10 Hugely Important Digital, Mobile, and E-Commerce Observations from the Past Week: E-commerce Link Digest

There are way too many good things to share with you all this week, Big Thinkers. I’d recommend you don’t spend your time reading this clever intro and skip straight to reading these 10 hugely important digital, mobile, and e-commerce observations from the past week instead. Enjoy:

1. eMarketer reports that the “buy online, pick up in-store” model proves financially beneficial for retailers. This represents a massive opportunity for businesses of all sizes to compete with the Amazon’s of the world and is particularly interesting when you consider that Google just opened its first ever Google Shop in London. Given how much Google uses data to drive its decisions, this move should tell you something significant about how Google sees customers interacting with brands online and offline.
2. Search Engine Land uncovers how Google intends its soon-to-launch “mobile-friendly ranking factor” will work, noting it runs in real-time & on a page-by-page basis. That represents a mixed blessing for many businesses. The good news is you can focus your mobile optimization only on those pages that get lots of mobile traffic already. The bad news, of course, is that you’ve still got to do the work or risk getting marked as “mobile unfriendly.” Happily, Search Engine Land also recommends these 3 actions to ready for Google’s mobile search update. Looks like a solid list overall.
3. In other Google news (no, not that kind of “Google News”) Business Insider explains why Google is acquiring InMobi, India’s largest mobile ad provider. The move gives Google a huge foothold in the Indian market, and possibly, the world at large.
4. It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Google as Search Engine Land predicts Apple will not renew Google as Safari’s default search engine. Given that Google receives about $1 billion a year from Apple—and considering all the growth in mobile search—this represents a pretty big chink in Google’s armor going forward and will likely lead to more aggressive moves by the search giant to protect its premier position in the marketplace. I’ll be curious to see if Apple bypasses Bing too and instead makes Yelp or Priceline their primary search engine (I’ll explain why they might in more detail in this week’s Travel Tuesday post). Stay tuned for more here.
5. Shifting gears to another of the big AGFAM players (that’s Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft), Mobile Commerce Daily talks about Marriott International “checking-in Apple Pay for extended stay.” Clever headlines aside, it’s really about Marriott’s shift towards accepting digital wallets to help its customers. A recent Quartz report says the time has come where mobile payments will either be the next big thing or a huge flop. Impressive commitment there, Quartz editors. I’ve already stated that digital wallets will be pretty big, though recent events have me questioning whether some merchants might bypass the technology altogether such as Uber does with its payment process. Still, this remains a key trend worth watching.
6. Marketing Charts provides projections on US Instagram users, by age group for 2013-2019. Given Instagram’s importance to Facebook, it remains a social channel to keep an eye on.
7. GetElastic offers up a great infographic highlighting the benefits and limitations of customer acquisition vs retention. Always a worthwhile topic to consider for your business.
8. Marketing Charts offers a great list of which digital channels marketers are best able to measure for ROI. It’s worth looking at how your business measures up.
9. Lots of great stuff this past week about how to achieve digital transformation within your organization. For starters, the latest episode of Thinks Out Loud, or weekly e-commerce and digital marketing podcast, focused on putting digital to work. I also uncovered 4 keys to executing on digital that every business can use. eMarketer added another great insight, noting that when it comes to fighting e-commerce fraud, finger-crossing isn’t enough. Too true. And another recent podcast episode declared that if you want to own the customer, own the data. Great stuff all around.
10. Finally, there’s never a bad time to review these 10 Can’t Miss Mobile Commerce and Marketing Columns: The Top Posts from February 2015. You’ll be glad you did.

There you have it, Big Thinkers; 10 hugely important digital, mobile, and e-commerce observations from the past week. I’ll drill down on a few of these in more detail over the next week, so be sure to check back every day for more e-commerce, mobile, and digital marketing goodness.

Want even more? Then don’t miss these 6 quick e-commerce and digital marketing winners, these “8 Must-Read Posts Connecting Content, Search and Mobile Commerce”, this past link digest called “Freezing? 8 Fabulous Marketing and E-commerce Posts to Warm You Up,” and the rest of our E-commerce Link Digest series.

And if you’re looking to learn still more about how your customers’ changing behavior shapes e-commerce and marketing, be sure an register to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it’s targeted specifically at hotel and resort marketers, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.

You can also check out these slides I had the pleasure of speaking to a great audience yesterday about how to lead digital transformation within large organizations (a topic we’ve been talking about a fair bit lately). Here are the slides for your reference:

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And, finally, you might want to take a look at some of our past coverage of the e-commerce, mobile commerce, and digital marketing overall, including:

• 10 Key Posts about Millennials and Mobile: E-commerce Link Digest
• The Secrets Behind “It’s All E-commerce” for 2014
• The Zen of Digital Marketing Strategy
• 7 Steps to E-Commerce Heaven
• Today and Tomorrow: Mobile and The Changing Customer Journey
• Mobile Makes E-commerce Even More “Frictionless”
• Your 2014 Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions – Thinks Out Loud Episode 56