Earlier today a4u released an M-Commerce Report, detailing the UK’s latest m-commerce statistics, considerations, and opportunities both for brands and affiliates.

Here are just a few things that have caught my eye:

Affiliate-Driven Mobile Sales Doubled Since the Start of 2011

Per Affiliate Window‘s observations “at the start of the current year the mobile channel accounted for roughly 2% of sales” while “by August that proportion had risen to more than 5%”. Another way of looking at it is this: “with 77,000 mobile transactions taking place in August, the number of mobile sales has leaped by 12,000 in just one month.”

iPad Doubles Desktop Conversions

The report points out that about “4% of iPad traffic converts, compared to just under 2% of non mobile traffic” and “mobile, in general, is outperforming computer traffic with phone-sized iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices converting at around 2.5%”.

Mobile & Online to Offline Convergence in Affiliate Channel

Debenhams ran a mobile voucher trial with VoucherCloud and MyVoucherCodes, and out of all other marketing channels employed “Affiliate Marketing was the highest performing channel … driving 57% of in-store sales revenue.”

The opportunity is obviously there, and not only for UK merchants and affiliates, but also for marketers working out of (and in) the United States, and other countries.

The full report is available for a free download at affiliates4u.com.

As strange as it sounds, the vast majority of merchants from the Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list do not have mobile websites. Earlier this week The New York Times wrote:

The potential for added revenue from mobile sales remains huge, retailers believe. EBay said that in 2010 it generated almost $2 billion in mobile sales, and is on track to double that this year.

But major retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, Coach, Dillard’s and Ann Taylor still do not have sites designed specifically for mobile phones — known as optimized sites — nor do they have apps. By mid-2010, according to the Acquity Group, just 12 percent of the top 500 United States online retailers had sites compatible with mobile browsers, while just 7 percent had apps.

Now retailers are rapidly realizing they no longer have a choice, because customers expect to be able to shop on their phones and want the experience to be as good or better than on a computer.

Coincidentally or not, I addressed exactly the same topic in my latest article which appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of Revenue Performance magazine. If you’ve attended ad:tech San Francisco you’ve probably already seen it (as the magazine was included in every attendee’s goodie bag), but if you haven’t, you may download the full Spring edition of the magazine here. Here’s just an excerpt from it:

Some merchants do run mobile-friendly websites. Target, Walmart and Amazon are good examples of those that do, as well as service providers such as USPS.gov to Cars.com, but there are many that don’t. …at the time that I’m writing this piece of the four largest U.S. mobile operators only Verizon has a mobile website, while AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint do not.

…there is a huge and growing opportunity here.

…[mobile] users can be focused and engaged but only if and when we provide the right infrastructure to support their focus and engagement. They know what they want, but do we care enough about them to make their experience enjoyable? With that in mind, here are 10 practical tips on how to make your website (and/or landing pages) more mobile-friendly…

Read the full “How Mobile-Friendly Are You?” article at page 33 here. The above-quoted statistics and examples are spelling out one word, both for merchants and affiliates, and the word is: opportunity.

It’s great to see affiliate networks developing. Last week ShareASale launched their new merchant interface. A couple days after that Google Affiliate Network announced product APIs for affiliates. Yesterday Shawn Collins wrote about buy.at‘s new product search feature for affiliates. Today I’d like to bring to you another network-related news — LinkShare has just launched a mobile dashboard for affiliates (or “publishers” as they call them).

This morning I’ve had a chance to have a look at their new mobile dashboard. It is not an app, but an actual mobile website, which, as they themselves wrote to me, “allows LinkShare publishers to search, get, and promote links all from a mobile device” (via email, Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr).

Here’s how it works:

1. Copy and paste a token

2. Choose an advertiser

3. Search for a product or coupons from that advertiser

4. Share via email, Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr

Once again it’s a mobile website, and not an app. So basically you can use the same URL on different mobile devices.

The famous Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes of Syracuse is known for saying: “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the earth.” For an affiliate marketer (and any online marketer, for that matter!) the “place to stand” remains the same as in 2010 — the Internet. Now let’s look at the “levers” to use in moving towards success in 2011.

There are a number of directions we can explore this year; and I believe there are at least 5 trends to take advantage of:

1. Marriage of Search & Social – At the end of 2010 both Google and Bing confirmed that Twitter and Facebook signals influence search rankings [more here]. While I do not believe Social to be the new SEO, it is hard to overestimate its importance. How will you leverage this in 2011?

2. Local Marketing Opportunities — More and more people are searching for local products, services, coupons and deals. Are you taking advantage of this tendency yet?

3. Rise of Mobile — Mobile Internet devices market is expected to overtake the traditional PCs in the next 5 years, and the mobile Internet will eventually grow to “at least 2x size of Desktop Internet” [source]. Are your websites even mobile-friendly yet?

4. Pay-Per-Call is Hot — Whether you’re reading this as a merchant, or as an affiliate, you don’t want to miss out on this one. For merchants pay-per-call works beautifully with other payment models [more here], while affiliates should take notice of the impressive conversion rates PPCall draws.

5. More Networking Opportunities — The number of affiliate marketing forums and conferences has at least doubled in 2010. Many of them present affiliate marketers with good networking opportunities which can also be leveraged for success.

Have I missed anything?

As the year draws to a close, and I’m looking into ways of improving my readers’ experience with my blog, I see that the numbers of those who access it via mobile devices has greatly increased since 2009 (as many of you probably know, I started blogging daily on 1/1/2009; so it is good/right to compare 2010 to 2009 now).

Here’s a vivid example: comparing the period of 10/27-12/26/2010 to the same period in 2009 we see a 746.15% increase in traffic this year:

However, as it is obvious from the above data, the considerable traffic increase hasn’t been coupled with significant improvements in the ways this traffic used/read the blog:

• Number of pages viewed per visit has gone up only by 7.23% (from 1.21 to 1.30)
• Average time on site increased just by about 17% (from 56 sec to 1 min 6 sec)
• Bounce rate has dropped only by about 11% (from 89.35% to 79.65%)

The lack of serious improvements is easy to explain: due to a fairly low traffic volume from mobile devices in 2009 nothing has been done to improve the mobile user’s experience with the blog in 2010 — nothing whatsoever.

However, now that I have already had over 4,100 visitors access my blog via their mobile devices in 2010 [see graph below], it is time to change something!

Yesterday morning I have installed WordPress PDA & iPhone plugin, and I’m already registering some improvement. The time on site of iPhone users (the most popular device people use to access my blog) has already more than doubled increasing from 00:38 to 01:29. Of course, it is too preliminary to make any conclusions, and I still have to see if there are better WordPress plugins available out there (WPtouch looks promising), but it is always good to register a quick improvement.

Is your blog mobile-friendly yet? If so, please share your tips on how you’ve achieved it (in the “Comments” area blow). I am certain that many people (myself in the first row!) will benefit from any additional tips.

Yesterday RingRevenue has circulated a press release, which quoted with some truly impressive statistics:

…record mobile campaign growth, with third quarter call volume up more than 500 percent compared with the first quarter of this year. With conversion rates as high as 47 percent and top mobile publishers generating more than $75,000 per month in pay-per-call revenues, mobile has become a significant channel for high-impact call-based campaigns [underlining mine].

So, I reached out to Jason Spievak (JS), CEO of RingRevenue, to see if I (GP) could dig a little deeper into this obviously happy marriage of mobile affiliate marketing and pay per call.

Below you may find my interview with Mr. Spievak:

GP: Jason, first of all, congratulations on the truly impressive growth registered with mobile affiliate campaigns run through RingRevenue. What are the top 3 marketing avenues that work best with mobile affiliate marketing now? My guess would be text, mobile SEO, and paid search. What’s the reality?

JS: Yes.  Search, mobile SEO and text are among the top performing publisher formats on mobile.  With paid search, there’s significant overall lift for both clicks and calls when publishers can include a phone number in a mobile ad placement.  Basically, it lets consumers interact with an advertiser however they choose, and the publisher still gets credit.  On the organic side, we now see publishers including phone numbers in page titles to drive more calls and create more consumer confidence in engaging with that advertiser.

Text messaging is a little different because it depends so heavily on the relevance of the offer to the text message.  The volume is absolutely there, but the quality doesn’t compare to search, for example, where you’ve got an active consumer seeking out a solution.  And that’s where the RingRevenue platform comes in, as we’re able to quality filter those inbound callers from mobile campaigns and make sure that the advertiser’s phone is only ringing with qualified callers.

We also see subscription-based apps like Mobile Posse performing well, as they have an active community open to receiving the content being pushed out to them.  Phone numbers positioned in other mobile apps like gaming are growing but have a ways to go.  Including phone numbers in shopping apps and social media apps is showing early potential as well and will likely grow as a pay-per-call channel.

Whether it’s online or mobile, effective targeting is still an important part of any campaign and has a major impact on volume and conversion rates on mobile just as it does in traditional online marketing.

GP: Without giving away anyone’s secrets, what are some of the top mobile affiliate marketing vehicles that seem to drive fastest now (for example, coupons, demographically-targeted promos, comparison shopping, etc)?

JS: Happy to share some secrets, but you’ll have to come to Santa Barbara with your fishing gear to get them.  What we can share is that — like with online marketing — it’s all about reaching a consumer at the right time with the right offer.  Coupon and comparison sites work well online, but those types of publishers haven’t quite yet figured out how to reproduce that consumer experience on the smaller screen.  Pay-per-call is a very natural fit in that environment because all of us have a phone in our hands at the moment we’re engaging with their media, and the most intuitive consumer action then is to click to make a call.  And the conversion rates are much higher as well for two reasons.  The first is that the consumer who calls in is more committed to the process than one who clicks.  And the second is that a trained sales agent is converting those callers to customers 30%-50% of the time, compared to a much lower conversion rate through an application or mobile web interface.

GP: What, in your opinion, are the most underutilized (yet highly promising) methods of mobile marketing (e.g.: location-based marketing, video, etc)?

JS: Even though search is one of the top ways affiliates are leveraging pay-per-call, it is still probably one of the most underutilized.  There are a lot of online search affiliates who haven’t invested in this space yet.  They know from their traditional online marketing that mobile doesn’t convert very well on clicks.  Consumers who search on their mobile and are driven to websites or landing pages typically have a high abandonment rate because the experience isn’t easy on the smaller screen.  They plan to come back to it later when they get to their computer.  But the downside is they don’t go back through the affiliate link.  They go directly to the advertiser, and the publisher doesn’t get the credit for the lead even though they paid for the click.  By including a phone number in the mobile search results, not only are publishers seeing higher click-through rates as a result, but they’re also driving high-value calls directly from the mobile.  And in many cases the call-based EPCs are higher than click-based EPCs.

Local marketing on mobile is also in its very early days, but we’re seeing it begin to take hold on our platform.  Advertisers can set their payouts based on targeted regions, and we’re seeing more affiliates on the platform now who are interested in promoting local businesses with pay-per-call campaigns.  Most local businesses aren’t looking to conduct an e-commerce transaction.  They’re looking to get you on the phone or in the door.  And having the phone number right there in the ad or the search results drives that direct connection between the consumer and the local advertiser.  The challenge here is that certain types of local service providers will pay tens of dollars per call whereas restaurants and other local business typically can afford to pay much less.  So, targeted local websites and regionally focused apps can outperform the much broader local directory sites.

GP: Mobile is undoubtedly a great marketing opportunity, but what about privacy issues (e.g.: people possibly being spammed by mobile affiliates), and does RingRevenue have any mechanisms set in place to address this?

JP: Yes. We take privacy very seriously, and we provide advertisers with all the controls they need to monitor their calls from individual publisher sources and the ability to instantly shut down publishers who may not be engaging in acceptable practices based on the terms the advertiser has outlined.

When applying to campaigns, publishers are asked about their promotional methods and their profile information is shared with the advertisers.  And advertisers have the ability to accept or reject applications based on that information.  Advertisers also have the ability to reverse any transactions for publishers who may have engaged in unacceptable practices.  So the incentive for publishers to engage in that kind of activity is low.  Our network partners also have network quality teams that are continuously monitoring applications and publisher behavior to ensure privacy guidelines are met and adhered to.

GP: Thank you for your time, Jason. It is always a pleasure chatting with you.

A little over a week and a half ago, I blogged about my discoveries on the mobile traffic my website gets.

In my case it accounted for some 3.5% of all my traffic, but this, in fact, meant thousands of mobile visitors every year.

I ended that blog post with the following words:

The fourth quarter is quickly approaching … but there is still time to analyze your websites, and make them (especially those of them that are in any way related to the Q4 shopping season) more mobile-friendly.

But how exactly do you “make them more mobile-friendly”?

I was happy to find an article on this very topic in this month’s issue of the Target Marketing magazine. In it Brian Klais gives a few good tips on how “to optimize your mobile Web results.”  Here are the 8 best practices (both for mobile sites in general, and mobile-optimized landing page, in particular) that I’ve picked from that article:

1. Provide a clean, and swiftly-loading interface. No page should exceed 100 kilobytes in size.
2. Navigation must be “intuitive and uncluttered”
3. Links must be labeled with proper descriptions (not just “click here”)
   
4. Provide a search function
5. Do not forget your CTAs (calls to action)
6. Flee from serving them pages that require any horizontal scrolling
7. Individual landing page URLs should be as short as possible. Keep them under 40 characters
8. Unlike it is with regular page titles (which are recommended to be kept at 67 characters or under), mobile browsers display only the first 45 characters, and when bookmarked, only the first 25 characters are displayed in the bookmark section. So, you want to keep the titles short and sweet too
   

Got anything else to add? Feel free to do so by adding your comments below.

Good thing Dave Chaffey tweeted a link to Gary Robinson’s Your 60 Second Mobile Review post yesterday. I got hooked on this immediately, and was indulging myself in the analysis of my site’s mobile visitors literally seconds after reading Gary’s post.

My Observations:

• Approximately 3.5% of visitors view my website via mobile devices
• Regardless of how small the above percentage may seem, it accounts for (or translates into) thousands of visitors every year
• The top 3 operating systems over the past four months have been: iPhone (58%), Android (13.6%), and iPad (12.9%)
• The lowest bounce rate registered with “mobile devices” has been with iPad users (natural, isn’t it?)

My Conclusions:

• Start monitoring this particular set of stats more frequently/closely
• Work on optimizing my mobile visitors’ experience (especially those accessing the website on their iPhones and iPads)

My Screenshot:

The fourth quarter is quickly approaching (yes, the first day of calendar Fall is here already!), but there is still time to analyze your websites, and make them (especially those of them that are in any way related to the Q4 shopping season) more mobile-friendly.

Over the past two months I’ve been compiling publishing lists of Twitter users related to digital marketing. You have been commenting and adding your own suggestions (which have been highly appreciated!)

Today I have decided to collect all of this data into one master list (which now contains over 100 unique Twitter accounts:

• Analytics – 20 must-follow experts + 9 from your comments (start with @) = 29
  1. Google Analytics
  2. Yahoo! Web Analytics
  3. Omniture
  4. Avinash Kaushik
  5. Eric Peterson
  6. Jim Sterne
  7. Steve Jackson
  8. Lars Johansson
  9. Marshall Sponder
  10. Jason Burby
  11. Dennis James
      
  12. ForeSee Results
  13. PostRank
  14. A/B Tests
  15. KISS Metrics
  16. Web Trends
  17. Web Analytics World
  18. SmartData Collective
  19. Analytics Update
  20. Datalicious
      
  21. @brianclifton
  22. @jdersh
  23. @dennismortensen
  24. @jimnovo
  25. @immeria
  26. @minethatdata
  27. @adamgreco
  28. @garyangel
  29. @beywebanalytics
• Branding & PR – 7 experts to learn from + 5 from comments = 12
  1. Chris Brogan
  2. Outspoken Media
  3. David Meerman Scott
  4. Brian Solis
  5. Bill Stoller
  6. David E. Henderson
  7. David Kirk
     
  8. @prsarahevans
  9. @BrandweekDotCom
  10. @amvandenhurk
  11. @podcaststeve
  12. @deirdrebreakenridge
• Content – 8 (copy)writing resources = 8
  1. Brian Clark
  2. Fuel Your Writing
  3. Write to Done
  4. Jon Winokur
  5. Daily Writing Tips
  6. WritersGroup
     
  7. Joanna Penn
  8. ShutUpAndWrite
• Conversion Optimization – 7 optimization gurus + 2 from comments = 9
  1. Bryan Eisenberg
  2. Tim Ash
  3. Chris Goward
  4. Oli Gardner
  5. Raquel Hirsch
  6. Jeffrey Eisenberg
  7. Anne Holland
  8. @ericjhansen
  9. @WhichTestWon
• Mobile – 15 mobile marketing experts + 4 from comments = 19
  1. Mobile Marketer
  2. Cindy Krum
  3. Mobile Marketing Association
  4. iLoop Mobile
  5. Matt Parzych
  6. MobiAd News
  7. AdMob
  8. Mashable Mobile
  9. Kim Dushinski
  10. Mobile Marketing Magazine
  11. Deborah Hall
  12. MobileCrunch
  13. OnlyMobileNews
  14. The Text Works
  15. Texting Forward
  16. @gomonews
  17. @txtlocal
  18. @punchkickmobile
  19. @recess_mobile
• Reading & Learning – 15 (+1) accounts for daily reading = 16
  1. Econsultancy
  2. Search Engine Journal
  3. Mashable
  4. Outspoken Media
  5. ClickZ
  6. eMarketer
  7. Small Business Trends
  8. Harvard Business Review
  9. ReveNews
  10. GeekCast.fm
  11. MarketingProfs
  12. MediaPost
  13. ProBlogger
  14. Neuromarketing
  15. Social Media Examiner
  16. Smart Insights
• Research - 7 resources to follow = 7
  1. eMarketer
  2. Forrester Research
  3. Google Retail Team
  4. Pew Internet
  5. BigResearch
  6. Focus
  7. American Marketing Association
• Social Media – 7 resources to watch + 1 from comment = 8
  1. Social Media Today
  2. Social Media Examiner
  3. Social Media Club
  4. Social Net Daily
  5. Social Media Guide
  6. Social Media Blog
  7. Mashable Social Media
  8. @SMMmagazine

Have fun studying the above list(s), and let me know what next area of digital marketing you want a list for! Just post about it in the comments area below, and I’ll work on it for you.

Also, if it so happened that I’ve left out your favorites, please post about them below too.

Mobile is gaining more and more popularity, and who else should be more prepared to embrace it than digital marketers? Nobody, right? Well… Experience shows that mobile Internet and mobile commerce are somewhat different from mainstream Internet and e-commerce, and while may of the digital marketing skills will be of benefit, to succeed with mobile you need to know the differences and peculiarities of mobile website development, mobile SEO, mobile usability, etc.

Here are the 15 Twitter accounts you must follow if you’re really serious about mobile marketing:

1. Mobile Marketer — The news leader in mobile marketing, media and commerce.
2. Cindy Krum — Mobile marketing evangelist, founder of Rank-Mobile, and author of author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are.
3. Mobile Marketing Association — Premier global association that strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing and its related technologies.
4. iLoop Mobile — Tweets about measurable mobile marketing.
5. Matt Parzych — Tweets on useful, effective, innovative communications between businesses and their mobile audience.
6. MobiAd News — Tweets about mobile advertising and mobile marketing.
7. AdMob — Official Twitter account of AdMob.
8. Mashable Mobile — Mobile news, app reviews, information and more from Mashable.com/mobile.
9. Kim Dushinski — Founder of Mobile Marketing Profits, author of The Mobile Marketing Handbook, co-host of Mobile Presence radio show.
10. Mobile Marketing Magazine — Tweets of a London-based website devoted to serving the global mobile marketing industry.
11. Deborah Hall — Good informative tweets from Web2Mobile, a developer mobile marketing tools and solutions.
12. MobileCrunch — The official twitter account for MobileCrunch.
13. OnlyMobileNews — Twitter stream of the latest news in mobile technology.
14. The Text Works — Passionate about making the benefits of mobile messaging accessible to all organizations. Focused solely on SMS marketing.
15. Texting Forward — Mobile marketing (especially SMS marketing), mobile service solutions, and more.

If I have missed any that, in your opinion, should be on this list too, please post about them in the “Comments” are below. I would highly appreciate it.