Making Your Website Mobile

What I Learned From The MO-lympics

Thursday, February 25, 2010 by Annette Tonti

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.

Mobile Commerce, What Every Retailer Needs To Know

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 by Annette Tonti

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:

1. Text message donations – recent earthquake relief put this format squarely on the map for moving currency very seamlessly – for good! The Red Cross received well over $22 million in text based donations in January 2009 for Earthquake relief in Haiti.

2. Mobile web page checkout – through Google Check out or others such as Paypal and even Amazon, retailers have many options now to create a mobile website and get a shopping cart front and center for mobile buyers

3. Near Field Communication - NFC is a short-range, high-frequency, wireless communications technology that enables the exchange of data between devices over four inches apart. The 2010 Mobile World Congress is underway this week in Spain where a key topic is ‘contactless mobile payments’. It is being tested in many areas around the world now.

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

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.

Mobile App or Mobile Website? (Hint: You Need One Of These For Sure!)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 by Annette Tonti

If you believe that mobile is a strong medium to reach your customers – you need to be thinking about how your brand will evolve on the mobile web. Today you have a few interesting options and they are not mutually exclusive.

As consumers wake up to the idea that they can actually reach the internet on their phone, we are about to see an explosion of new mobile devices; ITouch, Kindle, “netbooks” and even Sony Playstation Portable already are rapidly changing the ‘connection’ landscape.

What is a marketer to do?

First and foremost, every marketing executive should do a quick experiment and look at how their current “desktop” website looks on various mobile devices. Not great? We thought so. Though iPhone may deliver a version of your current desktop site – it is likely not an optimal experience either (too much pinch & zoom is not good) and certainly won’t cover most of the mobile internet user base.

Next question: Do you really need a separate mobile site?

Yes you need a mobile site… Why? One of the fastest growing activities people are doing on the mobile web today is search. The growth of mobile search is soaring! Further Google’s mobile traffic has quintupled since 2007 that growth will continue as smart phone penetration rises around the globe! They are looking for you and it will be important to be there with a great mobile site experience for your mobile viewers.

The good news is that it is easy to make your website mobile friendly. There are a few ways to do this, some require custom work others leverage mobile web tools. At MoFuse we aim to help speed your way to a mobile site. We also take the pain out of managing and editing that site over time. Check us out at: www.mofusepremium.com .

Well then, what about Apps?

The iPhone changed the game for the downloadable application or “App”. Apple got the storefront right and helped to ignite the mobile app as a standard in the mobile ecosystem. Today over 1 billion apps have been downloaded from the Apple iPhone app store alone! Everyone else has followed- so consumers can also buy downloadable apps from carriers like Verizon or newer storefronts just for phones such as Google’s Android or Nokia’s new Ovi. Apps are cool, often fun, and useful - those are the key elements you will want to architect into your app if you go that way. Today about 25 million people tap into apps, Cnet reports that the number of users who will tap into the App store will be at 100 million by 2013!

While having a mobile site is ‘table stakes’, deciding to go with an app requires another level of consideration. The growing number of mobile app options is staggering. Today Apple offers over 40,000 apps in their store. Nokia is about to release their app store, Ovi with over 20,000 apps. The Android store is built to grow apps even more quickly as they offer an ‘open’ environment for programmers. Don’t forget the Blackberry app store… Wheeew! So the first question is where do you fit in? Should you build an app for each individual device (store)? Just for iPhone or Blackberry?

Second consider how will people find your app? Finding a brand’s mobile app will continue to be a challenge as apps multiply quickly. Standing out in the app crowd is a key issue for marketers.

Third, what should your app do? You’ll want to consider how to get the most brand engagement as the data shows that apps with practical use work best at long term, continued usage.

That said – is an app right for every brand? The answer is no- not every brand or storefront needs an app. Today they are the “new” thing but longer term the mobile ecosystem will evolve.

We believe the pattern of usage of the mobile web today makes it imperative to have a user-friendly mobile site that works on every phone (like you can build at MoFuse). Depending on your business objectives you should consider apps carefully and of course SMS messaging.

Check out mobile web tools that can help you get a new mobile site in a hurry.

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

Is A Mobile Site Really Necessary?

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Annette Tonti

Today there are over 5000 mobile devices that can display some version of a web page. That number is getting bigger fast! As more phones become “smart” and more computing devices become… well smaller, you need to have a strategy around having a high quality mobile presence that works everywhere.

Your customers are mobile, be there for them. It's time to create a mobile website.

A recent report showed that mobile web traffic more than doubled between January 2008 and 2009. Mobile web traffic is going to continue to rise, quickly. Sites like ESPN have already had days where their mobile site gets more traffic than their desktop site!

Whether in the US, Asia or Europe your customers are likely carrying more than one hand held mobile device. Legacy PC companies are all moving mobile, and about to put new portable “netbook” devices on the streets. At the end of March 2009 Michael Dell, CEO of Dell said “For the last three years, we have integrated 3G radios into our notebooks,” said Dell. “We already have agreements with many mobile carriers around netbook devices, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that we would have smaller mobile Internet devices or smartphones in the future.”

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If you want to make your website mobile friendly there are a few ways to get there: an expensive custom built site or you can go to a provider like MoFuse who will help you by offering mobile platforms for building business sites and blog sites.

What is MoFuse?

MoFuse is the fastest growing network of build-it-yourself mobile sites in the world. Short for Mobile Fusion, MoFuse provides a platform that enables businesses, bloggers and any other web publisher to provide a compelling mobile experience on any mobile device.