Those were some of the highlights of a conference call that followed a press release in which Google reported earnings that were slightly better than what analysts had predicted.

Analysts on the call pressed Google to provide details about an ongoing decline in the amount of money it collects when someone clicks on its ads, and whether this drop relates to the fact that a growing number of people are searching on mobile devices rather than on computers.

Google executives said the falling click prices, which dropped 1 percent from last quarter and 16 percent from a year ago, could be explained in part by foreign exchange rates. In particular, the company pointed to a swoon in Europe’s currencies, which translated to lower US dollar revenue for Google.

The company would not disclose, however, the percentage difference between what it charges for a traditional computer ad versus ads on a smartphone or a tablet. Executives would only say that Google has more than 1 million advertisers purchasing mobile ads (in some cases as a bundle). (Correction: The 1 million figure refers to the total number of AdWords customers overall — meaning that there are 1 million potential advertisers; Google has not disclosed how many advertisers are actually using its mobile services.)

In response to a question about whether the mobile searches were “incremental or cannibalistic,” VP Susan Wojcicki said the searches were largely incremental since many took place on the weekends and other times when people are on the move. She downplayed the role of tablets displacing computers, saying that both phones and tablets are “on the go” products.

In response to a question about the state of CEO Larry Page’s health, an executive said “Larry has lost his voice and can’t do any public speaking .. but he continues to run the company.” Page has missed several Google events in recent weeks, after the company disclosed that he has been unable to speak.

The company also discussed its evolving YouTube business. See: Thousands of YouTube partners now make six figures a year

Other highlights from the call include:

• In response to a question about Google’s fanciful, high-profile projects like driverless cars and Google Glass, an executive said such moonshots were not consuming any more capital or management focus than usual
• While the previous quarter marked its full official integration of Motorola Mobility, Google said it was too soon to report on its specific plans for the phone maker
• Google is maintaining its large cash reserve, in part to “pounce” on potential acquisitions and to ensure it can stay competitive for talent
• 1 million people are activating Android devices every day and there are 400 million in use around the world
• The company is working to bring more music and other content onto its Nexus 7 tablet and into the Google Play store
• The company now has 250 million accounts for Google+ which it describes as the “social spine for all our products”

Image by Yuri Arcurs via Shutterstock

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In my role at EPiServer, a provider of social and e-commerce platforms, I’ve worked with customers and partners as they’ve begun to go mobile. From this experience, I’ve found that analyzing your users is just as important as understanding the technology. Before you begin implementing a mobile strategy, here are a few things you need to consider:

1.  Understand the visitor’s journey

Knowing when and why a person would visit your company’s site on a mobile device is crucial to ensuring that you’re providing the information they would find most relevant. Are they using your site for research? Are they using it for an impulse buy? Or are they using your mobile site for social connections? With Google Analytics, you can research patterns that validate assumptions about the user journey.

For example, a greeting card company that I worked with assumed that its users preferred to design cards on their computers, and that they were unlikely to use the relatively small screen on their smartphones for this. Surprisingly, analytics showed that mobile visitors were in fact using smartphones to customize and send cards while they were “in the moment.” Through an optimized version of its mobile Web app, the company’s mobile visitors now comprises 10 to 15 percent of its e-commerce transactions.

2. Check assumptions

I cannot overstress the importance of conducting primary research. Many marketers want to cut corners when it comes to learning about their customers’ behavior, but that can lead to a very poor customer experience. You need firsthand information from your visitors. Whether you set up interviews or collect analytics through A/B testing on a design prototype, validating consumer behavior can make all the difference in conversion rates for mobile apps.

A hotel chain I worked with recently conducted a series of A/B testing that has proven incredibly successful. Testing indicated that users were more likely to convert and book a room on a mobile device, and they were less interested in researching options. While other hotel websites try to fit the choices and variety of a Web experience into a mobile footprint, this hotel chain’s simple mobile site appeals more to travelers making reservations on the go. By basing its mobile design on research, the company has increased its reservations.

3. Understand what kind of experience your users are looking for

If your research indicates that you need to offer anything more sophisticated than a simple mobile Web page, it may be necessary to understand the benefits of a mobile app. But your decision making does not stop there. You need to decide whether or not your user experience requires a mobile Web app, or a more sophisticated native app. Depending on how complex the user interaction is, or whether you need to store information on the local device, work offline or use sophisticated phone features, you may need a native app. For example, access to GPS information used to require a native app, but now it is accessible from a mobile Web app or mobile Web page. Over time, other functions will shift this way, such as using the camera to read a bar code or recognize a friend.

Both mobile Web apps and native apps have their pros and cons. Unlike native apps, Web-based apps are faster and easier to develop. And since they use the same technology as desktop websites, they are easier to manage and have analytics built in automatically. Although they don’t provide the flexibility and sophistication that native apps have, they are platform agnostic, easier to maintain and extend, and are less expensive to develop and operate. That said, native apps traditionally perform better (though experts say this won’t be the case for long).

4. Understand the analytics behind your apps

With a mobile Web app, you can use Google Analytics just as you would for your regular site. But with a native app, you need to build in analytics. If you don’t do that at the beginning, it can be costly to add later. There are two ways you can collect analytics from a native app. The first involves building a custom process of collecting information from the app, but unfortunately that leaves analysis separate and siloed from the rest of your analytics. The second, and ideal way, is to send tagged information from the native app to Google Analytics and then analyze user behavior side by side with information from your desktop site.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses are using mobile apps with absolutely no analytics, leaving marketers in the dark. Understanding how your app is used is crucial to increasing conversion rates. A media company I’m familiar with realized after the fact that an increasing amount of their traffic was coming from tablets — a medium that required a different format for its newspaper and magazine articles. With this knowledge, marketers went back to work and ensured the company was meeting the needs of its most common visitors.

If you’re just starting to think about going mobile, this may be a lot to take in. Here are three key points to keep in mind: First, make sure your users can cross channels freely. If they use a login on a desktop, allow them to use the same login on your mobile site. Second, socialize your app and make sure your users are able to share content with their friends. Finally, remember that personalization makes a difference in conversion rates.

Engaging your visitors in the mobile channel is now table stakes, but a mobile strategy can fall flat if the proper planning is not done ahead of time. Using analytics and research to understand your customers and visitors before you begin developing the technology — and as you continue to maintain it — is essential to a successful mobile strategy.

Bob Egner is the vice president of product management and global marketing at EPiServer, a provider of multichannel digital marketing and e-commerce software. Egner regularly interacts with customers who are working to improve the results of their online and mobile presence and customer engagement.

Image courtesy of Flickr user SigNote Cloud.

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It looks like Facebook wants to address the big weaknesses in its mobile business model before it has to deal with nagging questions from its investors. According to FT, Facebook is set to include sponsored posts in the news feeds of its phone and tablet apps as well as it mobile Website. It’s planning a launch in March ahead of its $5 billion IPO.

The news should come as little surprise considering Facebook stated in its Securities and Exchange Commission S-1 filing that it was weighing inserting sponsored ads into its mobile news feeds, rather than clutter up the limited real estate of a mobile device with display advertising. As I wrote shortly after the filing last week, the S-1 exposed a gaping hole in Facebook’s advertising-driven business model as its customers increasingly shift their usage from the social network’s desktop Website to their mobile phones.

What’s more, Facebook’s mobile problem would accelerate if it failed to monetize that traffic before expanding its scope globally. As it gains traction in developing markets, many consumers don’t have PCs and will view Facebook solely as a mobile-only platform, meaning they would never see an ad if Facebook continues with its current model. In short, Facebook’s biggest future growth depends on a platform it hasn’t made a dime from.

Such a revelation must be chilling to potential investors, which explains why Facebook may be ramping up its mobile advertising strategy quickly. According to FT, Facebook will use the “featured story” format – where sponsors pay to highlight positive posts or endorsements — it launched through the main site in December. Though different from advertising, the sponsored stories keep members within the Facebook app itself, rather than direct them off-site to an advertiser’s Web page. Mobile display ads can be tricky because they create any number of rendering problems among the myriad of different phone browsers on the market and could drive up consumers’ data plan fees – neither are good bases for a marketing relationship.

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