Julie Ask

The world is changing and with it, consumers’ expectations of experiences and communication from brands. The paradigm for customer engagement is shifting from large, monolithic experiences that serve everyone to smaller, more contextual experiences served to consumers in just the moment they need them. Marketers must adopt the right strategy, operational best practices and technology […]

No. But they will increasingly fall short of consumers’ expectations for curated content, especially among brands that they know. And channels seldom if ever disappear; we still get mail from MetLife each month advertising insurance. We’ve been talking about the diminished role of the browser-based experience for years now. We talk about this in our […]

Last year Forrester predicted that mobile would become the face of digital, with consumer app fatigue forcing digital business professionals to pursue a portfolio of mobile experiences. Since the beginning of 2017, 29% of firms Forrester surveyed have experimented with skills on Amazon Alexa and other voice-enabled assistants and 51% have started using, piloted or […]

Google has dabbled in hardware on and off for years. Yesterday’s announcements – new smartphones, headphones, wireless speakers and more – signal a strong commitment to being a key player in consumers’ ecosystems and lives today and looking forward. This is the second straight year that Google rolled out updated products just ahead of the […]

Apple celebrated the 10th anniversary of the iPhone with both updates to its existing product lineup and the opening of the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, CA on its new campus with the much-anticipated doughnut or spaceship building. Apple generates its revenue from selling hardware or products with most of the revenue from iPhones. Convincing […]

Apple announced its Q1 FY2017 earnings yesterday. They sold a lot of iPhone 7’s and beat sales estimates. More interesting to me though was the news on Apple Pay … the number of Apple Pay users tripled in the past year, with hundreds of millions of transactions and billions of dollars in purchases in the […]

We put together our thoughts in a new 2017 Mobile Predictions report on what to expect in the mobile space next year across industries and roles. In 2016 mobile evolved from a stand-alone channel to a baseline for all branded digital experiences. In 2017, mobile will continue to elevate customer expectations as it transforms even non-digital […]

This blog post is co-authored by VP and Principal Analyst Michael Facemire and Analyst Andrew Hogan at Forrester. Google held an event in San Francisco this week to announce several new consumer products – a smartphone, a wireless speaker, Wi-Fi routers, a virtual reality headset and an updated Chromecast solution. All showcased an emerging strategic […]

Each year Forrester fields an Executive Survey to understand and benchmark enterprise mobile initiatives. This year, we are updating the survey to help business executives not only to benchmark and mature their approach to mobile but also to help them integrate mobile into their digital initiatives more  holistically. (A marketer’s version of this survey will […]

This post is co-authored by Jennifer Wise, senior analyst at Forrester Mobile search is essential. In fact, according to Forrester’s Mobile Audience Data, Q4 2015, 87% of US smartphone owners rely on browser-based search on mobile devices. And the data reveals that Google’s search engine is the most common path to a mobile site even […]

My colleague and coauthor Ted Schadler and I are watching with dismay as company after company shrinks its desktop website down to a small screen using responsive web design (RWD) techniques so it fits on – but isn’t optimized for – smartphones. Companies have delightedly embraced responsive web design as the one-size-fits-all solution to mobile, tablet, […]

Google took a few big steps forward at Google I/O 2016 to fill in its portfolio to win, serve and retain customers in their mobile moments. Three new product announcements should propel Google forward. They include: Google Home. Google Home looks like an incredibly promising (and necessary) entry into the home virtual assistant or agent […]

Smart watches are not a must-have device – yet. The novelty of the device – combined with early adopters eager to have the next great thing – has carried smart watches from an obscure idea to a well-known device, but neither critical mass nor mass market adoption. So what’s missing? Smart watches or similar wearables […]

Facebook held its annual developer conference in San Francisco this week. Analysts at Forrester collectively fielded a lot of questions from the media, but most of them focused on bots and the Messenger platform. Here are my top takeaways from the event: It’s still early days for developer tools: Facebook approached F8 with a humble, […]

Everyone is buzzing this week about bots with Facebook/Messenger’s anticipated launch of bots on its messenger platform. What is a bot you ask? A bot is a chat-based interface that helps consumers complete tasks — ordering take-out food, chatting with their doctors, or checking the score of a big sports game. Many believe that this […]

Yahoo’s board met yesterday amidst disappointing financial results that have failed to live up to the expectations of its investors. Prevailing rumors suggest that the board under pressure from investors will vote to break apart the business and sell the pieces. While it is true that the majority of Yahoo’s revenue comes from online advertising, […]

2016 will be the most consequential year for companies on the path to customer obsession, and that includes adapting to empowered customers who expect to get anything they want immediately, in context on their mobile devices.  Today that represents nearly 50% of consumers in the US alone. The consumers pick up their mobile devices 150 to 200 […]

Few consumers categories have seen the explosive adoption that wearables have – especially fitness wearables.The category has gone from zero to tens of millions in sales in less than five years. Without smartphones, however, the wearables market is likely nothing more than a fad for devoted athletes and passionate (or overzealous) weekend warriors. Smartphones have […]

Your customers are inundated with messages every day from friends or family, work colleagues, and marketers among others. Notifications from their banks, news organizations and fitness bands also land on their mobile phones. Let me show you the home screen of my iPhone. A summary of my communication (or lack thereof) shows: 24,998 unread personal […]