US Analysts Predict a Rapid Migration to Mobile

Over the few years since 2007, There have been an explosion in mobile apps to make our lives convenient and more efficient. And it appears there is no letting up. Recently, Forrester Research noted that there are now 7.3 billion mobile devices in a world where there are only 7 billion people.


"Mobile applications in the Enterprise may be a future vision for many companies, but mobile is a vision that is being realized much quicker than many had expected.  What does the rise of mobile mean for the enterprise?

The global Enterprise Mobility (EM) market is expected to grow annually by 15 percent every year, eventually reaching $140 billion by 2020. By 2020 roughly 10-12 percent of the enterprise IT budgets will be spent on mobility, compared to less than 5 percent today. These numbers are based on a report by Nasscom in association with Deloitte.

Read the full blogpost on Keynote Mobility

Related Links
1. How do you plan to deliver content and services to your mobile audience in 2013?
2. New IDC Report: The Evolution of Mobile and Web Load Testing
3. Mobile Applications Testing & Strategies

Are you taking advantage of holiday opportunities?

Mobile websites are important for all retailers because they’re far more discoverable than apps, which require a download from an app store.

During the holidays, you may be tempted to collect buyer information. Although this is a common practice in social retail, companies should weigh what’s gained in collecting junk data against the potential loss of real prospects by introducing multiple barriers to consideration of your merchandise.

Be sure to utilize an integrated and branded campaign across multiple platforms to reach as many potential customers as possible during the holiday season. In addition, mobile coupons are on the rise and can be a perfect addition to your mobile strategy this holiday season.

In a recent infographic, Microsoft Tag reported that 20% of smartphone users currently acquire and redeem mobile coupons on a regular basis, with that number expected to grow to 30% by 2013.


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1. Its that time of year again - getting ready for the holidays!
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3. Can your customer rely on your mobile site?

Can your customer rely on your mobile site?

We often talk about speed and optimization, but site reliability is just as important to get your customers to repeatedly visit to your mobile site and build brand loyalty. According to the Keynote Mobility Survey, 48% of smartphone users experienced a problem with loading errors and the inability to open the page.

This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users and a good reason to either not come back or visit your competitors mobile site. 

There are a few standard practices to combat the pitfalls of bad performance, and continuous monitoring & testing is the best way to find out when and where your mobile site is failing. Finding issues before your customers do and fixing them quickly is the key to scoring well in terms of website reliability. 

Who does reliability right?

Keynote keeps running measurements of mobile websites from several industries on our KeynoteMobile Performance Indices. On any given week we can see different companies at the top of the list for reliability. But if you follow the weekly indices long enough you'll see that the companies that rank best tend to be the same, suggesting a greater attention to mobile website availability. For the week ending September 9th, here's who were on top

Learn more about:

1. Why Web Load Testing?

2. How to monitoring site

3. Free website monitoring 

Is your mobile site up to speed for back to school shoppers?

It’s back to school time, is your site ready to handle the traffic?
Over the past year we've seen quite a few retailers jump on the mobile bandwagon recognizing that mobile shopping is now mainstream. Innovative new social shopping applications like Zoomingo, Wrappand even one launched by Seventeen Magazine, are inspiring a new age of mobile consumers to shop at the tip of their fingers.

According to Keynote Competitive Research’s mobile user survey, 47 percent of smartphone owners use their phones to purchase products and services.The survey also shows that mobile shoppers like their apps, but they like the mobile web even more. Along with the increased number of users shopping on mobile, the tightening of expectations continues when it comes to performance and the user experience.

According to NRF's Back to School Cheat Sheet, 43.8% of U.S. tablet owners will use their tablets to research products and compare prices this season. The survey also found that 28.4% of shoppers with children in grades K-12 will make a purchase with their tablet; slightly more, 34.5%, will purchase college items via their mobile devices.

Considering that 16 percent of mobile users will not return or wait for a website to load if it takes too long  to load and six percent will go to a competitor’s website (Keynote Competitive Research 2012), making sure a site is optimized for mobile is critical for this back-to-school shopping season.
If your mobile site isn't up to speed, here are some basic tips:

• Considering Data URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers).
• Lighten the load on your home page with fewer objects and smaller images.
• Display a clean, simple mobile-friendly user interface. Remove all content a mobile user doesn't need.
• Optimize your website for the mobile screen following mobile design best practices for better usability and performance.
• Create a unique site for tablet users. Don't send them to a smartphone or desktop site.
• Monitor your mobile website's availability around the clock.  Mobile shopping isn't necessarily a Monday - Friday (9am - 5pm) activity.

You don’t want your mobile site to add to the stress of any back to school shopping, so be sure your mobile site is geared up to go.

Mobile Testing Challenges

More than finding errors, the ideal goal of testing should be to understand the quality of offering. Its working, Does it function as planned? Will it meet the customers needs?, etc.

There are unique challenges when it comes to mobile application testing. The challenges of mobile testing will present you with tradeoffs that you will need to consider and choices that you need to make about the mix of different techniques and methods that you will use in testing. Each testing option you consider will have pros and cons associated with it, and you will probably find that no one testing option  will be completely satisfying. Rather, you will need to consider a testing strategy that combines different testing options that together provide you with the best overall testing result that balances the tradeoff between cost, quality, and time to market.

Read More on Mobile Testing Challenges