News

La Trobe University lifts off as smartphone ownership sets to rocket

jul. 4 2011

Nearly half of all Australians now own a smartphone, with that figure expected to rise to 60% in the next 12 months according to Nielson.

How does that place your website or online activities in this emerging mobile market? How will people interact with your corporate website, ecommerce store or other digital executions such as email marketing or events information? The answer is… differently. And more often.

The smartphone is not just a Gen Y fad either, nearly a quarter of over 50s (23%) have one, and 39% are over 40. More than one in six (61%) said they access the mobile internet on their phone daily, up from 53% in 2010 (Source: B&T and Nielsen Survey, July 2011).

August has been working with our friends at La Trobe University since 2008. As part of some forward planning with La Trobe late in 2010, we took this impending mobile trend into account and proposed an extension of their 2011 Open Day activities to mobile devices for their prospective students, with the aim of helping them get the most out of their Open Day experience at La Trobe. The project included design and development of a mobile friendly website platform as well as iPhone and Android mini-apps.

The result was to help people stay on top of all the events and information sessions at La Trobe University’s Melbourne campus Open Day on Sunday 7 August 2011. Interfacing seamlessly with La Trobe's existing event and website platforms, the mobile version lists session times and locations (via an interactive map), enables users to search and filter sessions by faculty and lets visitors provide real-time feedback on the events attended. This latter feature enables a more transparent evaluation of the Open Day activities by La Trobe’s Marketing Department. Of course there are also the usual suspects of social sharing integrated to enable users to engage further with La Trobe on their social sites.

If you want to discuss ways to ensure your digital activities are making the most of this move to mobile by your users, contact us to discuss your requirements on +61 3 9445 0326 or via email here (and yes our website is mobile friendly of course!)…