Mobile Website Builder

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.

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.

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.

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