Apple’s Message for Marketers: 'Handoff' Makes Omni-Channel a Reality
The Apple WWDC happened today, and a lot of the quick responses I’ve heard on the Web have been, essentially “if there is no new hardware, there’s nothing interesting.” And while it’s true that Apple didn’t introduce us to a new screen that marketing will take place on, this was a huge step forward in the area that vexes marketers most. Namely, how can we tell a cohesive story across digital platforms without knowing when and who is accessing the content?
Apple unveiled "Handoff," part of the new “Continuity” suite designed to bring phones, tablets, and Macs together, seamlessly. Continuity has some amazing consumer benefits, but it is Handoff that marketers should be excited about. Handoff will be used across all apps, but we see a particular opportunity with the Web browser. For the first time, someone using the Web on one device will move that content directly to another - and the implications are big.
Responsive Design
If you haven’t been paying attention to it, Responsive Design has been a pervasive trend in digital media. It means, essentially, creating the best experience for the same content on each platform but designing it for different screen sizes and capabilities. At POSSIBLE, everything we’ve worked on over the last 3 years has been responsively designed. Now, all that work is going to be put to the test. When a consumer uses Handoff and moves your Web site from their laptop to their iPhone, what’s going to happen? Will it break? Get an error message? Be so tiny that it is unusable (like, ahem, Apple’s own site)? Or will it elegantly display the content in a satisfying, usable way? This is going to be the test for whether your digital properties hold up or fall apart.
Omni-Channel Opportunity
But Responsive Design is just table stakes - you need to have it, but it doesn’t get you ahead. The real magic happens because suddenly, we’ll know when you move between devices, and that means we can tell a narrative marketing story. The best way to do Omni-channel work currently is by using native platforms, since Facebook, Twitter, and (when you are signed in) Google have the data about which device you are on and can be fairly sure you'll see messages across them.
Apple unveiled "Handoff," part of the new “Continuity” suite designed to bring phones, tablets, and Macs together, seamlessly. Continuity has some amazing consumer benefits, but it is Handoff that marketers should be excited about. Handoff will be used across all apps, but we see a particular opportunity with the Web browser. For the first time, someone using the Web on one device will move that content directly to another - and the implications are big.
Responsive Design
If you haven’t been paying attention to it, Responsive Design has been a pervasive trend in digital media. It means, essentially, creating the best experience for the same content on each platform but designing it for different screen sizes and capabilities. At POSSIBLE, everything we’ve worked on over the last 3 years has been responsively designed. Now, all that work is going to be put to the test. When a consumer uses Handoff and moves your Web site from their laptop to their iPhone, what’s going to happen? Will it break? Get an error message? Be so tiny that it is unusable (like, ahem, Apple’s own site)? Or will it elegantly display the content in a satisfying, usable way? This is going to be the test for whether your digital properties hold up or fall apart.
Omni-Channel Opportunity
But Responsive Design is just table stakes - you need to have it, but it doesn’t get you ahead. The real magic happens because suddenly, we’ll know when you move between devices, and that means we can tell a narrative marketing story. The best way to do Omni-channel work currently is by using native platforms, since Facebook, Twitter, and (when you are signed in) Google have the data about which device you are on and can be fairly sure you'll see messages across them.
Handoff should let us go beyond native platforms and be far more time-aware. We'll know that the consumer just moved the experience from tablet to desktop and we can provide targeted contextual messaging, not just for the person, but for the platform -- and we will know the sequence in which they move from device to device.
We can even suggest a device switch. Search for a business on your Mac and we can show a "take it with you" option, suggesting you use Handoff to send it to your smartphone. Branded content on the smartphone can offer "see it on the big screen - send it to your iPad." The proximity sensor in Continuity also means, for instance, if someone is looking at a property on their smartphone we can suggest "try it on your Mac for additional features," knowing that the device is nearby. The options are exciting.
All of the data points to a massive amount of switching between devices, but the pace of improvement in integrating across screens has been slow. A March 2014 report from eMarketer framed the challenges: "Significant progress has been made in developing reliable and privacy-compliant identifiers (IDs) to track mobile user behavior in apps and on mobile websites. Although many marketers hold out hope for a standard cookie-like identifier to emerge, the prospect seems less likely each time a new web-enabled device is announced (e.g. Google Glass and smart watches).”
At the same time, they underscored how important this integration is to marketers through this chart:
At the same time, they underscored how important this integration is to marketers through this chart:
Now, Cupertino will be flooded with amazing data that pinpoints much more about usage, switching, and what works on what devices than is currently available. This is going to significantly move the needle for Apple. We've already interviewed iPad/Mac/Android phone users who feel that Continuity might make them go with a fully-Apple product line. And on the subject of availability, remember - OSX "Yosemite" and iOS 8 can be downloaded for developers today, so there is no time to waste in talking to your agency or internal team about how to put these new capabilities to work for you in the coming months.
This article was written with my POSSIBLE colleague Sav Khetan.
Source:https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140603035858-4306216-apple-s-message-for-marketers-handoff-makes-omni-channel-a-reality
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