Mobile commerce is the perfect medium for interacting with consumers in short, bite-sized chunks. When the impulse strikes, consumers can jump in and purchase immediately.

Mobile commerce is creating new markets with existing markets. By this I mean, mobile commerce is taking time that was formerly lost and enabling commercial opportunities that didn’t exist before. This reclaimed time enables new sales to an existing customer base that in many cases wouldn’t have happened.

This new opportunity is important in many industries since their potential market is nearly completely saturated. Ecommerce offered a similar sea-change because it allowed consumers to shop without physically visiting a brick-and-mortar store. Merchants could offer their products to a larger market and consumers were freed up to shop at new times — like when they’re at work, or late at night. Ecommerce also changed the retail experience because consumers were more informed and in many cases more focused.

Mobile is opening up all the little, boredom filled chunks of our day with the opportunity to interact with brands. Sitting at a stoplight is my favorite example, but there are others: waiting at the doctor’s office, sitting in the conference room with a minute or so before others arrive, the list goes on. These little moments are almost forgettable, but they add up.

Mobile commerce is the perfect medium for interacting with consumers in short, bite-sized chunks. When the impulse strikes, consumers can jump in and purchase immediately.

Not surprisingly, Pizza delivery companies are on the leading edge of this movement. The CEO of Domino’s Pizza called mobile growth “astounding” in an interview this month. Pizza Hut also has had success with mobile technology. Consumers can quickly place an order when they’re thinking about it on the way home from work. In the past they might forget, or change their minds before they get home (or make the phone call and get placed on hold).

Other Quick Service Restaurants like Burger King and McDonald’s are also leveraging mobile. Other retailers like HSN and AutoNation are blazing paths in other industries.

Aberdeen Group recently validated this theory in the context of Mobile Marketing. They found that leading mobile marketers were 1.6 times more satisfied with their mobile ROI than with traditional media and that 62% of companies are increasing their budgets for mobile, despite an environment of overall budget cuts.

My take is that mobile marketing is but one tactical tool. Companies should look to make the sale with consumers not just communicate their brand. Increasingly, this means providing a unique, succinct, and transactional experience.

“Getting mobile marketing right is a great challenge,” says Jeff Zabin, Research Fellow at Aberdeen Group, “It’s also an opportunity with enormous upside in terms of driving customer acquisition, retention and profitability on an ongoing basis.”

Mobile User Experience matters, and most organizations are getting it wrong.

Like marketing, the look, feel, flow, and functionality of an any application is an intangible that organizations are tempted to skimp on when pressed for time, budget, or both. Similarly, a flawed user experience is likely to be as bad for business as a flawed (or absent) marketing plan. Also like marketing, user experience can be measured but the results sometimes are dismissed.

“The Mobile User Experience is Miserable” says Jakob Nielsen a respected Mobile User Experience expert in a July 2009 study, “It’s neither easy nor pleasant to use the Web on mobile devices. Observing user suffering during our sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994. It was that bad.”

Executives, Programmers, and project managers all tend to focus on reducing scope and getting the product out the door. Many of us wrap ourselves in constraints (read: excuses) as to why suggested user interface changes won’t work. The code technically works, we’re behind schedule, and we’re losing money. Ship it!

So, the fundamental question to executives is “Do you want mobile to make you money?”

If the answer is “yes”, then it requires discipline like any other business initiative. The fundamental business goals must be defined. The user experience must be well designed and well tested. The marketing plan must address the right demographics.

If we slap together a clone of the site designed for a PC, which isn’t anything like a phone, we almost guarantee failure. In fact, when Nielsen tested WAP sites in the same study, he found that tasks took users 38% longer in 2009 than in 2000! Phones are faster but perhaps we’re trying to do more and ultimately slowing ourselves down.

Nielsen says, “almost every design decision must be made in the context of the [mobile internet] site being designed, and what works for [one] site may not work for another.” The complexity of phone capabilities, application features, differing contexts, user skill variations and multiplying platforms and technologies often requires professional help in each specialized discipline.

Doing it right means budgeting time and money properly. Cutting corners risks delaying projects even further, damage to your brand, and the expense of convincing customers to give you a second chance when you get your act together.

Look for upcoming announcements for my webcast addressing this and other mobile strategy issues.

I went home this weekend for my high school reunion in Central Kentucky. It was a blast. I think all the predictable sitcom reunion situations — both drama and comedy — occurred, but this time in real life.

As would be expected, everyone showed pictures of their children. However, I don’t recall a single person actually pulling a paper picture from their purse or wallet. Everyone showed pictures using their phone. Of course lots of people also took pictures using their phone.

As in high school, we all have ended up in different socio-economic levels. Some of us went to college, some of us didn’t. Some of us moved away, some of us stayed. I suspect there are wide variations in income. However, mobile phones are a key part of all our lives and contain some of the most precious information we have.

This is where the value of mobile lies. People have much more intimate relationships with their phones and phones are with people wherever they go. People can count on having their phone with them whenever they need something, and increasingly we can count on the phone to be aware of where the phone and its owner are at any given time.

Organizations that figure out how these new layers of context fit in with their product and their consumers’ lives will profit from mobile. Organizations that put out a mobile web site because it’s cheap and easy, very likely will not.

It’s not that mobile web sites don’t have value. They do. However, having a mobile web site is just the first step toward mobility, not the end-game. Mobile web sites ensure that, with a bit of work, almost anyone can reach your information when they really need it. In most cases, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy or something they enjoy doing over and over.

Organizations have to find ways for consumers to instantaneously connect their lives with your products when they whip out their phone on a whim. The benefits of this are numerous: better brand perception, better brand awareness, better word-of-mouth, more customer loyalty. In many cases, this connection can be a sales or advertising opportunity that increases revenue and/or adds customers.

Throwing together a small copy of your website that fits the dimensions of any phone is not a mobile strategy. It’s a part of your implementation.

There’s a balancing act going on in mobile development around how much should be in a single mobile application.

Whether an app is built as a native app, browser-based or even using SMS, a fundamental decision has to be made about what goes into a single app. So far there doesn’t appear to be consensus as to where exactly to draw the line.

There’s a natural tendency for organizations to want to put all of their capabilities into a single application. We do that on our websites and in our physical locations. For example, an airline website lets you get to all aspects of the airline from booking a ticket, to managing rewards, to investing in the company. Likewise, if you walk into a bank branch you can get all kinds of information about the parent financial services company from money markets, to business banking, investments and sometimes even insurance.

However mobile applications are bite-sized by nature. We use mobile while walking down the street, waiting for the plane to take off, and while bouncing around in a car (hopefully while riding, not driving). I haven’t heard many people wish for Microsoft Word-sized applications that contain all the features engineers have dreamed up over a few decades.  Even though devices are approaching the technical ability to manage such large applications, can we find ways to make large, disparate useful in the mobile context?

For now, I think organizations need to carefully explore their plans for mobile apps and make decisions on a case-by-case basis. As with anything, answers for one organization may not be right for another.

This decision is shaping up to be more complex than either 2oth century packaged software issues or 21st century web application decisions. Mobile blurs the lines and requires a forward-looking product strategy in a rapidly changing market and requires low-impact ways to provide new offerings without inconveniencing or confusing users.