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When Mobile Rules Online

Karl Hourigan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:20:22 +0000

There’s a difference between “accessing the internet” and “accessing a web site”. Lots of buzz is being created around the idea that over the next 5 years we will see more people accessing the internet from their mobile device than from a personal computer. But I think it’s worth diving a little deeper into that notion before we get all worked up about making our corporate web sites mobile-friendly.

When you think about web sites and mobilistas, think about people, not technology, because it’s people who will determine where the play is in future internet development. And when thinking about people, it’s usually pretty simple to start thinking about ourselves first. So go ahead and think about yourself for a minute and ponder that ubiquitous online future, or at least what it might look like 5 years from now.

Are you willing to see mobile phones get as big as say, a Kindle, or a Skiff? No, me neither. So accessing the full functionality of a well thought out web site from a cell phone is not going to happen. Alright then, what about a cell phone that could project a larger holographic display, with something like a virtual keyboard or touch screen? Well, maybe, but there are a few bugs to work out, from both the people and the tech sides of the equation. Will I sacrifice too much privacy with a projector-phone, and will it work in all lighting conditions, for starters? And let’s assume cost won’t ultimately be an issue. But it seems that the mobile web experience will continue to be different than the sit-down personal computer experience for some time yet.

With a mobile device and wireless access almost anywhere you go, in the nearer term of this 5 year prognostication we can extrapolate some ideas about what kind of functionality will matter to people on their mobile web devices. Mobile of course implies being on the move, so GPS, maps, in-store shopping promotions, service finders (fuel, washrooms, food, lodgings, medical, cash machines, tourist attractions), social networks, file sharing and timely – make that instant – access to information about what’s happening right now, will all matter a lot. And these are the kind of things that cell phone apps are doing really well.

So if your company’s online presence is a key contributor to your business success (and if it’s not now, do you really believe it still won’t be in 5 years?), and you want to make sure that the mobile web population is interacting online with your business, think about the key benefits you can offer someone on a mobile device. Will they want to check your inventory, track a shipment, get a quote, check your hours and location, or…? Your web site can include everything you’ve got to offer, and all your company information, but for the mobile customers, focus, focus, focus on just the functionality they’ll need to access in the palm of their hands. If you deliver that focused functionality in a concise format, optimizing both your web properties (mobile and not-so-mobile) to be search and user friendly, then you’ll position your company ahead of so many who will simply ignore mobile or mistakenly think they can just port over their current web approach to a handset.

Wireless in Waikiki

Gord Hotchkiss — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:06:54 +0000

Having just dragged my butt off a beach in Hawaii, my mind has not fully settled itself back in the search groove. But I did come to a realization in between snorkeling (highly recommended) and hiking the Na Pali coast in Kauai (even more highly recommended). Mobile is going to change our lives in amazing ways.

I’ve visited this topic before, but this time, in addition to my beautiful wife and two charming daughters, I traveled with a new companion, a brand new HTC TyTN II with an unlimited data plan. While this may sound “ho-hum” to you Americans, unlimited data is an impossible dream here in Canada. Our mobile providers are still holding us hostage for daring to check emails while on the road. It’s a sad state of affairs for an otherwise civilized country.

All Wired Up and No Place to Go

The combination of 3G speeds, a relatively powerful device and the elimination of worry about a roaming data bill spinning upwards faster than gas prices proved to be a heady and intoxicating combination for me. Unfortunately, I found that although (metaphorically) I was all dressed up, there were still precious few places to go. A couple of times I found my self saying, “surely there must be a WAP site for that” only to find myself trying to negotiate non-mobile friendly interfaces in a horribly glitchy browser. While the potential was so intoxicating, the reality fell far short.

This was a topic I touched on briefly in my opening remarks at the last Search Insider Summit. Mobile is the place where discontinuous innovation is most likely. There must have been a dozen times over the last 2 weeks where I said, “it would be so great if someone could…” and completed the sentence with something that seemed so obvious to me yet apparently was unavailable at this time.

So Much Potential, So Little Functionality

Now, much as I’d like to say that it’s my incredible vision that brought all these great possibilities to light, I suspect these are not undiscovered ideas. I’m sure that many companies are sitting on them, just waiting for the right convergence of device horsepower, input and output performance enhancements, bandwidth and standardization to roll these mobile killer apps out. Once some of current bottlenecks are solved, or at least relaxed, I believe there will be a rush of mobile innovation that’s been sitting on a shelf, biding it’s time.

Here’s just one example. While on Kauai, I started dreaming of actually owning property there. I indulge in this little fantasy (the huge gap between my income and Kauai property prices unquestionably defines this as a fantasy) every year. So I did a little searching on Zillow.com just to see how out of reach my dreams were. Now, on the laptop, Zillow is a rich information resource for real estate shoppers. But when you go mobile, its functionality is limited to texting an address to Zillow, and it sending back the current market price of the property as a return text message. While intriguing, this falls far short of Zillow’s total online experience. How amazing would it be to drive through neighborhoods, GPS enabled PDA or smartphone in hand, and have maps instantly updated with available properties and details. You can almost here the words coming out of my mouth: “It would be so great if…” Well, you get the idea.

Google: a Map in the Right Direction

I used Google Maps on the mobile a lot while I was away, and I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed with the functionality that has been squeezed into this little app. But we’re barely scratching the surface of what’s possible. Using it to look for a good Mexican restaurant while hiding out from a down pour in Waikiki was an experience that would have driven a lesser man to tears. It’s not really Google’s fault, it’s the lack of online, mobile friendly presence on the part of almost every business on the planet. Yes, I’ve heard all the market rationalizations about early adoption, critical mass of markets, bandwidth required to mobilize local advertisers…yadda, yadda, yadda. But Dammit, the potential is just so tantalizing!

So, my expectations of mobile nirvana fell a little flat, but you’ll be happy to hear I made a full recovery after intensive and repeated beach and Mai Tai therapy.

Mahalo!

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider, April 3, 2008

What are the Benefits of Google’s OpenSocial and Android?

admin — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:59:22 +0000

Google's vision of creating open platforms for both OpenSocial (using a single API) and Android (Open Handset Alliance) is absolutely genius. Not only does it help Google competitively but it also helps create a stronger user experience and a strong support community. Here are some of the major benefits to open platforms such as OpenSocial and Android:

User Experience: Allowing developers to design applications on top of your platform provides the ability for users to have unique experiences tailored specifically for them. From a mobile perspective there will now potentially be a thousand different versions of the same operating system each tweaked slightly so that it fits the owners needs. Furthermore it will allow people to share the coolest parts of their user experience across all networks.
Standardization: With numerous partners involved in both OpenSocial and Android, developers have a standardized way of creating applications for users without having to worry about platform. The standard platform also helps define documentation, procedures and application sharing.
Cost: Open platforms always tend to be far less expensive than mainstream/off the shelf products. With platforms such as Android in place, users will notice a cut in cost compared to handhelds operating systems like Windows Mobile and Palm OS.
Innovation: Giving developers the access to such powerful and flexible platforms will encourage increased innovation as they compete to develop the next killer application.
Support: Open Platforms (1 common base) equals Thousands of Developers which equals the amount of support available for applications and configuration that are built on top of the platform.

"Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform, users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos."

"OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Common APIs mean you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community."

Original Post: Web Analytics World – Benefits of OpenSocial, Android

Yahoo Mobile Marketing for B2B Marketers

Jody Nimetz — Mon, 14 May 2007 15:14:12 +0000

Top of mind awareness is important. But generating awareness and maintaining this top of mind awareness can be difficult to do. For B2B marketers who are looking to create awareness about their solutions and services, being innovative and finding new methods to create awareness is key. An innovative method for creating top of mind awareness is through the use of search and mobile marketing.

The major search engines from Yahoo to Google have products in place to address the need of mobile advertisers. Look to both search giants to continue to improve their mobile search solution offerings. So why should B2B marketers use mobile search as part of their online marketing strategies? Examining the mobile solutions that Yahoo and Google offer may provide some answers as to why B2B marketers should incorporate mobile search into their marketing efforts.

Yahoo Mobile Search

Yahoo! has one of the largest audiences on the mobile Web. Through Yahoo! oneSearch and Yahoo! Go, Yahoo! reaches a substantial percentage of the worldwide mobile audience. Yahoo claims that Yahoo! oneSearch reinvents search to give consumers exactly what they want on their mobile device – instant answers. vYahoo mobile services enable mobile advertisers, publishers and operators to elevate business results.

Yahoo's mobile search solution fo publishers include items such as:

Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network
Yahoo! Mobile Content Engine
Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory
Yahoo! Mobile Site Submit

Yahoo Mobile Business Services is designed to enable:

Advertisers to reach the growing mobile consumer audience with innovative, highly-targetable placements that deliver results.

Publishers to increase the discovery and distribution of their content to mobile consumers, and to generate revenue from it.

Network Operators to offer leading-edge customer experiences, and to participate in the growth of mobile advertising

As B2B marketers, Yahoo!'s Mobile Ad Services can be a great method for increasing top of mind awareness for the services and solutions that they provide. Products such as Yahoo! oneSearch, do in fact provide a better search experience that redefines search for the phone. B2B marketers who have not looked at mobile search as a means of creating top of mind awareness should indeed consider mobile search as an addition to their marketing efforts.

Yahoo Press Release on Yahoo oneSearch
Yahoo Press Release on Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services

Original Post on Yahoo Mobile Marketing for B2B Marketers on SEO-Space

Mobile SEO as a Part of B2B Online Marketing

Jody Nimetz — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:27:35 +0000

Last week I wrote a piece on Ten Ways B2B Marketers Can Become Cutting Edge with Online Marketing. One of the items mentioned was to use Mobile Marketing to compliment your online presence. So exactly what is mobile marketing or mobile SEO? Can it be used by B2B marketers as a lead generation tool? Should it be used by B2B marketers as part of an online marketing strategy at all?

Before we try to answer these questions, we should discuss exactly what mobile marketing/mobile SEO is.

Definition of Mobile SEO: the process of increasing visitors to your web properties through the use of mobile marketing and promotion.

Definition of Mobile Marketing: Mobile marketing is the process of marketing on or with a mobile device such as a cellular phone or personal digital assistants (PDA). Mobile marketing is usually done through SMS.

Definition of SMS: Short Message Service (SMS) is also known as “text-messaging” and is a telecommunications protocol that allows the sending of "short" (160 characters or less) text messages.

Since the start of the decade, Short Message Service (SMS) has become popular in Europe and Asia. As a result, businesses in these areas started to compile mobile phone numbers and send off content and ad messages. Mobile Marketing via SMS has expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer. As a side note, the first cross-carrier SMS shortcode campaign in North America was run by Labatt Brewing Company in 2002.

SMS Facts

• in 2000 (the start of text messaging and SMS) just 17 billion SMS messages were sent
• in 2001, the number was up to 250 billion
• 2004 saw this rise to 500 billion SMS messages
• At an average cost of USD 0.10 per message, this generates revenues in excess of $50 billion for mobile telephone operators
• The 2004 total of SMS messages represents close to 100 text messages for every person in the world
• Short messages are most popular amongst young people who live in urban areas

So the question becomes should B2B marketers use mobile marketing? Well the quick answer is yes why not? Mobile marketing presents a fairly cost effective way to intercept your audience. You can use it to promote your website (in addition to your solution or product). Mobile marketing cannot hurt your existing campaign. In fact it can be used to bolster your online marketing campaign. There are a number of reasons as to why B2B marketers may want to consider establishing a mobile marketing strategy.

Reasons Why Mobile SEO Should be a part of a B2B Online Marketing Strategy

• The number of cell phone users continues to increase. (2005 saw 2.1 billion users, recent reports suggest this is now considerably higher)
• having a mobile marketing strategy through mobile ads can help promote traffic to your web properties
• text messages are also often used to interact with automated systems, such as ordering products and services for mobile phones, or participating in contests
• SMS has caused interesting changes in society and language since it became popular in such as short time. Text-messaging has had impacts on academics, criminal activity, political events and social news-worthy events. Creative marketing through text-messaging can generate tremendous revenue.
• so long as advertisers do not abuse the power of mobile marketing so that it is not considered spam, advertising through text messaging can be very effective

Should Mobile SEO be a focus of B2B Marketers?

Depending on whom your target market may be, mobile marketing may not be for all B2B marketers. In the past, services that provide bulk text message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to quickly reach a group of opt-in subscribers. Is mobile marketing simply a fad? I’m not so sure as it appears to picking up steam as we head towards the end of the decade. The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), have both established guidelines and have began evangelizing the use of the mobile channel for marketers. Mobile marketing is not going anywhere in the near future. For that reason alone B2B marketers should look further into the opportunities that mobile marketing may provide for their organizations. Mobile marketing can be a great way to compliment your online marketing efforts as part of an overall marketing strategy.

For more on mobile marketing and SMS visit Wikipedia’s entry on SMS