Mobile Platforms

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!

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 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.

Mobile Advertising 101

Friday, October 16, 2009 by Annette Tonti

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!

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.

Thinking Small

Sunday, August 23, 2009 by Annette Tonti

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.

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.

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.