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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 Speed

The 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 Share

Mobile 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 Easier

Reformating 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 Phones

As 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 Die

For 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 It

In 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 Book

Books 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 Today

Today 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!

The best is yet to come for mobile.   This year’s winter Olympics have highlighted some of the most important aspects of why mobile media is different.

As someone who may be building or managing sites for mobile devices, you will want to learn the latest techniques for engaging your mobile web audience. 

Key points here are mobile combined with real time and social

While the real estate is small; the compact nature of the mobile machine makes it easy to keep in our pocket all day. The cousin to our wallets,  mobile is truly the really personal computer that no one leaves home without!

Mobile is now our extended personal broadcasting device and the best way to receive real time information about anything, anywhere. Nowhere has this been more apparent but then during this year’s winter Olympics.

The Games Gone Mobile

This is the first winter games where virtually every athlete has a twitter account and people are accessing those feeds very often on their mobile phones.  For sure athletes and reporters alike, are posting to Twitter and Facebook in real time.

Google modified search just to make sure if you are on mobile, you will get results in real time.  All you need to do is enter your favorite sport into the search bar and back will come the latest results on your mobile device

People are searching for everything and anything related to the winter games – on their mobile devices.  Searches on Yahoo mobile for "ice skating rinks" were up 607 percent last week – especially among teens. Searches for “red Olympic mittens,” were up 182 percent last week.  As you might guess, Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White are hot topics.  Her searches were up 1,446 percent this week and mobile searches for “Shaun White snowboarding” were up 1,921 percent.

According to Web analytics firm Omniture, the mobile version of NBC's Winter Olympics Web site  has reached a  58.2 million page views, a growth of over two-thirds compared to the same statistic for 2008's Beijing games.  Before the opening ceremony even began on February 12, more than one million hits had already been recorded. That one-day total alone eclipsed the number of mobile Web site  views during the entire 2006 games.

Another interesting statistic is the growth in mobile video. More than 1.4 million Olympic videos have been streamed from NBC's mobile site. That's a 400%+ growth over the 2008 games NBC's mobile Olympics site, mobile.nbcolympics.com, provides a simple and instant view at the live medal counts and all the latest news headlines.

MoFuse joined Olympics coverage by hosting the Vancouver Observer site m.vancouverobserver.com.  We are excited to be a small part of such an important global event.

Take aways:  make your website mobile, add real time feeds from social platforms such as twitter to keep people up to date.  If you are hosting an event, make sure you engage 'reporters' to your event by supplying mobile web tools to keep audiences up to date and engaged.

The mobile phone has become so important to our everyday existence that we feel lost without it!  

It is truly a personal digital tool that has transcended it’s “phone-i-ness”.  The killer app started simply as the “voice phone” – imagine you could connect live with any person – from anywhere and any time of day.  Next, and building this past year, it has been about connecting this device to the Internet – The Mobile Web.

By connecting the mobile device to the Internet, the “phone” has become a personal web enabled information machine.  You can get to a portable website, and handle any web based application – anywhere you are. Suddenly it is in fashion to make your website mobile friendly.

Today we are standing at the forefront of the next evolutionary chapter – and retailers need to listen up!

That ‘oh-so-indispensible’ device is about to give your wallet a run for its money. 

By linking our personal mobile device to everyday transactions, enter the next “can’t do without”  – mobile commerce.   Purchase anything, anywhere – and use the device to move currency! 

There are 3 formats most often used for mobile commerce today:


With all of this focus on new mobile payment formats,   every retailer needs to have mobile commerce on their radar now.  Mobile web readers will soon become mobile web buyers.

How will mobile payments help to ease transactions between buyers and sellers?  What do you need to do now to prepare for this inevitable future?

We present the top 10 things every retailer should know now about mobile commerce:

1. Mobile Internet usage continues to grow – US mobile web usage alone grew over 110% in 2009.  Retailers that do not have a mobile commerce site will be behind the curve in 2010 as more people conduct transactions on mobile.

2. Mobile Drives In- Store Commerce – Mobile search for a retail locations will become among the number one uses for the device.  Store locators on mobile sites are a quick way to assure that the mobile consumer will find you when they are out and about. 

3. Shopping All The Time – Further breaking the ‘bricks & mortar’ boundaries, mobile retail allows customers to make transactions even when they aren’t in front of the computer.

4. Powering the Impulse  – The mobile Internet is great for impulse shopping. Mobile couponing and in store discounts really help to create excitement for buying.

5. Comparison shopping  – Mobile sites help customers to comparison-shop while they are out and about – further in store comparison shopping will be huge! 

6. Inventory management– Consumers can check in-store availability via a retailer’s mobile site the ultimate great experience for your customers.

7. Marketing  – Retailers can ask consumers to opt-in to receive coupons, special offers and ongoing mobile “just in time” specials. 

8. Check order status wherever, whenever – A mobile site also serves as a 24/7 customer service representative. Consumers can check their order status right from the retailer’s mobile site.

9. Location-based services – Retailers can use mobile to target consumers who have opted-in and are close to their retail locations. Special promotions by geography will be  welcomed by those who choose to receive them.

10. True Multichannel and Brand Alignment – Be there or be square - that's right- your teenagers will get it immediately.  The mobile channel needs to be a part of any retail brands offering.


The Top 10 adapted  from information provided byGiselle Tsirulnik, Article from The Mobile Marketer

Mobile Advertising continues to deliver better results and brand metrics than online advertising.   This might sound surprising because you are thinking of how small a mobile ad is in comparison.   While  mobile ‘real estate’ is restricted compared to a desktop website, it is exactly that ‘coziness’ that actually brings the superior edge to mobile.

Engagement is really the key to ad effectiveness.  Advertisements get our attention when we focus on them.  We notice ads when they are in-context of similar subject matter or when they are in an uncluttered landscape.  Today the average 10” to 15” website is often very cluttered with several ads trying to grab our attention.  Look at the Weather.com site for instance, (and I’m not picking on them it just happens to be snowing a lot today!) you’ll see a mix of brands from Pedigree to Weightwatchers – all on the same page.  Their mobile web page however has one, easy to read Hampton Inn ad.  So although size matters – attention and engagement matter more when it comes to effectiveness of ads.

Recently Insight Express published a report that found that mobile campaigns through the fourth quarter 2009 performed 4.5 to five times better than online ones against norms for measures including unaided and aided awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent.  Joy Liuzzo, senior director of marketing and mobile research at InsightExpress, said "the high levels of engagement, the explosion in technical capabilities, low levels of clutter and the novelty of mobile advertising all likely contribute
to increased brand impact."   Sites built for mobile devices really focus people on the content, inches from their face.  Focus works when it comes to ad effectiveness.



When you compare all of the options to advertise on mobile, we are proving out that the mobile web page is even more effective than SMS or in App ads at this point.  Mobile campaigns overall led to a higher level of purchase intent than online ads across key consumer categories including travel, auto, retail and technology. 

Publishers – it is time to realize that you will be able to make revenue on the mobile web from advertisements!  Build and manage a mobile website and most of all, understand your mobile audience using mobile web analytics.  Then use mobile ads to engage your customers and bring new revenue in 2010.

If you could compare how many people visited your desktop website using a mobile phone last January versus this January, you would likely be very shocked. 

How do you find that out?  You’ll need to interpret the log files from your website or use a site analytics package like Google Analytics.  Seeing the mobile traffic that is already trying to access your site is an enlightening experience.  It will give you instant insight into the shifting habits of your site visitors. 

Why should you care? 
If you don't have a site specifically created for mobile, then their experience is likely very poor. If your current site has Flash, Java or other popular site technologies - the mobile experience will be bad.  It is about your brand experience!

Traffic from mobile devices has taken a dramatic jump over the past year.  Smartphones, better data plan pricing and available bandwidth are contributing factors to the increased activity.  Just take a look at the newest statistics regarding mobile web traffic from Quantcast. 

Web traffic from mobile devices increased 110% in North America over the past year and 148% globally, according to a new study by Quantcast.  Putting it in to perspective, this is only a small fraction of overall Web traffic (1.3% of all North American page views in December 2009). Last August Admob reported that traffic doubled within that month from iPhone users alone!




The nature of that mobile traffic is changing too – hold on – iPhone is no longer the only platform you  need to consider. The Quantcast study shows that the dominance of the iPhone is being eroded by emerging competitors like Android.  Recently page views from the Droid in North America overtook RIM’s Blackberry.  Gee, that was fast!  Apparently Droid had over 12% of the North American page views helping Google's Android operating system surpass the BlackBerry OS.

In 2010, Quantcast expects growth of the mobile web's share of page views in North America to increase a full percentage point to 2.3%. Globally, mobile's share will increase from 0.95% to over 1.8%. A host of new devices from manufacturers Motorola, HTC and BlackBerry will fuel that growth this year.

So what does this mean for your business?  You should  be prepared for mobile visitors now.  You need to build a mobile website - like the largest media companies have had for years now (for example: m.cnn.com, m.weather.com or m.espn.com).  Developing a mobile website is easy and inexpensive with mobile platforms like MoFuse.  You can do it yourself or have someone build it for you in no time.

If we had to pick our favorite geological era - it would be the Cambrian when there was a profound radical change of life on earth. The very rapid explosion of new animal and plant life on earth is a bit like what we are about to experience in the mobile era.  Diversification of a great number of organisms occurred over a very short period of time.  As we enter 2010 we are experiencing the launch of a huge number of new mobile devices.  Some centered around a phone while others are more functionally focused on reading or gaming. 

Every one of these devices will have the ability to connect to the Internet.
Get ready for your Internet based content to be seen on any of 1000’s of mobile platforms.
Hint: you’ll want to have a mobile site built and managed just so these devices can take advantage of your content.

Smart Phones on the Rise

This recent IDC Press release tells the story: Nokia, Research In Motion, Apple and Android based "converged" devices continue to rise quickly.

According to Wikipedia there is no industry standard about what exactly constitutes a smart phone.    We know one when we see one.  Truth is “Phone” will only be a slice of what this device will come to mean to the human race.  Why not a “Smart Camera” or a “superintelligent music player”?   A smart phone can do a lot and they are built very differently than the more single focused ‘feature phone’, which was really built to make phone calls on the go.   One thing we know for sure, the Smart Phone penetration is on the rise globally. 

The combination of readily available big bandwidth (3G and above) and these ‘smart’ devices make a compelling reason for people to move to the full featured device. The smart phone market will climb to 37 percent of global handset sales in 2014 with emerging markets as the key growth engine, according to a new report from Pyramid Research. Cambridge-based Pyramid estimates that smart phones will account for a 16-percent share of total handset sales in 2009.  Also everyone expects that 2010 will be the year China takes top spot for Smart Phone sales – as iPhone will enter that market.  Also from Pyramid, they forecast that Brazil, Turkey, India and Nigeria will be the fastest growing market for smart phones over the next 5 years.

But something else is going on- as smart phones rise in the market – so do a number of other  functionally focused mobile devices.  For example, this holiday season we've kicked the launch of a number of ebooks into high gear.  Like game consoles, these are single purpose mobile devices and the early success of Kindle proves we are more than willing to own a few mobile devices to do everyday things.  Nooks, Kindles, the Sony eBook or any mobile web readers all have a chance to own a piece of this rapidly advancing market.

Growth of the mobile web has reached a Cambrian-like level of diversification of devices. You’ll want to think about the state of your business content as it will most certainly be accessed by these mobile organisms.  If you develop a mobile website you will be in the best position to capture the market that are already accessing the Internet anywhere they can!  Today MoFuse optimizes your mobile content on nearly 5,000 different mobile devices worldwide including Sony Playstations, Kindle and any smart or feature phone.   We can help you win in this new era.

Oh yes- it matters very much.

It’s happening before our eyes, the mobile web is growing up.  Exactly one week ago Google announced that it was acquiring mobile advertising industry leader, AdMob.

What does this mean?

The mobile web really is (as we’ve said 100 times before) a separate and important digital medium that you can no longer ignore. Google knows that mobile devices represent the largest penetration of any technology on the planet.   There are about 1 Billion desktop computers in the world and nearly 1 Billion Automobiles, but there are 4 Billion mobile devices!  With all of that reach (and attention) somebody will make money monetizing the mobile real estate that is accessed on all of those devices. The growth of the mobile web is just beginning.

We will look back on this event as a defining moment for the industry.  

This strategic acquisition by Google sends a strong signal that the mobile web is ready for prime time.    It signals that Google understands that traffic on the mobile web will no longer be guided by the carrier's initial landing page ('on deck' as it is termed in the industry).  Google has seen a 5X mobile search growth over the past 2 years.  Usage patterns of the mobile web have evolved significantly and are proof that people will seach, find destinations and link to mobile web pages directly- the same behaviors as the desktop web.  This movement 'off deck', away from the carriers 'guiding' you to the sports, news, weather  or any sites THEY want you to see, is a key change.   With more eyeballs, going to more mobile sites on their own -   more publishers will be able to make money on mobile advertising. 

AdMob is a leader in mobile advertising and supplies superior services for serving mobile ads and equally as important, for reporting on mobile web analytics.  Ad analytics give you insight into your mobile web readers or visitors, and include data such as: how many clicked, what kind of device were they using, what carrier, where were they on the globe when they responded, etc.   Serving ads to mobile devices is more complex than on the desktop web.  There are a relative handful of device types and web browsers on the desktop, but for mobile there are nearly 5,000 different devices worldwide.

Google’s acquisition of AdMob clears up the question- Is Mobile A Separate Channel?– it is. 

They acquired this mobile ad leader so they can "bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising, and will lead to more effective tools for creating, serving, and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats."    They see it as a new channel and you should too.

What Does This Mean To You?

Often people ask us – why can’t I just use the ads that are being served on my desktop website, or why won't my ads from the desktop show up on mobile?  Mobile is a separate channel and there is a distinct audience with a specific demographic profile that you will want to understand and address.   Why only get ad revenue from your desktop site when you can also design and host a mobile website that will give you advertising revenue for a new class of customers – your mobile audience.

It is time to make your site mobile and discover the newest channel for reaching a global audience - ready to experience mobile ads!

Are people afraid to visit your website on a mobile phone browser?

Right now your mobile web readers are trying to get to your desktop site on a mobile phone only to find:

• It doesn’t load at all and they get an "http" error
• Load time from hell - Your site loads extremely slow and if they don’t absolutely love you, they are gone
• They can’t find what they are looking for, and if they do, links don’t work, the text is a mess!

With very little time and effort, you can put a site together that will knock their socks off!
MoFuse can tell you how to build a mobile website that isn't a horror show!

When designing sites for mobile devices you will need to think differently than you do for the desktop web.


Consider there are 3 essential driving forces for mobile design:

• Your viewers have limited and hugely variable display capabilities
• They have awkward and difficult input mechanisms (keys are not good, scrolling, pinching etc)
• The mode or context of the User when they are mobile, is completely different

 

MoFuse is here to help- we’ve developed some quick and easy principles to consider when building your mobile site.

The Guiding Principles for Mobile Design:

 
Design for “Getting to the Point”: 
Mobile people have little time to find information.  They will be impatient if you put many slow loading pictures or graphics or if they can’t figure out where to find information on your site- in an instance. You don’t want too much downloading  before they can get to your information.

Design for Efficiency:  
Mobile viewers are often going for something specific, a function or bit of information from you. Rarely are they meandering or surfing the way someone might on the desktop web.  As you think about the most likely items that they will want to access from you in a mobile context, you should consider putting those functions at the top of the site.


Design for Easy: 
Mobile devices have difficult input (tiny keys, small touch screen for example), don’t make your visitors struggle.  If you can give them 1 click to call you- do it.   Avoid convoluted paths to get to essential information (don’t nest pages of information unnecessarily).  If you can manage it, don’t make them scroll down more than 3 times, this is a good rule of thumb when designing mobile.

Design for Widest Reach: 
Although Smart Phone usage is on the rise and eventually will dominate the market, you really want to make sure even the smallest mobile devices can use your mobile site and have a great experience.

Don’t Annoy: 
Mobile devices have limited navigation.  For example consider most phones only have up and down scrolling,not side to side.  Because you are dealing with such small real estate, you’ll want to get to the point, being concise is extremely important.  Don’t make people “weed” through a lot of unnecessary text.

 

The mobile version of your website is an additional source of revenue for your company!

It's early in the mobile ad game, but not too early to be testing out how to make a return on your mobile media.

When you have a mobile site and it is a good experience, you will build a mobile audience and get people to repeat visit.   You can make money on those eyeballs just like the desktop web.   A mobile phone website will help you to  build a viable audience with a strong demographic base in a new channel.   Mobile web traffic will deliver both new customers who are looking for your site ‘on the go’ (maybe using a search engine) as well as mobile viewers who enter your desktop URL (autodetection will send them to the mobile site). 

Every view of your mobile site is an opportunity to monetize your new media.

What is Mobile Advertising? 

It is similar to online advertising but the reach potential is far greater.  Start with the opportunity to reach 4 billion people (compare to 1 billion on your desktop computer).

How can you get a ROI for mobile advertising or marketing when using the MoFuse platform?

Here are the most direct ways today to get started:

1.    Sell a sponsorship to a local advertiser in your area or a company partner-  for a flat fee that would have a specific duration.  For example, perhaps you get a partner to sponsor all of your mobile views for 6 months for a fee of $3000.00.  You will be surprised to find how many of your partners will want to advertise on mobile - if you can deliver the valuable mobile eyeballs!

2.    Use one of the standard mobile ad networks to put ads on your site.  You can easily do this through the MoFuse interface “Monetize” button.  You can also use MoFuse Ad Network where we optimize about 6 mobile networks to provide the best ad for your site.

Every view of your mobile site is an opportunity to monetize your new media.

The forms of mobile advertising have been emerging for a number of years and are as follows:

Mobile banner ads – small graphical ads that are very similar in nature to desktop website banner ads.  They present a call to action (albeit smaller), placed top or bottom of the mobile web page.  When clicked, they take you to a mobile landing page (easily built on the MoFuse platform by the way).

Text links – similar to banner ads, except they are a text call to action link, when clicked take you to a landing page.

SMS - Text messaging – more like email marketing than advertising -  this is where you get to use the texting ability available on 100% of mobile phones worldwide.  That is some reach potential!  Like email,  a person must  opt-in to receive messages from you.   They will give you their mobile phone number and select perhaps some message category that you will send them (ie, sports scores, weather alerts, coupons or specials).   You may send short text messages to them of 160 characters.  Virtually every mobile phone in the world supports SMS so it is ubiquitous in its reach.

MMS -  multimedia messaging – is just like SMS but you get to send very fancy messages!   MMS is a rich messaging capability that allows for sending messages that include video, audio, photos and text.  MMS is not yet universally supported throughout the world via carriers.  But it is something you should know about and watch as it becomes more
prevalent throughout the coming years.  MMS is a significant advertising opportunity in the future!

Mobile TV advertising – OK just like TV advertising but done on the tiny screen.  The mobile ad will be a still or video ad place before, during or after a streaming mobile video.

Mobile applications – You can actually display ads inside of mobile apps.  Generally these are banners or ‘interstitials’ that show up between app actions.

For a comprehensive view  of mobile advertising guidelines you will want to check out the Mobile Marketing Association's (MMA)  guide
 
Every view of your mobile site is an opportunity to monetize your new media!

Do You Need A Separate Mobile Website? – Revisited

Yes - because people don't want to wait for your heavy desktop site to load on their mobile phone.  That is if that big ol' desktop site loads at all!

InsightExpress released a study in September about the levels of engagement among
various smart phone users.  They also compared ‘feature phones’ (basic non-smart phones) and desktop sites. 

When mobile Internet users were asked to identify the top three elements that most influence their decision to return to a mobile Internet site, they reported:


So we know that your audience will be truly engaged with your cell phone website, the study proves that.  It's up to you to take the stress out the experience by building a new mobile site that will load in about 1/10th of the time.

When you build a mobile site – you assure:  Very fast load time  (compare 36 seconds typical of a desktop website loading on a mobile device vs. 3 seconds for the majority of MoFuse mobile sites).

You design good, easy navigation into the site by making relevant content easily available – up front – without a lot of scrolling.

You get to select the content ensuring that is relevant to the mobile audience which means it will be high quality.   To read more about the study check out Mobile Marketing Magazine.

    VS.      


It is far and away the most asked question from MoFuse customers:

Can we place our web site analytics tag on our mobile website hosted by MoFuse?

Mobile web analytics are on everyone's mind. Once your mobile site is up and running, of course you want to know what your mobile web audience is doing and how you can improve their experience. 

However analytics for a desktop web site are fundamentally different than mobile web analytics in a few important ways:  

•    The execution of the measurement on the mobile site  - is different
•    The types  of data that you can capture – are different
•    Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will want to consider – are different

The Execution

There are 1000’s of different devices accessing your mobile site and most of them cannot handle cookie or tag technology which are standards for desktop site analytics to work.  Desktop website analytics refers to the measurement of visitors and their activities during the course of their visit to your site.  The most popular website analytics are performed today using page tags or log file analysis to track users.  Page tagging collects information via a code snippet or “tag” placed on your website which records and sends data to a third party for reporting and analysis. 

The problem:  tags for desktop sites are generally JavaScript which simply won’t do the job for the  mobile web.  JavaScript cannot be handled by most handsets or mobile browser technology.  Therefore, merely using the same tags that you use to measure desktop site just won’t work.  Worse, if you try to use them you will get results that will give you false or incomplete information!

Other standard methods for desktop site analytics such as HTTP Cookies, HTTP referrer and IP address information are also not supported by the majority of mobile browsers.  Even if they are, the data returned would be misleading due to the location of the Carrier’s IP gateway.

Collecting analytical data from your mobile site simply isn’t as straightforward as it is on your desktop site.  Using some traditional tools, like Google Analytics will appear to work at one level, however it will also give you misleading information because it is only representing a small subset of your mobile visitors.

A Different Approach for Mobile Analytics

When you make a mobile version of your website you will want to consider image tags or beacons, link redirection and HTTP header analysis instead of JavaScript tags for analytics of your mobile site.  MoFuse Premium provides all the data you need to get a proper picture of your mobile web traffic.

The Types of Data are Different for Mobile

In addition to data elements you collect from a desktop site, you can also collect data such as device type, carrier, geographic location, language and unique visitor identification.  MoFuse collects these for you and if you are a Premium user you will get these in your analytics information.   Next we'll talk about Key Performance Indicators that you will want to consider for your mobile site.  How can you measure the success of the  mobile site vs. your desktop site?  It all has to do with the goals you have for each site.

Some of you are wondering why we can’t just take your desktop site and squeeze it down real small so that people can see and do the same things on the mobile web.   As my grandmother used to say “you can’t put 10 pounds of sugar in to a 5 pound bag”. 

So where to you begin to think about mobilizing your site?

Start simple:  Think of 3 to 5 elements of your current desktop site that you would want on your mobile site.  Then consider the mode that your mobile viewer will be in.  What are the kinds of things that they will want  to do when they are ‘on the go’.  Is it comparison shop?  Find directions to your store?  See a sample menu or get your weekly ‘mobile in-store coupon deal’?

If you really don’t know where to begin to create a mobile website, here’s a tip: It’s highly likely that you already have mobile traffic that is trying to access your big, giant desktop site on the tiny screen.  What is it they are trying to do?

Start by asking your IT department to look at the log files of your desktop site and tell you where mobile traffic is going now.  It will give you enormous clues about where they go when they are mobile and hunting around your desktop site for functions. 

Once you figure out those 3 to 5 things that might make for a great mobile experience – test it out!

The good news is you don’t have to be a member of the IT department to build a mobile website now.  Creating and managing that site can be done by the marketing team by using mobile web tools like the MoFuse Premium platform.

Platforms like MoFuse make it simple enough that you can test and modify your mobile site very easily and for no extra cost.  Ask your customers, or "spy" on what they are doing today when they access your heavy desktop site with mobile devices – you’ll get a very good idea of where to start.

A lot of people think that the mobile web is just a “mini” version of the desktop web. That iPhone made it possible to simply miniaturize your desktop site so it works just the same on a mobile device.

That’s just not the case today nor will it be the case in the future.  You need to have a mobile friendly site, one that is designed with the mobile web readers front and center.

Why? 

The first reason is real estate- that's a no brainer.  Smaller screen, you need to be more effective at getting the essential messages out there.

Second is – well – how will the mobile web audience find you?  Search of course!
You've probably already been to Google and other search engines on the mobile web.
When you put a term in that search engine on a mobile device, do you think they use the same search algorithms and rankings as on the desktop web?

No, actually they use very different rankings when they know that a search is being done from a mobile device!

About a year ago  Google was awarded a patent for mobile search.  Their mobile search patent explains that…

"The mobile search result quality scores and the generic search result quality scores were generated according to different scoring formulas. Based on one or more terms in the search query, the search query is classified as a mobile query. As a consequence, one or more search result quality scores are modified to improve the sorting of search results that include both mobile and generic search results."   You can read up more on this patent here at SEO Principle.com.

In March of this year Google announced that their mobile traffic had quintupled since 2007.  It’s no secret that iPhone also has helped mobile search grow exponentially. It got more people interested in using the mobile web - and when we went there, we hurried right to our old habits: Search.

And the types of searches we do on mobile are different.  According to Google Mobile ad sales director Diana Pouliot, Local search on the mobile device indexes higher than the desktop by about two to three times.  So what does that mean?  It means as people are getting very comfortable using the mobile internet – they are doing what you might expect- searching for things, companies, entertainment, restaurant and more. 

No surprise, Google dominates mobile search  but there are a lot of mobile search engines out there.



So will a mobile search engine really be different?

Yes. 

First it will recognize the searcher is mobile and therefore the ranking algorithm will be different.   It is looking for a mobile version of your website.  Also Mobile search engines will offer relevant information based on location (and that is one reason why local mobile search will be important).

So once again you need a mobile web site built for the mobile web.  If you use a provider like MoFuse we enable your mobile site to automatically be entered into all of the mobile search engines.  You will be ready for SEO the minute you use our mobile web tools.

You need to add a mobile sitemap. Search engines such as Google discover information about your site by employing software known as "spiders" to crawl the web. Once the spiders find a site, they follow links within the site to gather information about all the pages. The spiders periodically revisit sites to find new or changed content. Google Mobile Web Search crawls and indexes sites that have been specifically designed for mobile phones and devices. By using Mobile Sitemaps to inform and direct their crawlers, they continuously expand their coverage of the mobile web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to their mobile indexes.

The first step is realizing people will be searching for you on the mobile web - but most important you need to be ready with a mobile web enabled site- set up for Search!
 

Mobile web traffic worldwide will reach more than one exabyte per month by 2012, that is what Cisco reported earlier this year.  As reported by Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOm, “To put that in perspective, the wired web transferred that much data as of 2004, more than three decades after the first email was sent. The mobile web will reach this milestone 18 years after the first text message was sent.”




So mobile content market is big getting bigger, agree?



Mobile content is any digital content that can be viewed, downloaded or interacted with using a web browser or app on a mobile device.  Some examples:

• Mobile Web Pages
• SMS (text messages)
• Mobile Apps
• Downloadable:
  • Ring Tones
  • Wallpaper
  • Music
  • Games
  • Videos
  • Mobile TV

Strategy Analytics forecasts the value of the mobile content market -- including downloadable games, ringtones, wallpapers, video, mobile TV, text alerts and mobile web browsing -- to grow 18 percent to $67 billion this year.

I remember back in the late 90’s when online advertising was just revving up- the panel discussions were overflowing with absurd questions about which format of online advertising would be the ‘winner’?   Ten years later the answer is all of them.  None of them died, all of the proliferated albeit some to a greater degree than others.  Biodiversity wins.

Recently Vic Gundotra, Google Engineering vice president and developer as reported here on the Financial Times put a stake in the ground and claimed “the mobile web has won” and that in the future mobile users will be getting their mobile internet stuff done via a mobile browser, not via apps.  While it’s certainly in my best interest to give Mr. Gundotra a high five and say “he’s right”, there is something bigger going on here.

The mobile content ecosystem will be diverse.  In the App vs. Mobile web wars there will not be a clear winner.  They will both exist and contribute to mobile internet success. 

Do you need a mobile website?  We believe you do because people will use their mobile browsers to find your brand.  Do you need a mobile app?  It might be very effective for your brand, do consider the audience you will reach.  Having an app that works on only 1 handset might be limiting to say the least.  Then consider how many other handsets you’ll need to write special apps for.  We think no matter what you will want to build a mobile website as a baseline for your brand.