Commentary

Calculating The Worth Of Mobile Features

Looking-at-Smartphone-BSpeed and convenience are the main drivers of a mobile search, but putting a price on each function places it all into perspective. Can you put a price on every time someone clicks on a locator button on your Web site or looks up a pair of jeans or t-shirt? What's the return on investment for changing the click button from red to green -- and how many clicks does it take before that online customer walks into the store to make a purchase?

Earlier this year, research firm Gartner forecast mobile advertising worldwide to reach 11.4 billion, and to hit $24.5 billion by 2016. In North America those numbers range from $2.8 billion and $8.6 billion, respectively.

In an effort to help marketers measure that investment, Google set out to find the ROI by launching the Full Value of Mobile initiative with tools like a calculator that averages the impact of online and offline investments, videos that illustrate each mobile conversion path, case studies highlighting successful mobile strategies, and tips for measuring the campaign.

Mobile campaigns and devices aim to change direct-response marketing. Johanna Werther, head of mobile ads marketing at Google, claims the setup for the calculator takes about 30 minutes to extract metrics like total value, value per click, and ROI for a campaign.

The calculator also looks beyond the mobile site at apps, calls, in-store and accross devices, too. 

Adidas, in partnership with their agency iProspect, felt that mobile converted in ways beyond their mobile Web site, so they created an attribution model to understand how mobile drives customers into stores. The companies found that each click on their store locator button was worth $3.20, which has changed the way they view their digital investment.

The goal of measuring consumers on mobile phones coming into the retail store to purchase products requires an attribution model that uses lots of internal data to determine that every one in five locator clicks results in a visit to a store, and based on that about 13% of in-store visits result in a purchase and the average order value in the store was about $71. Since that one person in five indicates a higher level of intent, iProspect applied a 20% conversion rate on an average order value of $80.

It determined the worth of every store locator click at $3.20, and produced a 680% incremental lift in ROI. Nice!

Next story loading loading..