Mobile content development strategy for tablets.

Forrester Research predicts that tablet sales this year will start to outpace notebooks. While it is clear that marketers cannot ignore the tablet as a channel, the mobile device landscape has become increasingly complex and confusing for brands and consumers alike. 

How do you incorporate the tablet as part of your mobile content development strategy? 

Doug Heise and Sascha Langfus list some of the best practices for building an optimized, engaging Web presence on the tablet here.

AaramShop has adopted the Web App approach which helps it deliver the best of both worlds, allowing highly interactive mobile apps for the tablet that is optimized from a usability and functionality perspective, but that can also be deployed to a wide range of platforms and devices. However, what really caught my attention was the need to distinguish between the mobile phone app and the tablet app. Clearly a lot of additional work to be done here.

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Six Social Media Trends for 2012

From the guy who gets his trends right - most of the times, here are 6 Social Media Trends for the year ahead:

1. Convergence Emergence. 
2. The Cult of Influence.  
3. Gamification Nation. 
4. Social Sharing.  
5. Social Television. 
6. The Micro Economy.

To understand the trends in detail read this post by David Armano on HBR

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A Framework for Keeping CPG's Relevant Online

Came across this comprehensive and insightful essay by Jordan Julien. He has arrived at the insights based on examining internal documentation, and conducting ethnographic studies, from four different global CPG's and finding correlations. 

 

The synthesis of this work has culminated into "The Ecosystem of Understanding", a framework for keeping CPG's (and everyone else) relevant online.

Jordan been able to extract 5 insights common (as under) to every CPG he has worked with; even the most innovative.

1. We don't know who we're talking to, but we like to pretend like we do.
2. We don't know why we're talking to them, but we know we should be.
3. We suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome.
4. We're inconsistent, but we're learning.
5. We're old, scared, and angry; but its only a matter of time before we're phased out.

Read more here

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Red Herring Global 100 Award for AaramShop

AaramShop has won the coveted Red Herring Global 100 Award for the year 2011, at the Red Herring Forum in LA. 

This was a significant step further to the earlier Red Herring announcement of its Top 100 Asia award in recognition of the leading private companies from Asia, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

AaramShop had made it to the coveted list of Top 100 in Asia earlier.

We are thrilled to have received the award this early in our journey. AaramShop is the youngest company to have received the award this year. 

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FDI & the independent retailers.

Every news paper and show is saturated with the recently approved FDI in retail and its impact on the livelihood of millions of small businesses in India. I am sure everyone has an opinion on it. However, what caught my eye was the recent tweet by US President on his support for the small businesses in the US via the fantastic initiative #smallbusinesssaturday. I am sure this will add more fuel to the fire.

Our views & work at AaramShop is clearly focused at making the small business owner / independent neighborhood retailer competitive and relevant to the changing shopper behavior of the residents of the neighborhood. 

We firmly believe that the independent retailers have a number of unmatchable strengths which emerge from his proximity to the customers, willingness to provide delivery at the consumer's doorstep and years of relationship that have developed into a strong bond of trust. These, combined with increased accessibility of the storefront on the web, and the huge change in the way consumers use technology will make the local retailer more relevant to the consumer. 

AaramShop is already being used by over 600 retailers across 18 cities in India in the short 4 months of AaramShop's presence. 

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