Fandango has had great success with its mobile efforts, but the company has also learned many valuable lessons. Because mobile is currently one of the hottest trends, many retailers are so anxious to have a hand in the game that they rush their mobile endeavors to market. According to app activity aggregator Apptimism, there are more than 78,000 mobile applications. With that many apps already available, retailers cannot afford to have “just another app” to get lost in mix.

Before launching a mobile campaign, Hong advises other retailers to, first of all, have a specific reason for their mobile efforts. Once their reasoning is determined, they need to take their time to build an effective product that will have staying power.

Mobile does open many doors of opportunity, but if retailers aren’t fully prepared for it they could, in the end, waste time and money and never see success.

Are you planning to launch a mobile campaign? Is your product prepared to challenge your competitors?

Update 9/28/09: According to a new release from Apple, there are now more than 85,000 apps available.

“Cyber Monday saw significant visitor gains at most of the top retail resources, led by Shopzilla.com sites with nearly 2 million visitors (up 98 percent versus the November base period), followed by Yahoo! Shopping with 1.9 million visitors (up 81 percent) and Google Product Search with 1.1 million (up 59 percent).”

These numbers further prove that consumers are browsing around online comparing prices and searching for the best deal. In the above video Greg Hintz, the General Manager of Yahoo! Shopping, gives four tips retailers need to know as they optimize their campaign.

1.    Optimize your data feed.
2.    Make sure your data feed provides relevant, comprehensive, and fresh data.
3.    Use factual language instead of “marketing” language.
4.    Include all product specifics.

When you move on to Yahoo! Product Submit, Greg points out that the primary factor is relevancy. Other factors to look at are merchant rating since higher rating produces a higher ranking. Also, remember to take advantage of comparison-shopping sites.