Develop a Mobile Website

Link The Real World: QR Code

Saturday, June 12, 2010 by Annette Tonti

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.

Smart Getting Smarter

Monday, May 17, 2010 by Annette Tonti

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.

eReader, iPad, PDA – Oh My

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 by Annette Tonti

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!

Mobile Web Traffic, Hitting the Accelerator to Your Site

Sunday, January 24, 2010 by Annette Tonti

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.

Mobile Cambrian Era – Here We Come

Thursday, December 10, 2009 by Annette Tonti

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.

Beware The Mobile Frankensite

Friday, November 6, 2009 by Annette Tonti

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 Need For Speed

Sunday, September 27, 2009 by Annette Tonti

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:

1. The speed at which the site loads
2. The ease of navigation on the site
3. The quality of the content on the site itself

What is very remarkable is that when a mobile site was available and well designed, smart phone users felt “positively engaged” almost at the very same level as desktop website users: 68% smart phone to 70% desktop site. That means when you develop a mobile website for your mobile audience, you will have satisfied repeat visitors.

On another note, those who access the mobile web on a feature phone (think: basic mobile phone) were only 48% positive about the experience. This isn't shocking really. Most desktop sites simply won't load at all - but if you develop using a platform like MoFuse the site give the feature phone user an optimal experience.

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.

The War That Wasn't

Sunday, July 26, 2009 by Annette Tonti

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.

Take The Test...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 by Annette Tonti

We get asked all of the time: Do I really need a mobile site? Or won’t the mobile phone browser just show my desktop website? Do I really need to develop a Mobile Website? (see answers below)

The best way to understand what happens when someone accesses the desktop version of your website on a mobile phone is to try it. Also try it on several different devices. You will quickly see that your desktop site probably looks unusable on every phone. The exception may be the iPhone, but consider people do not like to point, pinch and squeeze their way to your information!

Here is an example of a website for the Common Angels and what it looks like on a Blackberry. The left is their desktop URL typed into the mobile browser, the right is a MoFuse built site.

No Mobile site MoFuse Site

Try this yourself, input their desktop based URL www.commonangels.com. On the right we built a site on the MoFuse for Business platform, a very simple site that took us less than 20 minutes. The MoFuse site is very basic but we made the website mobile friendly. Look at http://commonangels.bxs.mobi on your cellphone, it will help you to understand what we mean.

There will be no magic bullets to automate sites for mobile devices. You simply cannot automatically push (or 'scrape') the information from your desktop website to create a mobile friendly version, without some human design. Sites for mobile devices take rethinking, they also require mobile web tools that help manage your mobile website for all devices.

Answers from above:

No
A mobile handset browser will never perform magic with your desktop site. It cannot figure out what to place on that tiny screen with priority. Therefore I’m afraid you will need to build a mobile website. To create a mobile website it will take some rethinking of your mobile audience and what they need. The message and design should to follow the form… therefore consider what it will take to make your website mobile.

Yes
You need a mobile website. Juniper predicts 1.7 Billion people will be accessing the web with a mobile device by 2013. You need to be there so they can find you! The time is now to create your mobile customers to your brand.

Stand Up and Be Mobi Counted

Sunday, June 28, 2009 by Annette Tonti

The first mobile phone to have Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator, launched in Finland in 1996 (source Wikipedia). NTT DoCoMo in Japan launched the first mobile Internet service, i-Mode in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile phone based Internet.

That was 10 years ago!

In 2008 the cross-over happened, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC user on the Internet (Wikipedia). Is there more of a compelling reason to consider making you website mobile friendly?

Earlier this year in Las Vegas the latest numbers were in: the mobile web had seen a sevenfold increase in mobile-friendly Web sites since last year. This reported by dotMobi, the company behind “.mobi” mobile web site naming convention. New mobile sites are on the rise.

When dotMobi first performed this study a year ago, 150,000 mobile Web sites were available. dotMobi now counts approximately 1.1 million mobile site addresses in the world, based on a scan of the largest Top Level Domains (TLDs) in use. The 1.1 million number means that approximately 0.8 percent of all domains are likely to have mobile-friendly content…. In perspective 99.2% of all web sites do not have a mobile friendly site!

As a comparison, Verisign estimates there are approximately 77.4 million “live” PC based websites (with ‘.com’ or ‘.net’ extensions).

Why should you care?

People are looking for your mobile site. In May comScore released a study that showed mobile users (in the US) are accessing the Mobile web 35.3% of the time, compared to 37% for voice and 27.7% for SMS. The demand is growing very fast. If you aren't sure how to get started, check out a mobile website builder like MoFuse who can get your started immediately and at a low cost. You need to be counted on the mobile web!

What Should My Mobile Site Do?

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Annette Tonti

As phones get smarter and mobile browsers get better at rendering your desktop site, many ask the question: “Why do I need a mobile site at all?”   The mobile experience is not about shrinking your site to fit on a tiny screen, rather it is about communicating with your customers when they are in an entirely new context. No matter the certainty of new devices, faster browsers and higher bandwidth in the future, the mobile experience merits its own design! Let's get started to make your website mobile friendly.

It all starts with the user- they are in a different ‘mode’ or context when they are using a handheld to access your site. The point being, your user is mobile and their needs at that moment will be quite different from that of a desktop viewer.   Your full website on a mobile screen would be overwhelming at best and a major annoyance at worst.

Rethinking Mobile: How do I begin?
Mobile Web Development

As usual, the first thing to do is to step in to your customer’s shoes.   If someone is accessing your site for a mobile device what are the kinds of things they would want to do there?    Will they read your latest article, find a store location or perhaps check to see if you are offering a special promotion?

Consider some basic aspects of the mobile user: They are likely out and about and time is an issue for them. They are looking for something more specific from you – either a recent article or some information to connect with your brand, maybe they want directions to your storefront.   By the way, they are holding a device that can make a phone call so consider adding voice interaction (can you say “click to call”).   The device probably has a smaller and perhaps less comfortable keyboard than the desktop- so you’ll also want to consider what keystrokes you will ask them to perform.

Less will always be better- that is the primary rule of converting your website to mobile.

Here are some questions to consider when you are making a website mobile:
•    What is the context of the average mobile visitor?
•    What are the goals of the mobile user?
•    Why are they going to your mobile website at this time?
•    What are they likely and unlikely to have any interest in?

MoFuse Top 10 Rules of Mobile Website Design

1. Keep it Simple
With over 5000 devices and screen sizes, simple layout is the only way to go

2. Make it Convenient
Put most important information at the top, easy to access

3. Speed Up Their Use
Think less keystrokes, use radio buttons or dropdowns to get data entry when possible

4. Don’t Annoy Them
If you use images use jpeg or gifs to make them quick to load, nobody likes to wait for a slow loading site

5. Pay attention to Navigation
MoFuse ensures a ‘back’ button on every page, nesting topics leads to quicker understanding

6. Consider Color Contrast
Make sure text shows up against a pleasant, yet contrasted background for easy reading

7. Connect With Them
If it is appropriate for your business type, enable them with a Click to Call button, use the phone’s core capabilities

8. Help Them Find It
A search bar is more than a convenience; it is a time-saver and often their quickest way to get answers

9. Keep Them Up To Date (and make your job easier)
Use RSS feeds to populate your mobile site, whatever you use on your desktop site should work fine

10. Listen and Iterate
Just like with your desktop site, you will learn as you go and it is easy to make changes with the premium site builder

For more information on Best Practices for Mobile Design visit the W3C guide: http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/

To get some ideas on the best new mobile site designs you can check out: http://www.mobileawesomeness.com

MoFuse has a platform that helps you build sites for mobile devices around the world. Find us a www.mofuse.com