Download The App

• Download the iOS version of the app for your iPhone or iPad
• Download the Android version of the app

Features Of The MIMA App

The 2013 MIMA Summit App has everything you need to be your perfect event partner for the day.  Look up sessions, times, speaker bios, Twitter handles and a map of the event venue to help you navigate the day.

The “My MIMA” feature lets you favorite the sessions you want to attend and builds your own customized schedule for you.  Review all of the sessions and have your day set-up and right on your phone or tablet with you for the event.

Say Hello

Of course there will be a few of the Spyder Trap team at the Summit so please say hello.  If you get the chance, I’ll be moderating a panel on Technology and Transportation from 3:10pm to 4:10pm that includes leaders from Nice Ride Minnesota, Uber and Zipcar. I hope to see you in there!

If your event, business or organization is in need of a mobile partner for the mobile web or app creation, let’s talk.

Using Google Analytics Custom Dashboards To Analyze Mobile

Custom dashboards in Google Analytics are a great way to quickly segment and focus on specific types of traffic and behaviors on your website.  We created a mobile and local dashboard to share with you to get you started on understanding your mobile web traffic.

Our Google Analytics mobile dashboard looks at:

• All traffic by device
• Total mobile visitors
• Mobile goal completions
• Top mobile content/locations (*you’ll need to change the URL for your site structure)
• Mobile traffic referrals
• Organic mobile keywords (until Not Provided is 100% … soon)

Download The Google Analytics Mobile and Local Dashboard

Craving More GA Dashboards?

If you want to further into customizing your data and dashboards a couple of other Google Analytics dashboard resources are:

• State of Digitals 6 GA Dashboards (Includes Mobile E-commerce)
• LocalU’s Local Search Dashboard

Bloggers, speakers and tweeters alike have been heralding the changes, how to prepare, and what to expect in the post-apocalyptic world. Like many sign holders and the beginning of every Plants Vs. Zombies game, everyone shouted, “They’re coming!”

“You will need axes, call extensions, water purifiers, mobile bid adjustments, a field guide of edible plants, ad group-level site links, and really comfortable running shoes.”

The dreaded launch day of Enhanced Campaigns, dubbed E-Day by some, recently came and went. Gruesome self-contradicting monsters are rampant with half a face showing higher CPCs and the other half, looking like Google, saying CPCs are going down. What? Attack that thing with a chainsaw and move on; one person’s experience may be very different from another’s.

Enhanced Campaigns Didn’t Change Your Goals

Every PPC manager is results-oriented and — argue this all you want, but check this out — the “new” changes still allow you to be results-oriented. Best practices are still best practices. Targeting still matters a hell of a lot, mobile is on your radar when it should have been already, and you are still free to find efficiency that allows you to scale.

Sure, some of my clients have seen CPCs go up, yet others have seen them go down. You know what’s consistent? Results. I made sure every client was bitten by, or at least exposed to, Enhanced Campaigns well before E-Day. I’ve seen them struggle with the internal changes, yet the results for both my clients and me have been positive.

If you run PPC or have simply read about Enhanced Campaigns, you know the changes, how to implement them and what people are telling you to expect. I hope to God you have actively adjusted everything to fit your clients’ needs and are not being ship wrecked. Of course, if you are, contact Spyder Trap and we will help you out.

If there is one thing I hope we can all agree upon now that E-Day has past, I hope it’s this: they are only called campaigns, no longer Enhanced Campaigns. Stop referring to anything campaign as Enhanced; the campaign structure and settings are commonplace and standardized. Knock it off.

After all of the hype, now that the dust has settled, the conclusion I’ve made is that the Enhanced Campaigns zombie apocalypse was about as climactic as Y2K. If you have other thoughts on the transition, let me know in the comments!

Monday was a huge day in the tech industry. From the WWDC to E3, there’s plenty to talk about surrounding the new announcements. Spyder Trap has its share of Apple Fans. Together we spent our Monday lunch glued to the live stream of the Apple Keynote in the way others might watch (and celebrate) the Super Bowl.

During the keynote, Apple revealed some significant changes to iOS. As soon as the developer center servers came back online, I installed the beta on my iPhone 4S. So far my reactions have been similar to a sour candy. Sweet, then sour to the point I almost spit it out, followed by slow transition back to a lasting sweet.

Design changes, seen from a developer

While design is the biggest change in iOS 7, I’m not a designer. My observations are through the eyes of a developer. The new fonts and removal of UI elements make for a much cleaner lock screen. The 3d parallax effect on the home screen at first feels gimmicky, but it does reinforce the layered metaphor they’re trying to introduce through all the transparencies in the new designs.
To that point, iOS 7 uses a lot of transparency. Unless an app specifically overrides it, the keyboard background is a blurred transparency of the content underneath. Even some applications, like the phone app, have a hint of the home screen underneath them. Certain nested tables have the previous page underneath them. Transparency is everywhere.

The new font choice, and crisper icons in the top bar, leaves the clear impression this OS was designed for retina. Many non-essential UI elements are a fraction of the size they used to be. For example, the progress for a sending text message is just a pixel or two tall. The data activity spinner is noticeably thinner as well.

I’m not sold on the new icons. While I’m not a designer, I feel like the old icons could have been flattened and fit the new UI just fine. It feels like a petty move Jonny Ive made just to make sure every UI element of the OS was changed under his watch.

In addition, there’s a lot of borrowing happening. The weather app is a near clone of the Yahoo Weather app. At least they were kind enough to give them an Apple Design Award. Most system apps and menus borrow liberally from recent trends seen in Android and Windows Mobile. I’m sure they’ll cry fowl at some point, and their claim has merit, but I’ll leave that to the lawyers.

Control Center

By far, my favorite new feature is the Control Center, a quick access to music, airplane mode, do not disturb, flashlight, camera, alarms, and air play all in one convenient place. It has quickly become a feature I commonly use more than any individual app.

I’m also a fan of the new multitasking menu. I would regularly have to tell people how to switch between apps and force quit development software we are working on. It wasn’t intuitive. The icon, along with a view of the app itself, can be dragged off the screen and the app quits and disappears from RAM.

Upgraded Task Manager

Speaking of RAM, my 4S has just barely enough to provide a quality user experience. Many animations take longer, which at first lead me to believe the resources of my poor little 4S were being pushed to the limit. Since there’s no jerking, or “catching up” though, I believe these slower animations are on purpose, and I’m starting to appreciate them.

It’s a good thing they made the new task manager more user friendly though. If I get really carried away switching between apps, I can notice a small slow down. Usually there’s a bit of a speed up by the time a beta gets to the general release version, but I’m worried about what the experience will be like for regular iPhone 4 users.

That said, I hope Apple tweaks some of their UI before the general release. If you don’t have great crisp photos, the way transparencies are blurred can get annoying. Some UI changes feel like internal petty, ego-driven choices. The prevalence of white in the UI made my black iPhone seem out of place. The new UI makes me realize how much of the phone face is not screen. I find myself hoping the next iPhone is entirely screen on the front.

Bugs, as to be expected

There are still bugs. It’s beta software. While not as bad as the iOS 5 beta, I did have to reformat to get all of my previously installed apps to transfer over from my iCloud backup ok. As many apps start, the top bar looks funny. Siri, while better, is still not the personal assistant Apple tries to bill it as.

While I’m comfortable with the new design, I’m not sure other less digital-savvy users will. I’m already planning on a trip out to grandma’s this fall to help her relearn how to user her iPad. I haven’t been able to try the AirDrop functionality yet (not enabled on the 4s…), and I haven’t yet gotten around to trying the iTunes Radio, but those are really the only new “features.”
iOS 7′s success or demise depends on if you like the new design. As I was considering switching to Android just for a change of scenery, iOS 7 has me ready to stick with Apple a while longer. That’s it though. The new features are minor and will not be enough to win you over one way or the other. This one’s all looks.

General Mills History Blog

General Mills came to Spyder Trap with an idea that they wanted to share with the world some fun and hilarious moments of their historic past. This project needed the content to be on a platform where it could be easily added by the client and shared by the consumer and user. Tumblr became the platform best suited to handle the publishing, management and engagement of their content.

With today’s Internet accessible from every device and screen possible, we utilized Responsive Web Design to allow the user experience and content to shine on smartphones, tablets and the desktop.

Vintage Design

Most of the products that’ll be featured on this site are long from the past, so the look needed to have a very vintage feel to it. General Mills had some great illustration work of their company from very early on (late 1800′s) that I had to bring into the site in some shape or form. Use of old logos and a worn polaroid helped complete the vintage look and feel for the theme.

Tumblr Features

Here’s a condensed list of features designed and developed into this site:

• Responsive Web Design
• Content Management
• Photo & Video Uploading
• Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest Sharing
• Integrated DISQUS Commenting and Notes
• CSS Mobile Menu

View the General Mills History Blog.

Let’s look at 3 tips to improve your email marketing open rates:

1. Brand Reputation, More Importantly Email Brand Reputation

Do you think your email recipients are actually excited when they see your email in their inbox? Why or why not? Companies have a hard time understanding that they develop an email reputation that can make or break open rates.

Break it: If you email too often, only try to sell them (buy! buy! buy!), write near novels, or never establish yourself as a valuable reference, you are going to suffer with each additional email.

Make it: You deliver timely, valuable content that your users associate with your brand so that they look forward to hearing from you. You educate, inform and help, benefitting the recipient more than your company.

Personally, I have about 5 companies that I get a monthly email from that I’m actually excited to open.  I have about 20 that I pass over just about every time.

If you do one thing after reading this post, evaluate your email brand reputation and work to start improving it right now. You can slowly turn long time subscribers into frequent openers and deliver a substantial first impression to your new subscribers.

2. A/B Test Your Subject Lines

I’m always amazed at how subject lines are ignored as a key contributor to your email marketing success. Creating multiple email subject lines and testing them against each other in a A/B test is just plain smart.

The email marketing platform we use allows our campaigns to test two subject lines with the first 50% of the email list. Afterward it automatically sends the second half of the list the email with the winning subject line. This A/B test helps produce an increase in opens just about every time out.

The example above illustrates that for this A/B test, Version A was the winner and helped produce an estimated 96 more opens than if Version B’s subject line was used. This resulted in a 19% increase for delivery of the winning subject line to the second half balance of the email list.

To take it a step further, this A/B test was the only one done by this client in a 6 month period and it returned a higher open rate then the other 5 email campaigns. (Note: The client manages their own campaign sends, but Spyder Trap initiated the A/B test to illustrate to them the value of A/B testing subject lines.)

The September campaign with the A/B test saw an open rate of 25.35%, almost a full 4% higher than the 6 month average, and out performed all of the other campaigns. Even November’s campaign, with 400 more subscribers in the list saw 105 fewer opens.

If you don’t currently use an email platform that enables A/B Testing, we can help.

3. Mobile Email Awareness Is A Must

So, you already know that people engage with email on their smartphones more than any other platform (desktop client, webmail, etc.). Today’s email marketer in any industry needs to make their emails mobile friendly in all aspects.

Step one is to be aware just how many of your email subscribers are opening your email marketing via mobile. The example below shows you that IOS devices iPhone and iPad dominate how this company’s email marketing is opened and read, especially the iPhone. (Over 1/3 of their readers!)

Step two is to understand how your subject line differs on mobile devices. You will have less characters in the subject line depending on what device it is viewed on. For example, an iPhone 4s can display as little as just 33 characters. Also pay attention to what message/text appears in the content teaser below the subject line. If you start your email with a graphic header, that teaser might just be visible HTML code and not even the content of the e-newsletter.

Step three for your mobile awareness is to start building your emails using responsive design. This allows your email to change its shape and size when it’s opened on a smartphone compared to a desktop email client. Just as responsive web design is solving many companies challenge of a great mobile experience, email shouldn’t be left out.

Email is Still the ROI Leader

Even though we have a lot more to think about over the last decade for online marketing, and so many more exciting options to consider, email is still the ROI leader. Take into account these 3 tips to improve your email marketing and open rates and it can be an even stronger performer for your organization.

If you need an expert email partner or a better email marketing platform to help improve your email marketing efforts, we’re here to discuss what can be done.

I want to look at three areas that I see as big contributors to your next website and it’s success. I know it took time, convincing and budget to get this redesign green lighted. Now, how can you ensure it’s the change you need?

Looking past the basics of a new design and content management system, I believe the following three areas are additional and important considerations in your website redesign. Failing to include these you might make your redesign efforts ineffective.

1.  Better Data

While the web is buzzing with big data, what I see many organizations falling short with is better data. Companies have had a hard time progressing past just installing Google Analytics and looking at basic (and often meaningless) metrics like pages viewed and referral sources.

Put a focus on tracking outcomes over beginnings. Over-hyping referral sources and keywords only gives you entrance points and intent.  Those help but the ability to understand what types of traffic are accomplishing an outcome your website is more valuable.

Establishing and tracking goals and setting up event tracking and other outcomes on your website is truly “better data.” Goal tracking in Google Analytics is one way to put the focus on the outcome and start understanding what is the right kind of traffic to attract.

Below are a few goals that just about any website can track and measure:

• Completion of a contact form or RFQ form
• Email address acquisition
• Download of a whitepaper
• Access or registration for a webinar, event or video

2. Mobile

You knew it would be one of the three, but yet it’s still maybe not part of your redesign? The biggest factor for most organizations to become mobile friendly with their website is the technical configuration or development.

Every stat across mobile is in a growth or explosion mode. Email is consumed on mobile more than desktop or webmail, “mobile first” internet users are rising. In fact, mobile search is set to eclipse desktop searches in under two years, and the list goes on.

Responsive web design has caught on as the right mobile solution for many, giving you one website that adapts to the device you access it on.  Google and Bing have given RWD their blessing for mobile search structure of a website adding to its benefits.

That said, sometimes your website and user are better off with a parallel mobile site or a dynamic mobile site. Responsive is not the only solution for mobile, but for most the benefits can be the answer they’re looking for.

I’d recommend you force the issue of mobile now.  Especially if your company’s trend has been to redesign every three to five years, waiting that long to have a mobile friendly website might put you light years behind your competition.

3. Content That Matters

While a new web design is shiny and a new CMS can alleviate headaches, not putting quality content as your top priority in your redesign can be costly.

What’s content that matters you ask? Imagine that a bookshelf is the website redesign and the content are books. If you don’t know the size, shape and weight of the books, you can’t build the shelf that will hold them. In the same way, a website redesign should consider content first.

Remember, it’s content that is valuable for your user. Content that answers their questions, builds trust in your offering and guides them to an outcome they desire and understand. In the past, we’ve talked about content built on marketing fluff and how you need to address your website users needs, not the company ego.

A great example of content that matters for me is what REI does with Snowshoeing (and many other products).  Many e-commerce enabled sites focus only on product display and sales.  REI has used content focused on education to help you make a smarter and more trusted purchase.  Their site offers content that helps you get the “why” of the product, the product types, expert advice, techniques and more.

They also use various forms of content to educate as text, graphics, photos and video all contribute to the users education.  If your website was a customer service rep, REI’s is poised to answer valuable questions and educate. Many of their competitors would only answer “Add to Cart” or “View Price in Cart”.

Summary: Maximize Your Website Redesign

Good luck with your website redesign and nailing these three important elements that will make your website even more valuable to your organization. Look past the refresh of your design and pay attention to the more valuable decisions you can make with your redesign project. Of course, we’d love to be part of making it happen, just tell us about your needs.

It shared a fun Doodle for a day. It was used in millions of “I told you so!” moments. It learned more intimate details about individuals than they share with doctors or partners. It also announced some “major” change that scared a niche group of people – paid search marketers.

Google’s New AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

The announcement of Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns is being talked about with such hype that you’d think the Pope just quit or something. On the surface, this is huge. While this change to AdWords could be the most significant thing to happen to advertising in the last five years, it really isn’t changing anything.

For me, this whole fiasco initially shows one thing: change will always scare us.

Some people are throwing flags and calling foul, but the only people doing so are people like me, paid media managers, a.k.a. PPC fiends.  You can read many blog posts that cover varying opinions on Enhanced Campaigns.

To the rest of the world, the people who didn’t know they needed this, the update could change their lives. Steve Jobs didn’t believe in market research and held the mentality that “… customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” Isn’t that exactly what Google is doing?

People who manage AdWords budgets are not Google’s customer, it is the client of that person who is Google’s customer — or more appropriately said — it was the client.

If Google asked business owners what they wanted, they would say, “I want the funds to be able to hire an agency to handle my AdWords campaigns.” Google solved the problem by giving control, simple control, to that business owner without all the jargon and complexity offered by an agency.

They did it before the customers asked for it, before market research told to do it, and that is why us PPC fiends have our panties in a bunch. Relax.

The Enhanced Campaigns update is not going to shipwreck things for you and digital agencies are not going to die away.  With that winded preface aside, here are my main four takeaways on Google Enhanced Campaigns.

1. Context-Based Ads & Bidding

The revolution for Google’s customer – remember it’s not us PPC folks – is housing what used to be dozens of campaigns and their subsequent details into one idealistic beast. It’s the time to throw out that day-parted iPhone-specific campaign targeted to the 20-mile radius of Minneapolis and the several other sort-of-similar-sort-of-not campaigns that compliment it, and wrap that mess into one nice bow-tied piece of context capability.

Sure, I still need to migrate and recreate my campaigns, but the essence of the idea is amazing. Yes, I love the idea. I’m going to have so much fun recreating campaigns and re-strategizing things. Why wouldn’t we all love the idea of making simple changes that have large impact?

Having parameters in place to change the percent of a flat bid based on time of day, location, and device is amazing, especially considering how easy it’s going to be.

The capability of being able to adjust bids based on the numerous parameters I set in place is going to a wonderful tool, especially as I guide, consult and grab drinks with clients and explain things to them. The clients are going to see enthusiasm in the details surrounding their investments. They are going to learn more about their business and customers. We are going to build a better relationship. See where I’m going with this?

2. Focused Ad Extensions for Ad Groups

Gone are the days where ad extensions and sitelinks had to be generic enough to comply with all following ad groups. Go ahead and argue I didn’t have things broken out enough, but campaign-level extensions always bothered me.

I’m all about granular details. This change creates even more opportunity to provide the searcher exactly what they are looking for with less effort.

Ad group level ad extensions is a win so large it can’t be brushed aside. My mind has been buzzing with ideas on how to leverage this for my clients. It has started some fun conversations. It brought up very legit concerns about landing adjustments. That has in turn led to further fun discussions. I hope it does for you, too.

3. Clear AdWords Sitelink Performance

Clarity is an exciting thing.  Now you will have something more specific to say than, “This tells me we need to update the URL copy for the site links.”  Sitelinks offer great shortcuts for users to get to the content they need faster.  Locations, directions, popular filters, categories and more are great uses for sitelinks.

Testing copy and destinations is going to be truly backed by meaningful data. You are going to know exactly which site links are working and need changing. This is a small change, but the data now being available is huge! Geeks get ready!

4. Mobile, Local, MOBILE!

As Google throws desktop to the curb and rebrands “mobile” as a catchall device term, mobile must be a significant priority to your clients — all of your clients. The merging of mobile and desktop campaigns is infuriating if you look through the wrong lens. Yes, it’s going to derail specific efforts.

Yes, your CPCs are going to be higher. Yes, the CPA could go up, but only for those who don’t have sites that are ready for mobile.

The sheer number of people who are still not ready for mobile users to hit their site shocks me. It pains me. With this epic merger, an m-dot site, or better yet, a responsive website is a must-have! You owe it to your clients to take them down this road. Sure, you have already told them that, but that was your salesperson saying it. Cut them a deal and preserve the relationship out of their best interests, make their site responsive, get their conversions back in order, and do even more business together.

Pro Tip: If you need help in this, I work with some pretty cool people who are keen on mobile web design. Wink face, nerds, wink face.

Keep Calm

Google has done what they always do, freak out internet nerds with some new updates.  We’ll see if all of them stay or if a few get tweaked a bit.

You are going to be OK. Your clients are going to be OK. The diligent PPC manager is going to tackle the ideas with ease, after all, the strategy isn’t changing at all, just the tactics.

Our predictions for 2012 had some gems, like one of developers nailing a gaming and tablet integration. (I’m stealing your Crystal ball Joe Barhorst!) Many outlined predictions in mobile and apps last year and 2013 are no different.

2013 Predictions

Development – We will continue to see more and more schema-free (nosql) data stores, new and innovative ways of mining said data sources and even more of a focus on an API-driven development in which RESTful web services continue to play a huge role. Front-end technologies (namely JavaScript libraries) are continuing to advance at a rapid rate so expect far more client-side interaction in 2013 as well.
Nicholas Kreidberg, Developer

Analytics – Everyone has data, but few know how to interpret it into actionable ideas that push them and their client in a new direction. We’ll see more agencies tout their data and analytics skills or partners; more data-specific shops will appear overnight and be acquired just as quickly.
Nate Knox, Search Marketer

Social Media -  Photo-sharing becomes hotly contested with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Google all making huge strides late in 2012. This will lead to a lot of new features and changes in 2013 as each service looks to gain more users and traffic.
Steve Retka, Social Media Coordinator

Social Media - Advertising on Facebook, Twitter, etc. finally got a proper name in 2012 with Native Advertising. I expect that advancements in targeting advertising and sponsored messages through these channels will become significant this year and ad spending will grow.
Jeff Gerst, Account Supervisor

Search Marketing -  Marketing departments start seeing the advantage to content marketing and having all forms of content to be the “front door” to their business. Blogging and whitepapers will still have value, but image and video creation, layered with optimization, is what will rank and gain attention in the crowd of search results.
My Prediction – Aaron Weiche, VP

Business – As the US comes out of a recession, I predict a large number of start-ups fueled by the increase in entrepreneurs. With large acquisitions and IPO’s, there has been a bubble of geeks with good ideas who have gained the liquidity to chase their dreams. The technology sector is also swelling with new tech that came out recently and hasn’t yet been turned in to marketable products.
Perry Govier, Innovation Lead

Design – I’m predicting more experimental layouts and interfaces now that we are getting past the desktop standard (1024 x 768). You’re going to be seeing a lot more experimental design standards that are focused around touch interaction.
Shaymein Ewer, Creative Designer

Technology - Cloud convergence and integration will see strong growth. With the adoption and adaptation of cloud services, devices (mobile and otherwise) will begin moving away from local storage and start relying on the cloud for regular storage, back-ups and document sharing. This capability leads to a new breed of lightweight devices that relies less on internal storage and is packed with a ridiculous amount of processing power pushing the limits of what can be done on the web.
Travis Smith, Project Manager

Technology – I think we will see a longer hardware lifespan as costs increase and companies have more invested in a single product.
Travis Manick, Developer

Technology - App and hardware integration will continue to evolve past current devices. 2013 will be the year we’ll see a big push in devices that will monitor our activities, sleep, weight, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. These devices will talk with our cell phones and will allow us to better monitor our successes, failures, health, etc. API’s will allow devices to open data to multiple apps.
Cory Vandenberghe, Social Media Manager

Technology - The connected living room (smart TV, media center, integrated mobile devices) will become more mainstream, but it won’t work as well as it should.  Incomplete licensing deals between content creators, content distributors and device manufacturers will continue to plague us throughout the year; people will continue to be frustrated when they can’t use the HBOGo app on their Samsung Smart TV if they are an Xfinity subscriber, for example.
Demian Brink, VP of Client Service

Mobile – With the growing popularity of local/mobile search and social activity, I expect to see businesses use geo-location services more predominantly in 2013.
Daniel Hollerung, Search Marketing Manager

Mobile – Mobile wallet like Google Wallet and mobile banking will see significant growth with mainstream acceptance.
Barb Vanags, VP of Finance

Mobile – Mobile will begin to be the first thought when a business owners wants a new website – followed by the desktop version.  This will continue the push for developers and designers to become experts as HTML5, CSS3 and Responsive.
Travis Neiderhiser, Development Team Manager

Mobile – More companies will look at mobile technology as a necessary utility to do business, across all departments, not just marketing. Custom mobile applications will serve as a foundation for supporting job functions in sales, project management customer service and operations.
Jeff Nolan, Account Executive

Mobile – Mobile commerce takes hold. Using mobile devices, it will be even easier to satisfy the desire to shop. Made popular by cutting edge grocery stores in Asia, these interactive virtual shops will start to show up everywhere and you can snap a QR/bar code and instantly purchase items through an e-commerce mobile site. And to make it even more exciting, there will be “pop-up” shops with exclusive limited-time products.
Rebecca Toth, Director of Account Services

Apps - A shift from Native apps to Web apps is here. I predict that within the next year mobile phones will pass up PC’s for use of the Internet. With this, I think we’re going to see a major shift in companies creating Native Apps and will expect to do more with their Web Apps or mobile websites. With more advances in HTML 5 & other technologies we’ll be able to design for more complex & creative interfaces.
Jeff Wagner, Creative Director

Apps – More people than ever before will become technology-motivated as mobile and tablet apps and devices continue to appify even the smallest of every day tasks. Don’t be alarmed when you find your grandma cooking a meal with step-by-step tablet instructions or that notoriously computer-illiterate family member shopping for groceries by influence of an app awarding them ‘points’ because they shopped a specific food category.
Joe Barhorst, Developer

Apps – App numbers and popularity will undoubtedly increase this year, but I think “companion apps” (apps created by manufacturers to accompany/support their products) will start to become more of the norm and a larger point of differentiation for tech saavy consumers when they’re deciding which brand to buy.
Nick Bryant, Director of Client Strategy

What’s Your Digital Future?

Do you have a prediction to add to ours for 2013 in marketing and technology? Share yours in our comments!

Spyder Trap team members have been busy the last month taking part in various mobile conferences across North America.  With numerous app projects, mobile websites, responsive web design projects and mobile search campaigns, it was great to take a few days here and there to share our passion, experience and thirst for more knowledge on mobile.

Mobile Conferences Recap

Here is a quick recap of the mobile marketing conferences we took part in the last month.

SCREENS – Toronto, Canada

Web Development Manager Travis Neiderhiser attended SCREENS 2012, a 2-day conference focused on mobile and tablet app development and responsive web design.  Travis came back with a ton to share with his development team on HTML5, app analytics, responsive web design and more.  He cited Wes Bros as his favorite speaker and session of the conference covering mobile operating system advancements.

Travis had a great time learning and networking with other mobile developers and shared that Crown and Dragon is the beer and wing hotspot in Toronto.

Breaking Development – Dallas, TX

Creative Director  Jeff Wagner was Texas bound in September to take part in the Breaking Development conference on mobile web design and mobile development. Jeff really valued the conversation and collaboration format of the event as speakers and attendees mixed opinions and ideas frequently.

Sessions covered mobile content, load time, mobile experience and testing.  Want to know the answer of web first or mobile first for design process?  Ask Jeff!  Jeff cited Lyza Danger Gardner as his favorite speaker with her session addressing “Supporting more, sucking less.”

Jeff claims that he didn’t hit up the social scene at all in his Dallas adventure, but he did share that the Gaylord Texan Hotel was “the bomb.”

SMX East: Local University Advanced – New York, NY

The SMX conference series brings in global online and mobile marketing experts for a 3-day conference in New York City.  I had the privilege of being part of the Local University Advanced Workshop at SMX East covering mobile search marketing.

My presentation outlined the massive growth in mobile and local search and what a mobile marketer needs to understand about mobile search rankings and strategies.  I’ll cut to the chase for you on this blog post, but local search and paid search are huge winners right now for mobile marketing.  With 50% of Google’s mobile searches having local intent and 70% of local search users taking action within an hour, the “mobile search funnel” is huge.

I could hijack the rest of the post with all of the great things in New York I took in during my 3 days there, but one highlight was the “Local Search Last Supper” at rooftop bar Birreria (pictured above).

Let’s Talk Mobile

If you’d like to hear more on our recent travels, conferences, connections and speaking opportunities in mobile, please give us a shout!

-Additional photo credits to Avalaunch Media