Every business needs a mobile website now more than ever. Mobile web traffic is up 35% since July 2011. Smartphones are becoming the primary platform for search and a key access method to find your business.
A mobile website is quite different than your desktop website. The mobile audience wants information quickly and more directly. Usually the level detail on your desktop site just confuses the context of a mobile site.
What is the quickest, most effective way to get mobile today?
A mobile web content management platform (mobile CMS) is just what you need. The actual site builder is only one aspect of a mobile CMS, but it is so very important! It should get you mobile fast, and provide a method for easy ongoing edits. The builder you select should provide ways to add mobile specific features and most important, provide ongoing mobile optimization and analytics about your mobile audience.
Some mobile website building tools are nothing more than a simplistic mechanism which essentially scrapes content from your existing desktop website and applies that same content to a mobile template. While it may seem like a quick and easy approach at first, there is a huge opportunity to create a mobile 'mess'! This scrape method assumes that everything on your desktop site belongs on your mobile site and that is a mistake. Often with these scrape site build methods, there is a limitation on the amount of design flexibility for your mobile site. The content is, more or less, pre-selected for your mobile website and laid out according to its order on your desktop website. That context is likely not optimal for the mobile web audience.
When considering a mobile website builder for your organization, there are 5 questions that should be answered:
1) Does the solution make it easy to create a mobile site even if you do not have a desktop website today?
Can you provide a context for your mobile site or are you 'fenced in' with their formats and templates.
2) Once you've created your mobile website, will you have the flexibility to change the content and design whenever you like?
It should be easy to update your mobile site once it is created.
3) Will your new mobile website be optimized for all types of devices, or just a small subset of wireless devices?
Also can you intelligently serve the content by device, for example send your iPad viewers to the desktop site but iPhone viewers to your mobile site.
4) Does your mobile website platform help you to build a mobile site that adds features very specific to mobile such as geo-location, QR code management and mobile ads? Does it help to integrate social features such as Facebook and Twitter? Mobile data capture forms?
All of these features are very important aspects of creating a relationship with mobile viewers, and making the most of the mobile web touchpoint.
5) Does the platform include information about your mobile web audience? Can you also add your own analytics tags?
Analytics are ultimately most important for your business to learn what is happening on mobile. You should be able to add your own analytics tag or use the platform analytics provided.
A powerful mobile website builder will allow you the flexibility to prioritize the content and design your mobile site with the mobile audience in mind.
A quality mobile website platform will also optimize your mobile site for any device on the market. You shouldn't have to worry that your content is not rendering well for certain mobile site visitors. According to a recent ComScore report, over half of all current mobile users in the US are using non-smartphones. While the number of smartphones on the market is growing by the day, it is still important to consider your mobile visitors who may be using feature phones.
Selecting a mobile website builder which allows you to select, edit, and optimize your content and design for all of your mobile site visitors is the right way to go.
These days every event attendee will have a mobile device with them. This is a perfect moment to interact with them using mobile website technology. People at an event have a unique need for timely information; they are often captive in a physical space unfamiliar to them. This is a perfect moment to connect with them on a mobile website.
There are 7 must-have features that will greatly enhance your event mobile website.
Simple Agenda Access - Let's face it, this is why they came to your event in the first place. People love to access this information on their mobile phones rather than carry around pieces of paper!
Directions and Maps - Getting your event attendees to activities and sessions is often the number 1 reason to have an event site.
QR Codes - for quick access to maps, agendas and activities surrounding the event. Where can we get the bus to go back to our hotel? Where is the technology pavilion? Why not create excitement with a QR code driven contest at your event.
Communication - Easy, direct access to event coordinators, medical stations and concierge.
Social Integration - People like to connect with the outside world to say "Hey I'm at this event!". Make sure there is easy connection to Twitter, Facebook and other social networks on the mobile website.
Surveys - You'll want to hear feedback along the way and also at the end of the event. A simple mobile site form will make it easy for your attendees to give you timely feedback.
Sponsors - The mobile viewer is a captive audience. Sell a "mobile web" sponsorship to your event. They will get high viewership and excellent recall from the small screen.
Event Mobile Website Case: The Publishing Business Conference & Expo is the leading event for both book and magazine publishing executives. With an impressive lineup of speakers from the publishing industry and an agenda that's just as robust, it provides a view into the innovations and issues facing both publishing companies and executives today.
The 2012 Publishing Business Conference & Expo will, as it does every year, attract thousands of visitors and will sponsor a host of speakers and events over a course of three days.
The mobile website for the 2012 Publishing Business Conference & Expo contains information on the line-up of event speakers, conference agenda, exhibitors and sponsors. Further, with registration possible directly from the mobile website for the event, visitors can become attendees in the matter of a couple clicks.
The 2012 Publishing Business Conference & Expo mobile site also features recent news and social media updates, a raffle for a Kindle Fire, and information on booking a hotel room at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square, the host hotel for the three-day conference. All-in-all, this is a great example of how a mobile website can be of great benefit for events and conferences. By providing their attendees with the information they need in an easily digestible format, the Publishing Business Conference & Expo is clearly ahead of the game when it comes to marketing their flagship event.
You've got a mobile website so how can you be sure that people will find it?
No surprise, mobile viewers are heading to familiar search engines on their mobile browsers as a quick way to find information. Recently Google announced that mobile website optimization is a key part of its mobile rankings methods. You can make sure the search engines are categorizing your mobile site and therefore, increasing the ranking of your mobile site, for anyone using search on a mobile web browser. SEO Friendly URLs are a key strategy to make sure your mobile site will be found!
Google has seen an explosion in mobile search, with an astounding 500% increase over the past two years alone. Just last Mother’s Day, Mashable reported a whopping 33% of all searches for flowers on Mother’s Day in 2011 were done on mobile devices. We know these numbers will only increase, so make sure you’re ready well before this mother’s day comes around ;-).
What do you need to do?
Key to increasing your site traffic is incorporating your mobile keywords strategy into your mobile site URLs. Setting up SEO-friendly URLs impacts the way your mobile pages are cached in search engines.
This will have the same effect on mobile, as it does on your desktop website. When you use mobile keywords, mobile crawlers (e.g. Google and Bing) will index your mobile pages, placing a priority on them over other mobile pages. This is key to driving better rankings for your site with major search engines.
For instance, if you are creating a site for Max’s Bar and Grille, a logical mobile URL for a menu page would be http://m.maxsbarsandgrille.prohost.mobi/menu.
A mobile website with SEO-Friendly URL's will benefit your site enormously. Along with creating a custom domain and implementing auto-detect and redirect code, mobile friendly URLs are at the top of the list for most important task when building a mobile website.
MoFuse makes it very easy to add SEO friendly URLs to the pages on your mobile site. When you build your mobile site, we give you the option to include any keywords that best represent that mobile page. It's very easy to be mobile SEO friendly with MoFuse!
Location based everything – that is what we can expect from mobile in the coming months.
As a business, you’ll want to understand how customers are using mobile to interact with their environment.
Start now to learn what you can do to foster a new kind of relationship – one that is based on the location of your customers.
The equation that gets everyone so excited about mobile is: power + size + connectivity. It adds up to creating a different kind
of connection with your customers. Why should you care now? Your customers will quickly come to expect a new relationship with
your business – via mobile, they are visiting you on various mobile platforms already. Check your mobile web traffic to see that they
are indeed visiting you now.
What's driving this?
A Smartphone is a ‘handheld computer’. with full operating systems, powerful processors and abundant memory –
just like your desktop computer. The payoff is, they are connected to the Internet and have global positioning information,
which changes the game. Today the features on the ‘phone’ that enable interacting with your environment include the
Global Positioning System, the camera, and even WiFi. Mobile web tools continue to evolve. Very soon new chips will ship
in Smartphones that will revolutionize how customers interact at the point of sale, and will change the stakes for credit card businesses.
Your mobile web audience will come to expect a locationship with your brand - when they want to interact.
What’s pushing the model?
Over the past year the “social, local, mobile” revolution has taken center stage. Termed "SoLoMo" by VC, John Doer –
SOcial for its role in maintaining always-on connections with friends, events and activities, LOcal for its ability to gain relevance
from location and real time activity and MObile for its ubiquitous. Platforms like FourSquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places are
changing the way that businesses interact with customers. Mobile platforms are the enabling technology.
Marketer’s have been the first to test out location based services, such as “texting” to get a coupon or reward, location generated
deals and even WiFi is used to micro-broadcast special discounts. As your brand begins to build trust with mobile web readers,
there are a whole new set of ideas for you to create “Locationships”.
Some Early Ideas To Consider:
Help them find you:
Store locator – using Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) this is application that is available now via mobile websites.
You can create a mobile website that includes store locator today.
Run promotions that get engagement, nearby:
Use 2-D Barcodes (QR Codes) to engage customers in store, or with your product itself. Use them in print ads to drive mobile
web audience to your website. Bridge the gap between online and in store purchasing.
Xtify, Placecast and Location Labs have introducing “geo-fencing” technologies that retailers can incorporate into apps to track
when customers are near stores and try to entice them with special offers or discounts. Xtify and Location Labs rely on a phone's
GPS technology, while Placecast uses carrier cell towers for location.
Location Based Commerce:
Shop.org showed that about 2% of online retail sales were coming from mobile, and this percentage is climbing fast.
Location-based commerce is an evolution of mobile commerce that leverages the known location of the consumer to drive
engagement with mobile shopping applications relative to a known location or retail store. A second-quarter 2010 survey
showed that 6% of U.S. mobile users had used a shopping app in the last three months, and 12% said they planned to use
their phones to find or redeem coupons during the holiday season.
Loyalty Programs
Some apps like Shopkick are triggered when users enter a store, awarding them points toward a purchase just for walking in.
After launching last fall at retailers including Macy's and Best Buy, Shopkick said this month its app had 750,000 users
Your mobile web audience is getting very comfortable using these new features, it is time to begin testing various mobile web
platforms to engage your customers in a new way and to create Locationships!
If you are thinking about building a mobile website and wondering why you need one at all, you’ll want to understand why the mobile web is truly a different medium. The game has changed and your customers will demand a new style of interacting with your business.
The power of the connected mobile device is changing the expectations of your visitors. The device is now truly powerful and being connected makes it infinitely useful. Visitors in store as well as on your mobile site have a new way to interact with your brand. This is not just a portable website.
Many companies think it is enough to merely get your desktop website to display on the small screen of a mobile web browser. But that ‘one way’ broadcast of your site is just the very minimum consideration of this new relationship. Don’t short change your customers by only thinking about site display. Create a Mobile Website to leverage all of the phone's capability. It is about the power of interacting with your customers who are now moving around with a powerful computer in their pocket! As you create your mobile experience, here are 4 tips to take advantage of the new mobile relationship:
Display for SpeedThe distance between a mobile user and the information they require should be 1 or 2 clicks away. The mobile audience is an impatient bunch. They want their mobile sites to load fast (sub-10 seconds) and they want information easy to get to. Pulling, zooming and trying to use fingers to hit buttons that are pen-point sized just isn’t a good experience at all.
Make your website mobile friendly will make your customers happy because the site loads fast, and the information they need is right in front of them with buttons that human fingers can handle.
Build “Locationships”If you give customers valuable reasons to interact with your brand on mobile they will come back. That might mean coupons, special incentives or even latest news and loyalty programs. More than just display, you can help your customers connect with you by using features of the phone that go beyond display. Mobile web readers will expect more.
Help Them To ShareMobile just makes people want to share! Something about the mobile experience makes people avid content creators and they love to share with their connections. By giving your customers a compelling experience, you’ll find that your fans will want to share what they are doing on mobile with their buddies.
Make Their Lives EasierReformating alone won’t cut it. If you can offer interactions at the point of sale, do it. Use QR codes to get them involved with your digital brand in your physical location. Explore mobile commerce now, so you will be ready when mobile becomes the
primary wallet for your customers. Now is the time to test and there are solutions out there to make the mobile web very cost effective.
Mobile viewers are not a patient bunch. Consider the mobile viewer wants to find information fast. Get to the point with them on mobile.
We have fairly powerful machines in our pocket now and they are connected to the Internet! Merely pushing your desktop website does not take the best part of mobile website functionality into consideration. What makes a mobile phone site an entirely new medium includes access to new set of digital inputs and outputs including geo-position, camera, text, and voice. These capabilities alone enable a host of new computing scenarios including geo-targeting of offers, mobile commerce, and social media creation. This is why MoFuse believes every business needs a new site that is built with a mobile user’s context and special phone features in mind. The growth of the mobile web is just beginning.
"If you don't have a mobile strategy then you don't have a strategy for growth", said Diane Mermingas, editor at large for Mediapost in her recent article
Future Growth: It's All About Mobile.We agree, and the growth of the mobile web is poised to help you to have a strong mobile strategy all while meeting tight budget constraints in 2011.
For too long “apps” have been the first item businesses think about when getting their mobile brand strategies moving. That made sense when bandwidth was limited and handsets were weak. For many reasons the mobile browser will ultimately be the primary pathway to using the Internet on a phone. That’s really good news for businesses because unlike the building and managing of Apps, you only have to build
one mobile site to work across all mobile browsers.
Not so long ago, computing applications went from the desktop to “software as a service” or to the cloud. Businesses save enormous time and money because they no longer have to "install" and update 10,000's corporate computers with new memory resident software.
Mobile is going through the same evolution. You don't need an App for every brand interaction; now you can go to a mobile phone web page hosted on the Internent.
Mobile applications are moving to the mobile web, because new smartphone handsets are quickly becoming as powerful as any desktop computer. Bandwidth is quickly evolving from 3G to 4G. Higher bandwidth takes the lag time off the table. Applications from your brand no longer need to be resident on the handset.
By 2011 more than 85% of handsets will be connected to the Internet according to mobiThinking.
As for Apps, around 1/3 of U.S. adults have apps on their phones, but out of that, only around 2/3 ever use those apps according to
Pew Internet Study. Further using Apps ranks very low on the scale of what people like to do with their phones. More people use their phones to access the Internet than Apps according to Pew.
Here's the good news, you don't need to have an App to have a solid mobile strategy. With mobile web readers on the rise, building a mobile website optimized for all mobile devices is a good way to go. Mobile web tools like MoFuse make this extremely easy.
Why will the Mobile web win over Apps long term?
- Easier for people to find your company, discovery in App stores is difficult for most brands
- Far less expensive for your business to implement mobile web sites
- With better bandwidth and more powerful handsets – everything moves to the cloud
- New advances in HTML5 will give the browser abilities to access mobile device functions such as the camera
- Mobile web saves money. For most businesses building and managing an App is expensive and complex
A few final reasons why the Mobile Browser is the killer app:Mobile search is seeing tremendous growth. People accessing a seach engine on the mobile web is the leading mobile web traffic indicator. One in three mobile searches show local intent which means we are using the mobile web browser to find local businesses. Google CEO Eric Schmidt asserts that mobile search activity and revenue will eventually become bigger than desktop search. He's said more than once that mobile search peaks at night and desktop search peaks during the day. People are using the mobile web today - your business needs to connect with your mobile web audience today!
There will not be one unifying mobile phone platform across the globe - ever. Competition is stiff and the stakes are too high to own a piece of the enormous global mobile marketshare. Sounds like I’m stating the obvious but not so fast…
When iPhone launched in the US, there were many who declared “the winner” – iPhone. At MoFuse we heard people say “won’t everyone eventually own an iPhone?” or “What if we just optimize our website to work well on iPhone, won’t that
solve the mobile web problem?”
A little more than a year after iPhone launched along came Google’s Android platform. In less than 2 years since their launch, Android has made great strides to be a true global leader in mobile operating platform race. Here’s how fast the world changes in mobile: last year Android-based phones were only 1.8% of the market, by Q2 2010 Android captured 17.2% according to new numbers from Gartner Group. That is very fast market growth!
Eric Schmidt recently was quoted to say that 200,000 Android phones (mostly Motorola Droids) are sold every day. Growth of the mobile web continues and Android is pushing the mobile web audience. On the mobile website visitor front, those who advertise on mobile are ever aware of the various platforms viewers are accessing each month. Millennial media recently announced that Android accounted for 19% of ad impressions in July, up from 11% in June. Almost double in 30 days! This amazing growth vaulted Android into third place, behind Nokia's Symbian. Android also overtook RIM to become the No. 1-selling smartphone platform in the US. Android now powers smartphones made by a number of different manufacturers, including a revitalized Motorola's Droid -- the best-selling Android handset in the second quarter among U.S. consumers -- and Taiwan's HTC.
So what does this all mean – this mobile market moves very fast. Don’t declare a winner too soon (or ever). Mobile web platforms will proliferate. The market is too large to ever expect that there will be one mobile operating system that rules the globe. Competitive markets are working, you can bet that new and improved platforms will continue as the stakes to ‘own’ maketshare in the global mobile ecosystem are considerable.
You need to develop a mobile website that is optimized for all of these various operating systems and for new ones to come.
Today there are about 10 mobile operating systems that are worth tracking: Symbian, RIM, Apple, Android and Windows take the top 5 positions. This complexity is what makes optimizing a mobile website so important.
QR Code hung in large format over Madison Square Garden, June 2010. Finally the "Code" is getting some traction here in the US.
Linking the physical world with digital information is a fundamentally exciting aspect of being mobile. Within a few short years augmented reality will become main stream as businesses begin to push new applications using a mobile device to overlay the physical world with digital information such as names of places, store info, and real-time information. Meanwhile there is an easy link between physical and mobile and it doesn't cost anything to use it!
One very early connector of the mobile web and the physical world is the QR code. QR stands for “quick response”. It was developed by Japanese corporation Densu-Wave in 1994. QR codes are very popular in Japan and by now you’ve likely seen this square box with the black and white blocks inside, as they are used more frequently every day. The picture at the top of this post shows a QR code prominently draped over Madison Square Garden in New York. UPS and Fedex use them as do many manufacturers. They simply carry much more information than an 'old time' bar code.
Old Time Bar Code Very Smart QR Code
Not Much Information Contains lots of information
Basically QR codes work like this – The phone must have QR reading software installed (takes less than a minute to install and is free). Using the camera of the mobile device, the phone software will translate the QR code and deliver back to the user whatever you want–a mobile website, video, pricing information or actually even kick off an application like charging for a product.
The cell phone needs a QR code reader to work, and in Japan phones come with this software already installed. Google's mobile
Android operatingsystem supports the use of QR codes by natively including the barcode scanner (ZXing) on some models.
Today MoFuse has many clients who use QR codes in interesting ways. One publisher adds them to magazine articles to drive people from the physical pages of a publication to their mobile phone web page that carries a special offer. Another publishes QR codes on the jackets of books and when translated, brings people to a mobile web page with more information about the author and book.
Marketers take note, when you use QR in advertising you can find out a lot about your mobile web audience. People who translate a QR code are delivered to your mobile site - which is fired up when the QR code is read. Your mobile web analytics will then give you insight into who is interacting with your brand via the QR code.
If you want to try them out you can go to
qrcode.mofuse.com to create your code. Just fill in the URL that you want your customers to go to when the QR is read. We’ll give you the 2D bar code to copy and publish anywhere. You can also select from many sizes of QR code depending on the use. Place the QR code on physical locations to connect people to your mobile URL. QR is just one of many exciting mobile web tools that will help you integrate physical and mobile.
What makes a smart phone so smart?
By now you know that a ‘
smart phone’ really is a computer that fits in your hand. It allows you to make phone calls but at this point, phone calls are somewhat of a side show. Smart phones give us the ability to use applications that take advantage of our physical location and that is a major sea change for computing for years to come. From ‘augmented reality’ to a digital compass, from restarant locators to favorite bar recipes – we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what these small computers will do to enhance our lives.
Phase 1: Populating the Planet with Smart PhonesAs I was planning this post (for about a month now), I was going to predict that 2010 would be the year of the first ‘free’ give-away smartphone. Meaning – the cost of manufacturing these devices continues to decrease while and their popularity increases. Their ubiquity is hastened by the give-away. Before I could post –
it has actually already happened.
Verizon Wireless recently expanded its buy-one-get-one offer to include all of its smartphones. The situation is as follows: all phones are very quickly, trending towards “smart”.
What will that mean? Assume that eventually everyone will have a “smart” phone – this has wide implications about how people will consume media. The data shows people with touchscreen mobile phones are
more likely to download video, interact with apps and use the mobile web. This means you can no longer lay back and let your mobile website experience be driven by the more than 30 (and growing) different mobile web browsers. On the contrary, Smartphones give people much higher expectations of what they should be able to experience from your brand.
Your desktop website was designed for a 10 – 15 inch experience and on a device (a PC or Mac) that can handle complex technologies like Flash or Java. Not so on the mobile web. Cell phone websites cannot deal with complex, 'heavy' technologies such as Flash. Further you need to design the media experience for someone who is in a ‘mobile mode’ – far different that sitting behind a desk and browsing your site in detail. Even if it loads, people do not like to poke, zoom, pinch their way around your site! You need to make your website mobile friendly.
A growing number of smartphone users really does bode well for the Mobile Web!
More smartphones helps to redefine how we consume media – and it moves people into new habits of access and producing media. A
recent study in the UK found that 65% of smartphone users access the mobile web regularly. Accessing mobile websites is
fast becoming a part of our daily lives.
Android handsets have been shipping 65,000 smartphones each day and with the recent
TapTu report the number of mobile-friendly websites is increasing faster than expected. The growth of the mobile web is happening before our eyes. Smartphones are driving mobile web traffic and usage. It is time to get in front of the global smartphone "user-sphere" and develop a mobile website that will work especially for the smartphone user where ever they are.
Repurpose Or DieFor a long time we’ve talked about how digital frameworks will change the nature of how we get and consume media. Mobile has the potential to distribute content to many new, more personal frameworks. Mobile Platforms such as the eReader are deemed ‘single purpose’. As they redefine what constitutes a “book”, anyone producing content should take note of the potential that various mobile devices deliver for readers . If you produce content, it is time to experiment and repurpose your publication for the many formats of mobile to come. Mobile web readers will expect it!
Zagat’s Got ItIn 1979 Tim and Nina Zagat had a great idea – why should people looking for restaurant reviews be limited to get only the opinions of a very few paid, and frankly, unreliable restaurant reviewers that were available through limited newspaper sources. Instead let 100’s of amateur critics tell the world their opinions about restaurants – publish and distribute this information far and wide. The ratings were more reliable and the information was easier to access. Today Zagat publishes in over 100 countries.
At the core of their success is their relentless pursuit to repurpose their content for many new devices. Zagat To Go is one of the top downloaded iPhone apps in the world today. You can also expect them to be at the head of the line when the Apple iPad launches early in April. Repurposing for the eReader is also a key part of Zagat’smobile strategy. In January, Amazon announced a
software development platform, a mobile web tool for their popular Kindle eReader. Zagat is one of the first to sign up for this program to produce
“active content” for the Kindle reader.
eReaders and other mobile devices are changing the way publishers think about content and certainly the way readers think about interacting with books. Zagat gets it – Be out there in these new mobile frontiers, experiment with your content, engage customers, gather results- tweak and evolve.
What It Means To Be A BookBooks have been about ink on paper. Today many of us have experienced text and images on an eReader platform. One person I know read a book using both her eReader and her IPhone in combination. The mobile phone website of the book presented her with options to complete her book, anytime. In April the iPad will become available and define even a newer generation of what we will one day consider ‘book’. Mobile web readers will come in many forms, it will be important to develop sites for mobile devices.
Recently
Wired Magazine revealed their new eReader – which will be available on the iPad. The experience is reported to be fundamentally “next generation publishing” in both the look and feel of the digital magazine as well as the level of interactive and dynamic content including video and 3D visuals.
Reality Check For TodayToday there are
6,000,000 eReaders sold worldwide and the prediction is that there will be 10 million units sold by end of 2010. Amazon Kindle own about 60% share of this market today. This post is prior to the launch of the iPad, but remember - the hype may not match the numbers. Most important - be aware of the growth of the mobile web and all of the options you have to delight your customers with your content - anywhere, anytime and anyplace. Today you must have a mobile web site that is optimized for the 4.2 billion handsets out there. MoFuse can help you get this done today!
