automatically limit your ads from running on tablet devices if we detect that users will be led to a landing page containing a significant amount of Flash or other content that will not render properly. To learn more, please visit this Help Center article.

We’re constantly working to provide our advertisers with new targeting capabilities for their AdWords campaigns. We hope that these targeting options will enable you to successfully connect with your customers across a variety of devices and platforms.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager

Last Tuesday we presented a webinar on Mobile Site Optimization and shared some best practices and next steps to help you get started on the path to a fully optimized mobile presence.

Google Senior Mobile Account Executive, Elliott Nix, and Mobile Specialist, Shiv Kumar presented key statistics surrounding the current state of mobile readiness and made a strong case for the importance of mobile site optimization.

With half of all Americans predicted to have a smartphone by the end of year* and rates of mobile web usage continuing to grow rapidly, it should come as a real surprise that so many marketers, including 79% of Google’s largest customers, do not have a mobile optimized website.

As the number of mobile visitors to your site grows, it’s increasingly important to make sure you’re providing your users with the best experience you can. In one study, 11% of users expressed being so frustrated with a mobile transaction that they’ve screamed at their device and 23% have reported cursing at their phones.** Don’t let that be your site!

To learn more about mobile site optimization, download the Mobile Site Optimization webinar slides or watch the recording of the event on the Google Mobile Ads YouTube Channel or below.

Posted by Martina Agapakis, AdWords Account Manager

*Source: Nielsen March 2010, Morgan Stanley 2010

**Tealeaf: http://portal.sliderocket.com/AHJJM/Tealeaf-Mobile-Transactions-Survey, 3/31/11