Today, with exploding penetration of smartphones and tablets, companies are adopting mobile-first approach of interacting with their consumers and employees. With a considerable amount of web traffic coming from mobile devices, companies cannot ignore the Mobile Web data. The purchase of smartphones and tablets has outperformed the purchase of laptops and desktops. And as these mobile initiatives are being rolled out at increasingly rapid rates, the quality and reliability of mobile web, mobile apps and linked services that support them has become critically important.
Mobile web data is one of the biggest contributors to the Big Data World. According to reports, by the end of 2015, mobile data, specifically data generated by smart devices, would have contributed 8 ZB of data. Thanks to the concept of Internet of Things, devices from smartphones to television sets are coming equipped with connectivity; a massive amount of data is being produced. The volume of data thus generated is so massive that it is becoming difficult to handle it. Data analysts are incapable of handling the inundation of statistics, machines are unsuccessful in making real sense of it, and organizations are unable to manage the heaps of data, thereby rendering the data useless. All the collection of information remains passive, with no positive impact on any business.
The idea is to revolutionize the process of Mobile web data monitoring. In a world where mobile is ubiquitous, the mobile web data has the greatest potential to reveal valuable customer insights. Since the mobile devices have great penetration levels even among the poor and deprived, it is particularly valuable as compared to other types of data. The traditional mobile web data monitoring tools focus on “what” in the data, but give no importance to “why”. Insightful visual mobile data monitoring can increase the productivity and create new business lines and revenue streams.
For many organizations, mobile is the fastest growing channel of sales, contributing up to 50 percent of new revenue. But, at the same time, the mobile ecosystem is disintegrated and complex with a variety of devices, different OS and their versions, different browsers, and third party services. Understanding the dynamics of the disintegrated mobile ecosystem is critical for getting mobile data insights which weighs heavily on a user’s mobile experience.
With more companies aiming to become data driven, many organizations are designing mobile applications and incorporating big data analytics for their products and services. While companies expand in terms of users, they must be prepared to deal with the enormous data influxes resulting from the mobile apps. Businesses need to find a solution that will enable them to extract the valuable mobile data insights hidden in these datasets. The problem with mobile web is that data is used more quickly and frequently because of the easy accessibility.
The process of mobile web data monitoring should involve monitoring under restricted conditions to determine if mobile applications and services use an optimum amount of data over a network. Monitoring metrics may include average load time, response time and total load time. After the monitoring in restricted conditions, a real user monitoring can be carried out which ensures consistency and checks response time at particular points of time. It is important to keep in mind the fragmented, mobile ecosystem. Several variants of mobile devices, different OS and multiple platforms can complicate things. Therefore, monitoring mobile web data with wide variety of contingencies is paramount.
Mobile companies are vigorously trying to fortify their use of mobile web data monitoring in order to improve existing services and design new ones. The mobile web data monitoring allows for better understanding of customers, which in turn, results in improved sales and better marketing opportunities. The customer insights obtained through the monitoring and analysis of mobile web data also helps optimize network operations and improve productivity.
There is a growing debate about how organizations, citizens and government can derive the maximum benefits from the mobile web data, as it has great potential to generate new and insightful information. Mobile web data presents an economic, high resolution, real time view of an individual’s behavior. Each time, a mobile phone user interacts with a mobile operator, various details of the interaction are captured, generating a rich dataset associated with the customer. From these captured interactions, information about identity, finances, social relationships can be extracted.
Trying to extract valuable information from exponentially growing data influx with diverse structure and variety has its own share of challenges. The most demanding challenges are related to interoperability and standardization of mobile web data. Privacy and security concerns cannot be ignored as well. It is critically important to address such privacy concerns with respect to data sharing. Mobile web data producers and users need to work together in this regard. There is a need to raise awareness about the potential and significance of generating new insights to fully harness the potential of mobile web data for development. Attempting to extract value from mobile web data demands expertise in specialized domains, data preparation, and visualization. Currently, there is a shortage of talented data analysts with the required skill sets.
Given the acceptance of mobile cellular devices, mobile web data seems to have the widespread infiltration and the greatest uptake. The new mobile web data sources have immense potential to produce insightful information to facilitate development. To derive full benefit from the use of mobile web data, a number of barriers have to be crossed. This includes allowing for extraction of insights, at the same time, keeping in mind the user’s privacy. Further research is required to understand and validate the usefulness of mobile web data monitoring for information society.
