Since we launched the App for Buskerud Shopping Center (BSKS on app markets) a little more than 4 weeks ago we have now the hard fact figures and are able to see a trend.

Compared to the shopping centers’ home page, that has been up and running for ten years or so, we have reached 20% of the number of unique users and growing every week. That in itself is a very good figure considering the short periode of time we have been live compared to the well established homepage.

More striking is that measured in number of sessions per month the App allready outnumbered the homepage by nearly 30%. Which means that the average App user visits the App close to six times more often than the average web user. That is impressing and tells us the real potential behind a good App.

Furthermore we have experinced that the 90 shops present in the shopping center are using the control panel frequently so there is always fresh content and deals on the App. That is, together with the fact the App is mobile, the main reason for its’ stickyness.

To sum up; the App is used more frequently (by far) than the web as long it is usefull and fresh.

Our next business case is a destination App. More on that later.

You can visit our website www.3gsignage.com to find out more and download the shopping center app from Android Market or from App Store by searching for bsks.

It doesn’t matter if you speak about mobile web pages or mobile apps – that has been debated in numerous articles and blogs before – so far both platforms are growing at a tremendous speed side by side. Here in Scandinavia with an extremely high density of smartphones, (more than 70% of all phones purchased are smartphones) the mobile data traffic is exploding. Interesting is to see how businesses are approaching this new channel and perhaps more interesting how (and if) new business or marketing concepts will evolve from this mega trend.

Many sees the mobile web only as an extension of the traditional web. For a newspaper this might be the fact. But I think that will be the exception. Todays consumer market is very much about me as a person with personal tastes. The target for the retail business has become individuals or at least very defined groups of individuals were tradtional media have a problem to reach. Using the mobile platform wisely opens up for new opportunities as well as for established businesses as for new ventures. Why? Because the mobile phone is a very personal item.

For a retailer to succeed with its mobile strategy the message and the target audience has to be very well defined. Just to translate the web pages into mobile web pages or into an app is not a sustainable strategy. You will propably have an imediate news effect by releasing a mobile web site or an app but that is about it. Because of the personal aspect of a mobile device (read: smartphones) you will have to narrow down your target audience and then monitor their behaviour and act accordingly when they are visiting your mobile web site or app. This is all possible if you have the right tool.

Having developed a powerfull cms solution for mobile apps’ that not only makes it extremely easy to publish but that also retrieves multidimensional metrics from the app users. There is hardly any better way to learn more about your target audience if you don’t want to purchase an expensive consumer research report. With this powerfull tool you are up to speed with your audience and can react down to an individual (device) level. The smart business will take advantage of this and capture the hard to reach young consumer. This time business is personal.

Contact us today to learn more of how we can help you with your mobile strategy.

Yesterday I attended a seminar on the above mentioned subject. But like any seminar involving smartphone apps we had to be taken through the iPhone and iTunes incredible success story. We had heard it all before but still it is such an incredible success story and Apple has obviously done something very right not only proven by its incredible market cap but also in terms of changing old business structures into new and highly efficient business models. I am sure this will be food for many MBA students.

Yesterday there were about 350.000 apps available for iPhones. In a week or so it will be 10.000 more. The interesting bit behind these figures is that an increasing part of the new apps are business apps that help you and me to work more efficient. We were introduced to the speakers’ top five favorite business apps. All well and good. I probably have to blame myself when I expected something else as business apps were on the agenda. I would have expected how smartphone apps really can change how to run your business – just like Apple has done with the music industry. That is what 3Gsignage has been doing. We are making cost efficient tools for businesses to improve their performance.

In a first edition, we have created a business application for retail chains and other organisations that spend considerable time and labour monitoring their business locations with time-consuming operating systems routine checks. Where so far this has very often been a paper-based process with data being manually entered into Excel-spreadsheets, the business application would be used to measure the performance and record the status of store equipment installations.

With this business application, ‘quality assurance’ personnel can track visits and status changes practically in real-time, and make comparisons much more easily than from data compiled from piles of Excel-sheets. The application also sends an alert if any repair dates on pieces of equipment are behind schedule.

This application serves as a blueprint for a series of quality control themed applications to be developed and made available to all organizations needing to rationalize their internal processes.

Contact us for more information of how we can help you to improve your business

I have to admit that when I saw the latest LG digital signage campaign and how they have made it simple I got a bit jealous. They very simply got across the message that with their Super Sign Premier S everyone can harness the benefit from Digital Signage. The only hiccup I got was when I saw the price; starting at $ 149 a month for a minimum lock up period of 36 months. And that is most probably for a 32 inch screen. Is that Digital Signage for everyone?

With $ 149 a month you pay $ 5364 for a 3 years contract. Well, I think that is quite steep. I don’t know what interest rate LG is using but if I compare it with our complete digital signage solution it has to be well above 10%.

Together with Axiomtek we are offering complete digital solutions because we believe it is easier for our customers, just as LG so correctly say in their campaign. But we also believe that when the customer buys everything from one vendor he should benefit from a better price. Doesn’t that make sense.?. So to answer the innitial question why we made digital signage complete; it was to make it easy and cost efficient for our customers.

Contact us to get a quote for our complete digital signage solution.

I just read a report from Morgan Stanley showing that the internet consumes 28% of the media time but only get 13% of the advertising budget and that print for example consumes 12% of the media time but is rewarded with 28% of the advertising spending. Why is that?

OK it has improved over the last couple of years but there is still a mismatch between media reach and media spending. In the same report you can also read that the mobile internet is going to surpass the traditional internet by 2012, which means that if advertising budgets continues to be conservatively spent the mismatch between media consumption time and advertising spending will increase. The same report however indicates that decision makers are increasingly shifting focus towards internet as a marketing channel.  That is good news. The question is, which channel will they go for?

Will they go for the more established traditional internet – or for the mobile platform?. Probably both. There are too many factors that simply cannot be ignored when it comes to mobile internet: The growth alone is so significant that it has to be taken into a marketers advertising account. The demographic of the typical smartphone user should be most advertisers’ prime target. Then there is the question which platform will be the chosen one?. Mobile web or Smartphone applications?

Again probably both but for different reasons. When smartphone apps like iPhone and Android apps have a clear advantage when it comes to user experience and media consumption time they will be the preferred choice for retailers and other customer facing businesses, the mobile web is probably the better choice for distribution of online news. We at 3Gsignage strongly believe that smartphone applications should be a part of every business marketing strategy.
With iBrand™ we have made a complete smartphone solution that consists of a ready to run smartphone application, a management system that runs it and managed services at an all inclusive fixed low price.

If you are a business or a media agency that wants to try our complete solution contact us today.!

Last week 3Gsignage and its partner Axiomtek participated at the NACS show in Atlanta with great success. The message that we tried to convey was the “push and pull” formula.

By using dynamic smartphone applications to pull the target audience into the stores and digital signage to push the message to the customers you achieve astonishing sells lifts. That is the proven immediate effect. But with iBrand – our smart phone application – there is more. A sustainable long term effect:

Every retailers dream is to gather knowledge about their customers and react on their behavior. Even better if you can get individual knowledge and target the message to that individual. That has a double effect; The customer only gets the information he needs . No spam. And the retailer can communicate with the customer on a more personal level. That is modern brand building with a sustainable long term effect. Is that possible?

With iBrand™ 3Gsignage is offering a Smart Phone Application platform that allows businesses and other organizations to promote products, services, events etc…on the most personal platform there is today. The solution is unique in the market, as the application is ‘dynamic’ as opposed to ‘static’. In other words, its Content Management System that allows the user to adapt the promotions online according to how the app is being used. It also delivers advanced analytics down to single consumer level. iBrand covers the fastest growing part of the Smart Phone market as it supports both Apple’s iPhones and selected Android smart phones. As an all-inclusive formula, iBrand is set to become today’s most cost-efficient dynamic tool to retain and acquire new valuable customers.

Contact us today and we will provide you with a free demo license for iBrand and 3Gsignage Digital Signage cms.

How do we define an All in One Digital Signage Solution? What should it include. For me the answer is simple; Everything. It should include all the Hardware and Software you need and all the support and maintenance it requires and that made available from one supplier. It gets even better if the hardware comes as one integrated unit with an embedded SaaS software. That makes it a real plug and play all in one Digital Signage Solution. So what advanteges does a total integrated solution bring our customers?

Obviously there are fewer components, less cables and no management software to be installed. More importantly, but perhaps not that obvious for a customer, is the fact that the software has been tested and approved for the Hardware. Yes I know very many Software vendors claim that their Software runs on any type of hardware. That cannot simply be the truth. There is too much Hardware out there and the pace of technical progress is too fast to make such a claim.

When we together with our Hardware partner Axiomtek started to take a closer look at what our respective customers were looking for when deciding on Digital Signage solution (vendors) we found the following merging points:

• They are typically first time buyers of Digital Signage and wish to relate only to one supplier to keep things simple.
• The hardware must be easy to deploy and the software must be very intuitive to use.
• Our customers got satisfied as everything went quickly and smoothly. It was important for our customer to have only one service phone number to relate to if anything should go wrong.
• Some of our customer had demanding environmental conditions where reliability was an issue.
• All of our customers did not want to build any IT infrastructure like servers etc. Software as a service was a requirement.

All the findings above actually make sense when we know how fragmented the Digitial Signage Market is. At the end of the day you pick your vendor based on trust.We believe trust comes from thorough quality testing and a one stop service that is there for our customers also the day after tomorrow.  If you want to know more about what we have to offer visit our websites at 3Gsignage.com or Axiomtek.com

When we attend this years’ NACS show in Atlanta with our partner Axiomtek it is to reveal a double impact marketing tool for convenience stores and the petroleum retailing industry. Together we have made an all in one SaaS digital signage solution that  is simple, affordable and professional. The other half of this double impact formula is iBrand™; a Content Management System for iPhone and Android apps that is allready driving business for our Scandinavian clients.

In Scandinavia we experienced tremendous results both in the number of downloaded applications and in real sales lifts.In one area with about 80.000 iPhone users we had 30.000 unique users within 3 months. Thanks to the redeem coupon functionality we could measure day by day how many actually were pulled into the stores and took advantage of the coupons. On a weekly basis we saw that an average of 11.000 was pulled into the stores thanks to the smart phone app.

With our experience from Scandinavia we have taken iBrand™ a few steps further. We now support Android phones, we have made the smart phone app dynamic, which means that you can react on customer behavior and change content accordingly. We have build in analytics and tags so you can customize your reports and since it is dynamic you can react within minutes. The best thing is perhaps that we have made iBrand extremely easy to use and affordable for every business.

Put iBrand™ together with our SaaS Digital Signage Content Management System and you have a double impact formula. We call it the push and pull formula. With iBrand™ you pull the customers into your venues and with the SaaS digital signage you push sales. The formula is proven and it is tangible. If you want to know more about what we achieved in Scandinavia and how this can influence your sales then visit us at NACS in Atlanta or contact us directly.

Our digital signage and mobile application solutions have started packing. Georgia, here we come!
Six months ago when we and our hardware partners, Axiomtek US, were considering exhibiting at the NACS show this coming October 5th-8th in Atlanta our chief objective was to increase awareness of our now fully integrated SaaS digital signage solution and, of course, to collect qualified leads within the convenience & petroleum retailing industry in the United States. Our respective product features analysis, had quite naturally elected convenience stores as perfect candidates for the implementation of our easy-to-use, affordable and integrated digital signage solution.

Surprisingly however, the list of previous exhibitors showed few digital signage vendors. That observation raised the obvious question of whether we would be taking the costly risk of being like a fish out of water or whether it was the perfect opportunity to inform the C-store operators about the benefits of our solution without being eclipsed by the digital signage veterans’ flamboyant stand displays.

With over 1,130 exhibitors, the size of the NACS trade show is quite daunting but further research into this $625 billion industry comforted us in the belief that it is the right time for C-store operators to find out how our digital signage and smart phone application can make a significant difference to their bottom line.

Looking into our fellow exhibitors in the technology section at NACS, it’s noticeable that better understanding is spreading about the links between business performance and optimized value for customers through enhanced and innovative customer experience. So, whilst we had originally planned to restrict our stand’s focus on our bundled digital signage solution we are now confident that the launch of our branded customer loyalty application for smart phones at NACS will be a hit.If you can’t make it to Atlanta, and want a sneak preview contact us today.

3Gsignage has harnessed the 20 years′ experience of a team of IT engineers and marketing experts to create a Third Generation Digital Signage Solution: one that leverages other technologies such as mobile targeting for a holistic, inter-active and successful approach to modern retailing. Throughout our whole R&D process we’ve kept one thing in mind: developing a smart yet genuinely simple solution. 3Gsignage’s software-as-a-service not only delivers ease-of-use, flexibility and effectiveness, but it also offers new and unique features to help you achieve higher audience reach and a much improved ROI throughout the whole value chain.

To further improve audience reach and lift sales dramatically, we’ve introduced iBrand, a customer loyalty scheme application for iPhone. Together, these two solutions are the perfect integration of mobile targeting and signage.

3Gsignage is the result of years of practice and study of the industry′s shortcomings and we are proud to be able to offer you solutions that we believe are truly impacting your bottom line. Implementing your high tech retail marketing projects no longer requires the involvement of expensive IT & media experts.

Forget the usual 7 steps to implementing a digital signage network. How about just 3 steps to being in full control? No other system on the market will give you such freedom. 3Gsignage’s platform does. Contact us today to try it for yourself.