How to Create Successful Mobile Experiences - Part Two

The scenario is this:

You work for ACME. ACME makes a line of gardening supplies and your mission is to make ACME the name brand in household gardening. Your marketing perspective is that providing “helpful” experiences rather than transaction / e-commerce support would best enhance the ACME brand. Let’s see if mobile solutions can assist in this mission.

Who are your users?

You do some research and discover that 60% are 55+ males, and 40% are 55+ females. Note that 55+ YO females can be potentially divided into 55+ YO working females and 55+ YO housewife females, creating three categories. Same, of course (and less stereotypically) can be done to the male demographic. For sake of illustration, the user segmentation has been kept simple here.

So now let’s make a chart of your analysis:

Who

• 55+ YO males

• 55+ YO females

What

55+ YO males

Likes landscaping and decorative gardening support.

55+ YO females

Why

55+ YO males

A mobile solution can help them integrate professional ideas with the realities of their actual garden shape, size, and other land features. They also want an easy way to transform landscaping ideas into shopping lists.

This capability does not exist. The next best thing is hiring a professional landscaper.

55+ YO females

They are busy and don’t have time for gardening when they are not gardening. They want to keep mentally active while gardening; information that is contextually relevant to their actual gardening efforts, not generic gardening content.

There is plenty of content out there from many sources but it is generic and interrupted by commercials.

Where

55+ YO males

In the garden, outdoors. In gardening supply stores (Home Depot, etc.). On the ACME site.

During gardening activity, mostly weekend afternoons but varies.

55+ YO females

In the garden, outdoors.

During gardening activity, mostly weekend afternoons but varies.

When

55+ YO males

After gardening activity, to shop for or re-order supplied needed for future gardening or landscaping activities.

55+ YO females

Housewives do majority of gardening in mid-afternoons on weekdays.

How

55+ YO males

While reading about or listening to professional garden landscaping suggestions, the user will be able to use augmented reality to superimpose landscaping solutions against the backdrop of their actual garden. While doing so, they will be able to choose aspects of the solution they wish to buy and be presented with a shopping list containing the items needed to realize the solution. The user will have the option to purchase directly from ACME those items from that list which are sold by ACME. The rest will be turned into a checklist the user can use at Home Depot or other brick and mortar or online outlets.

55+ YO females

User will be able to take pictures of their garden. The system will recognize the plants and structural elements in the pictures and create audio programming and a list of video tutorials specific to the user’s actual garden environment. The user can listen to the specialized content while gardening. Video articles / tutorials will be announced and the user can optionally pause garden work to sip some lemonade and watch a video relevant to them.

The ‘How’ is where your creativity and marketing intelligence really comes into play. At this stage, one of the smartest things you can do to ensure you come out with a market-beating product is partner with a Digital Strategist who will be able to provide up-to-the-minute trends and available technologies, while you provide marketing genius and expertise in your particular product(s).

This example was simplified. In reality, all the answers should have more depth.

The research you do about actual users is critical, but so is the effort you make to create a long list of candidate features that serve the user well. Above, for the 55+ YO males, we created a single key feature for illustration, but your real list should be MUCH longer. The features you invent are business solutions that have a cost and a benefit to your business and to the user. After a list of features are created, you will need to triage the features based on a cost-benefit analysis.

This is Part 2 of a 3 part series. View Part 1 and Part 3.