For the last ten years I have heard someone, somewhere say ‘this is the year for mobile’. It’s become a standing joke in our industry - from SMS to WAP – it seems everything has been tried and failed. Well, now it’s my turn - and at the risk of being laughed at, I am going to tell you ‘this is the year for mobile!’ Here’s why.
Over the past few years, consumers have embraced – at remarkable speed – new digital devices and service models to have immediate access to personal and business information, stay in touch with their social networks and make their lives more efficient and fun. Most recently, they have gobbled up a variety of mobile and smart phones such as Apple’s iPhone and services like Facebook and Twitter. People today are used to talking to or texting someone half way around the world; they are taking pictures and videos while walking down the street, as well as conducting mobile banking and retail transactions. Consumers are downloading games and music, tracking where they are on a global positioning system and watching movies or live television on-demand by using one mobile device.
The rapid pace of consumer adoption of new digital convergence models has given consumers around the world the power to demand what they want, when they want it, and how they expect to get it. As a result, this power has put added pressure on telecommunications and media companies, as well as consumer electronics manufacturers, to deliver the goods according to consumers’ perception of value and trust.
From email to music, from maps to social media - and a myriad of applications, all interfacing into your favourite online services, the mobile internet lies at the heart of all digital media. This is just the start. Even personally speaking, I think at least ten percent of my ‘online’ time now is done via my Smartphone- my Twitter and Facebook updates die when my mobile battery runs out or I am out of range.
The mobile internet and mobile internet presences are rapidly becoming a fact of life. So isn’t it time you got one?
Currently one billon people in the world are online - that’s about a sixth of the world’s population. However, four billion people - that’s two-thirds of the population - have a mobile phone. It reaches into some of the remotest parts of our planet. No roads to dig up and put in wires, a fashion accessory that demands upgrade at least three times as often as your PC, we are talking one of the fastest growing and widest reaching technologies known to man.
Here we boldly go, crossing the digital threshold, clutching our mobile device in hand, smiling all the way to early retirement, right? No self-respecting ‘cyber-digital’ mobile man, or woman, need ever worry again that their creed will not be taken seriously: digital communications are the mainstream and the mobile internet plays an increasingly crucial role in stitching it all together…
So what does all of this mean for you?
It means that even if you've been sceptical about mobile, we seem to be reaching an inflection point where it's hard to not to take it seriously. Now is a good time to be thinking about a mobile strategy.
Whether your strategy means making sure that your website can be viewed properly on mobile devices or entails more involved and dedicated mobile initiatives, by putting a mobile strategy in place now, you can help ensure that your online business is prepared to take advantage of the growth opportunities that the ripening mobile internet seems set to offer over the next several years.
Yet according to a recent survey conducted by Forbes magazine, only eight percent of the Fortune 1000 companies actually have any mobile web presence or strategy whatsoever! This is almost incredulous as it stands but it gets worse. The latest PWC/Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) report on ecommerce states that between two and seven percent of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, while global e-commerce revenues for 2008 totalled £117.6bn. So even allowing for a wide error margin, two percent of mobile web traffic could, in theory, account for over £1.2bn in m-commerce revenues!
While that's almost certainly an exaggeration, I do think that online publishers, e-tailers and internet entrepreneurs who look at the mobile internet with scepticism would be wise to consider that it just might offer the same sort of potential seen when the internet we know today was first starting to come into focus.
Despite long-time web design guru, Jakob Nielsen’s recent report which pronounced the mobile web experience ‘miserable’, I think he’s probably done the whole industry a bit of a favour really by highlighting the fact that to make the mobile web truly ‘usable’, you actually have to design the web for mobile.
I’m a little dubious about the research itself, but mainly that’s because I already knew that getting a test subject to access a full website on a mobile browser is UI suicide. I’m not disregarding the findings at all, because I agree with the conclusions. I just feel that the approach could have been to look more closely at sites already designed with mobile in mind might have helped us advance the cause rather than assist the stragglers.
To summarise the problems in his research findings: ‘Websites don’t work on mobile because they are designed for a big screen and mouse controlled GUI.’ The solution, of course, is to actually make dynamic and optimizing services for mobile. As a developer or designer, once you begin on this path, usability common sense kicks in, mainly because you have to work and test on mobile devices during development.
Nielson’s survey presents us with the very useful point that designing specifically for mobile is the smartest way to go. Standard websites are simply not designed for easy interaction – even on the smartest handsets. The research found that general satisfaction was higher for mobile-specific designs rather than full websites on mobile screens. “If mobile use is important to your internet strategy,” says Nielsen. “It’s smart to build a dedicated mobile site.”
So what does all this mean for advertisers? Several things; new reach to remote markets, enabling investigation and comparison of products whilst out shopping, grabbing content from posters via QR codes or even SMS interaction with TV programs - this is a device that is creating a personal link between all media and interactivity with brands without wires, as well as true personalisation of content.
One thing is for sure, it won’t take 10 years for mobile to reach the same point as the internet is now - and with quadruple the reach - expect an overtake in penetration even sooner than that. The mobile internet is NOT the internet – users browse the mobile internet for very different purposes and it presents an unrivalled opportunity to connect to users wherever they are. Yes this is year for mobile web development- and it’s very, very exciting!
Author: Anne Thomas, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer, Wapple