La Tribune de Thomas Husson, Forrester: mobile Marketing, made the difference between tablets and smartphones!

Monetate yesterday announced a doubling of mobile traffic in a year, including an increase of more than 20% of Web traffic in the United States from so-called "mobile" terminals, in the first quarter of 2013 - approximately 10% of smartphones and 10% of the shelves!

In France also, mobile traffic explodes - even if the average is lower. The conversion rate on smartphones is lower than on the web, and yet it did not seem to worry some marketers who continue to do not optimize the user experience.
There are too many marketing departments who do not the difference between tablets and smartphones. And yet, the consumer uses and contexts of use are very different.
The tablets are mainly used at home - first in the living room, then in the bedroom, and then in the kitchen. On the other hand, smartphones are much more used in situation of mobility and in many different contexts - to access quickly to information and complete tasks.

"Tablet Marketing"

It is still too early to measure the use of the iPad mini and other 7-inch tablets, or even of «phablets» of type Galaxy Note, but the analysis of North American data show that even the shelves with 4 G connectivity (the US are more advanced than Europe on this technology) remain mostly used at home.

Smartphones are now available to the general public, while shelves beyond only the critical size.  Above all, smartphones are the terminals more personal that individuals use while the shelves are shared with other members of the family.
Marketers should use the tablets in the phases of discoveries and explorations of their brands and their products, using the best features of iPads and other Tablet - video, rich media, content, touch interfaces, extension of the TV screen.

The tablet marketing"is still nascent but it is urgent to tailor the experience to the user context - rather than adapting content to the size of the screen. Tablets replace especially today PCs and their owners spend less time on print media. It is time to optimize the marketing mix to reach these influencers and prepare new uses.

Tomorrow, through the connected objects, tablets will be increasingly used in place of smartphones within the home - opening up new marketing opportunities.
The starting point is already analyzing the traffic data and the differences in behaviour between users of smartphones and tablets!
Thomas Husson is Vice President, Principal Analyst, the firm studies and consultancy Forrester Research. It can be followed on Twitter @Thomas_Husson. This post is reproduced with the permission of Forrester Research.