Mobility trend in Hospitality

A recent TripAdvisor survey found that over 40% of travelers use their smart phones to plan a trip and over 46% use their smart phones to enhance their trip while traveling.

No longer is it just an idea or an aspiration for the hospitality industry to use innovative methods to engage with their guests, for example Marriott Hotels, just this year, announced the addition of mobile checkout to its industry-leading Marriott Mobile app for smartphones. Clearly mobile check-out is just the latest innovation from the brand as a new service designed for today’s connected travelers. Read More »

Tags: ad, advertising, App, application, business, business insider, Cisco, clothing, cmx, connected mobile experiences, consumer, content, context, coupon, customer, customize, data, device, evolution, grocery store, habit, hospitality, hotel, IDC, Industry, landscape, location, location services, location-based, macro, market, mobile, navigation, offer, personalize, phone, Real Time, realtime, retail, rtls, services, show-room, show-rooming, showroom, showrooming, smartphone, store, technology, travel, venue, wayfind, wi-fi, wifi

This is part of a series of how location services is a core part of the mobile evolution in various industries. In a previous post I looked at the growth of mobile  location, data and context based advertising, and there is no doubt from the evidence that this market space is already big, and predicted to grow exponentially over the next 4 or 5 years.

While this is very interesting at a macro level, for most of us what does that really mean, what can it be used for, how can we get some value or benefits from it….

Let’s look at this from the point of view of various industries, both looking at the uses of the consumer and of the business in a practical manner.

Today we look at the Retail Industry, and ask a few questions to understand the landscape.

• How are consumers habits changing
• What are retailers doing about this
• What can we expect to see in the coming year(s)?

How are consumer habits changing?

We already know that today over two-thirds of all U.S. consumers have a smartphone (expected to be >90% in about 3 years) and the capabilities that this brings is changing the face of retail business as we know it. Specifically looking at mobile retail and advertising the patterns are undeniable, we as mobile retail consumers are doing things differently and happy to engage and be engaged in new ways.

◦    Remember the coupon cutting days…well mobile coupons are starting to become the norm…recent research among mobile users shows significant numbers redeemed mobile coupons… 41% at grocery stores, 41% at department stores, and 39% @ clothing stores (source: Business Insider 2014) Read More »

Tags: ad, advertising, App, application, business, business insider, Cisco, clothing, cmx, connected mobile experiences, consumer, content, context, coupon, customer, customize, data, device, evolution, grocery store, habit, IDC, Industry, landscape, location, location services, location-based, macro, market, mobile, navigation, offer, personalize, phone, Real Time, realtime, retail, rtls, services, show-room, show-rooming, showroom, showrooming, smartphone, store, technology, venue, wayfind, wi-fi, wifi, wireless

Did you notice the recent change to the menus on Cisco.com?  We call them “megamenus” — those convenient lists that fly down when you mouse over the masthead bar on any page on Cisco.com. We recently updated the “Products & Services” megamenu on the site to make it more readable and simplify navigation.

Here’s the new improved Products megamenu:

For comparison, the here’s previous version:

What We Did

Do you notice what’s changed?

• We reduced the length of the list of product categories so that it’s more readable.
• We updated the layout so there’s less back-and-forth scanning.
• We made Solutions and Services a bit more visible.
• We put Cisco Validated Designs in a more obvious place.
• We reordered some other things here and there to help us understand traffic patterns.

We think this is a nice simplification for our site-wide mega menus. And, of course, you can still find the full list of all products via the “All Products” list.

Enjoy!

(And, as always, if you have feedback, please send us a note here or at the [+]Feedback link that’s at the bottom of every page.)

Tags: digital experience, navigation, products, usability

This past weekend, we made a subtle change to the product navigation in the “mega menus” available from the top of the pages on Cisco.com.

Notice the change? Feedback welcome!

Tags: navigation, webexperience