Last week I attended the Mobile Research Conference in London.

Here’s what I learned (This list does not claim to be exhaustive):

• Mobile Internet is a good way to reach emerging countries as these people don’t have computers but handsets
• Airtime for prepaid contracts is a nice and adjustable incentive model for mobile surveys
• Mobile surveys can deliver fast results and are suitable for TV/Radio/Print campaign tracking if you need a rapid response
• Mobile surveys have to be short, fun and need a “show-off-factor” to impress other people at the bus stop. People will love it then.
• Android is the state of the art OS, but there are still many iphones around as they had a headstart in most markets
• Average incidence of smartphone owners in Europe: 30%
• Owners of smartphones in France are: 65% male, 18% students
• Qualitative studies with videos and photos work great and give real insights
• Successful mobile sites are: facebook, google, youtube, mobile operator sites (providing apps) and news sites
• Facebook and mobile have a strong correlation and Globalpark offers extensions to use and combine both (I should get money for this ;))
• Mature markets prefer browser sites instead of apps
• Mobile advertising with coupons works good
• Give information/results back to the participant, when you conduct mobile surveys (remember: they like to show off with that stuff)
• Single choice answers work best, textfields are a problem, voice recording could be an alternative
• Don’t ask more than 10 questions
• Push back your clients if they want to do a 15 minute survey with several matrix questions: It won’t work and you will annoy your mobile panel members
• Don’t use cookies on mobile phones, it won’t work in the most cases
• Geo location is nice, but don’t force your participants to provide that data, do it optional

I think, that’s enough for now. We’re conducting a mobile study with email/sms invitations right now. Maybe we’re able to report some own experiences  soon.