Finnish business people do not use Windows Phones – and other data from Nordic Business Forum 2014

Written by Matias Pietilä and Anu-Kaisa Jääskeläinen

Nordic Business Forum 2014 was held at the Exhibition & Convention Center in Helsinki on October 9-10, 2014, with approximately 5300 guests in attendance. Most guests at the event were business developers, entrepreneurs, managers and directors of various companies. Qvik created the mobile apps for the event for all platforms – now it is time to take a look at the analytics.

Analytics are the key for continuous improvement

It’s always important for all digital services to analyze the usage in order to improve the service for coming updates. In mobile services this is especially important as the context of usage varies greatly.

Finland adds its special flavor as we have three competing platforms (iOS, Android and Windows Phone) with almost equal market shares. The importance of any of platforms varies depending on the type of service in question.

iOS dominated – WP share surprisingly low

One could say that it was not a surprise that the iOS version of the event app was the most downloaded, but the gap to the other platforms is certainly larger than expected.  Apple devices (iPhones and iPads) had 2158 uniques users while the numbers for Android and Windows Phone devices are 458 and 474, respectively.

The question is, whether these figures represent operating system market shares among the participants or whether they rather indicate that iOS users are most eager to download new apps.

Relevant information quickly delivered

Also the time spend in the app shows differences between the user groups. If this were a commercial app, these numbers could also indicate which platform is the most important for business.

iOS user spent an average of 22 minutes with the app and Android users spent  24 minutes, respectively – while WP users only spent 8 minutes. This may be largely due to the fact that he Windows Phone version did not have as extensive functionality as the other platforms.

The average session times were short on all the platforms:

 

 

This indicates that speed is an important factor in this situation when users are in a buzzing event and want to quickly find the relevant information.

At this kind of events the cellular networks are usually crowded, and wifi networks tend to get slow, so its invaluable that the static data is available also offline at all times. At NBF 2014 we did not experience any network problems though, but better safe than sorry.

An app that keeps on giving

Data also shows that user kept getting back to the app throughout the event. The average sessions per user are as follows:

 

If we take a look at the usage as the function of time, we can recognize some typical patterns that remain the same, regardless of the platform.

The app usage starts increasing in the morning, reaches its peak at around noon and decreases again in the evening. All the platforms show a dramatic decrease in the usage at one point, however.

When Jim Collins held his presentation as the first speaker of the event, people seem to have concentrated on him rather than the app. The amount of active users was only half of what it had been before the presentation and what it became after that. The activity in the app was also very low during Arnold Schwarzenegger’s presentation.

 

 

 

Push messages activate if the message is relevant

In addition to the static information, the app provided the event organizers with a real-time communication channel with push notifications. The three messages that were sent during the event vary both in their style and their effectiveness:

Thursday 3:30 PM  

“Charge your mobile battery at Lexus Mobile Hotel next to Business Corner. Lexus Creating Amazing”

Friday 12:15 PM

“Business Lunch begins soon! Check the tables from the app. Enjoy networking!”

Friday 12:30 PM

“VIP Q&A session with Dambisa Moyo begins at 12:40. Welcome all VIP guests!”

The first message was sent at a good time and with a message that was relevant to many people. As a result, the app usage reached its daily peak during the following hour (see the figure above).

The two other messages were not as successful. It seems that people were busy having lunch and did not care of a message that reminded them to utilize the networking options. The other message had a limited target audience, as it was only relevant to VIP guests.

 

The used analytics tool Flurry that provides an estimate on the users’ gender division. This needs to be taken with a grain of salt but there is a clear difference between iOS and Android to be observed. The functionality is not available on Windows Phone.

 

 

 

The app did not ask or collect any data about how guests liked various presentations. However, it is interesting to see which speaker biographies got the most views. All platforms combined, the guests were mostly interested in Jim Collins, Sir Ken Robinson and Dambisa Moyo.  Arnold Schwarzenegger being only sixth.

What speech titles create traction in the app were as follows (for all platforms):

Title	Position
Creating a Winning Organization, Sir Alex Ferguson	1
Hot Seat Session on Developing the Future, Linda Liukas, William Wolfram, Anna Nyboe and Vladimir Funtikov	2
How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Sir Ken Robinson	3
What’s It Going to Take to Be Successful, Dambisa Moyo	4
Growing with Purpose, Soulaima Gourani	5
The Process of Building Great Companies, Jim Collins	6
Choosing Excellence, Tony Fernandes	7
Coffee break	8
My Rules for Success, Arnold Schwarzenegger	9
Reaching the Next Level by Engaging Everyone, Matti Alahuhta	10
VIP Executive Session with Jim Collins	11
VIP Cocktails & Dinner Buffet	12
VIP Q&A Session with Dambisa Moyo	13
Business & Networking Lunch	14
Welcoming Lunch	15

 

Are all the features necessary?

As anticipated, the most used feature was Agenda, with event details following it. After them came the map & info page with half the amount of views on it. Speaker info had about the same amount of use as did the integrated Twitter feed. The Twitter feed was integrated primarily for those who do not have their own account but want to follow the discussion, which usually is plentiful at events like this.

Looking at the chart below, we can see that some features had only little use. If this were a commercial app, it should be considered are these features truly necessary and in case they are, how they should be improved so that users would use them.

 

Conclusion

All of the above numbers show that although we assumed many Finnish business users have Windows Phones, they come behind in all the numbers. For a commercial app this could mean that Windows Phone users might not return the development investment. As with all the mobile services we make for our customers, it is important to carefully consider one’s mobile strategy and product market fit like any other business plan.