The Mobile Internet has finally risen to significance. Mobile applications have been hailed as the harbinger of progress for the mobile ecosystem and there are a few amazing applications available. There is however little attention on the mobile web. We want to put the mobile web and applications in context and shed light on critical differences that will help you form a healthy mobile strategy. The availability of hundreds of thousands of apps is great, but there are billions of Web pages. Which matters more?
Hyperlinks create a usable and connected experience.
Tim Berners Lee created hyperlinks to serve as a thread to connect the Web. URLs allow anybody to link to anyone. Google turned those hyperlinks into currency. Search engines crawl the Web and follow hyperlinks in those documents to create relationships between content. Enter mobile applications. An overlooked limitation of applications is that they do not accept incoming links, there is no URL to open a certain piece of content in your newspaper or Facebook app. Without hyperlinks these apps are not 1st class Web citizens and as such lead an isolated existence. Real World Scenario: You Google something and find an interesting piece in the New York Times. When you open the link it will open the New York Times Site and not the New York Times app even if you have it installed. Therefore, you must have a mobile Web site even for those users that have your app installed and your user is confronted with two interfaces for the same content.
Platform neutrality is a step towards rational product development.
HTML was conceived as a platform-neutral way to deliver content. Web site resources such as images, javascript and dynamic side code live on Web servers. Deployment of these resources means simply updating/copying them. This applies to mobile Web sites as well. Enter mobile applications. Mobile applications are platform specific structures that only work on supported devices and live on the device. The main platforms are iPhone OS, Android OS, Web OS, Symbian and RIM OS. Many new OS are coming, just look at the recent announcements. Its not just the sheer amount of all those platforms but the different versions of them. This fragmentation is just starting. If you want to be present on all platforms you need to have a pool of developers available that master all those platforms and their different versions. If the app is dependent on Web services you need to ensure that you maintain compatibility with all versions of your app out there. Or, if the OS updates, you need to ensure that your apps are forward compatible. Keep in mind that users update their apps all the time. Look at a couple of iPhones — there is always a floating number above the App Store Icon that indicates how many apps should be updated. If you compare that to relatively simple way of of updating Web sites you look into a complex, time intensive and expensive maintenance process.
Application stores are the new walled gardens.
Most applications are published through walled application stores. The maintainers reserve the right to refuse your app for ethical and technical reasons. To be clear, there is content that should not be available on the Internet, but censoring is not a trivial matter and is a dream come true for institutions that want to shutout competition and uncomfortable voices. Imagine going through an approval process to have your Web sites indexed by a search engine. There is no institution that could provide the scale of auditing the billions of Web pages. As for technical reasons there is no way around an application review process since apps can seriously harm your phone. Mobile viruses are not for the faint of heart.
Reality check.
When your idea needs fast graphics, audio processing, access the camera or interaction with the address book you most likely need an application. For most ideas, however, there is no need to develop an app. Modern mobile browsers are constantly improving and allow local data storage, geolocation access, full Web standards support and multitouch user interfaces. There is a standard recipe all top mobile sites follow. Create a basic mobile Web site that will render well on almost any phone and create versions that use special features on platforms that you deem necessary. Mobile Web sites fully integrate into the vast Web and do not lead the isolated existence of an application. Mobile applications are a step backwards into the dark ages of platform dependency that the Web overcame and make it more difficult for your content to flow. Choose wisely.
The public release of the Apple iPad into the wild is quickly approaching. In the meantime, PercentMobile is on the hunt to uncover the locations these rare and illusive devices are appearing prior to official release.
View map of iPad sightings across the PercentMobile network of accounts.
(Source: PercentMobile, March 2010)
WordPress on Mobile at WordCamp Ireland, Andrea Trasatti
This weekend I traveled to the beautiful Kilkenny to talk with developers and designers about mobile. Of course mobile is my bread and butter, but I thought it would be a good challenge to talk about it to people that have never worked on it or maybe still see it as a niche and something that is not SO interesting.
It took me quite a bit of time to collect all the information I needed and I wanted to be sure I was prepared to the questions that would come up. The event was about blogging and WordPress, so I thought some metrics about mobile in general and then some specific about blogs would help (thank you to PercentMobile!) me set the stage and then I dived into WordPress and plugins. In a nutshell there are a number of good plugins to create basic mobile blogs, but there is still way too little good design and there is a lot of space for innovation. Check out my presentation embedded here or on slideshare and let me know what you think.
View more presentations from Andrea Trasatti.
Don’t forget to check out WordPress Mobile Pack.
Do All Small Businesses Need a Mobile Strategy? (The New York Times)
At the Mobile Premier Awards — an international competition for mobile start-ups held last month at the Mobile World Congress — the message was clear: Web sites are old school, and mobile is a growing requirement for every industry and business.
Investors and entrepreneurs who judged and won at the M.P.A. competition were eager to offer tips and predictions to help all business owners — not just those with technology companies — prepare a mobile strategy. Here are some of their suggestions:
First, every company should try to become “visible” to mobile devices. “The idea is that if a consumer is looking for you on the run,” said Chetan Sharma, a mobile consultant who judged at the M.P.A. competition, “your info must be available in any format where they are looking to consume that information — or else you miss an opportunity.”
While smartphones can access most Web sites, the content in most sites isn’t coded to be read or found by people using devices on the go, with small screens and mobile browsers, search engines and operating systems. Smartphones, for example, can’t read Flash content, which many dance clubs and restaurants favor to create aesthetically pleasing sites.
Mr. Sharma recommends checking business directories, map and review sites and apps already popular with mobile users to see if your company is listed. If not, you can list basic details like your location, contact information and a short description free on many sites and apps. You should check Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Nokia’s Ovi Prime Place, Microsoft’s Bing Local Listings, Yelp and Foursquare.
You might also optimize your company’s existing Web content, suggested David Harper, chief executive of Percent Mobile, a New York-based mobile analytics company that won a Gold Award for Early Stage Innovation. If you maintain a blog on WordPress, for example, you can use the free WordPress Mobile Pack to convert the blog to a format that is fast-loading and readable on a smaller screen.
Other free and affordable things you can do include building a list of mobile phone numbers for customers who are willing to receive text-message alerts or text-message coupons; creating a mobile microsite coded in XHTML, CSS or other languages easily read by new mobile Web browsers and devices; or building a branded app and mobile ads to promote it using the services of companies like AdMob, GetJar, Mofuse, Mippin and MediaLets.
All entrepreneurs should be able to develop or use more powerful mobile apps to their advantage soon, said Rich Wong, a partner and venture investor with Accel Partners in Palo Alto who invested in AdMob (and GetJar) early on. That’s because, Mr. Wong said, new mobile devices, from their hardware features to their more open operating systems, are serving as “a richer substrata on which to build apps.”
He predicts geo-location services and “augmented reality” will begin to figure more prominently for traditional businesses. Augmented reality uses a phone’s camera, GPS and compass capabilities to create a street-view image that is layered with real-time information and hyperlinks. (It’s reminiscent of a scene included at 0:25 in the trailer for the movie “Fight Club.”)
At the M.P.A. event, a company called Layar presented an augmented reality mobile browser that impressed Mr. Wong. For example, he said, “With an augmented reality browser like Layar, you can hold up your phone, scan the neighborhood around you somewhere in Asia, and get back information on stores in the immediate area, including prices with a currency conversion back to U.S. dollars, or listings and discounts for a film that’s about to screen in a nearby cinema.”
Despite all of the new technology, a basic function of the mobile phone is still making phone calls. But even that’s changing. Adaffix, an Austrian company that won a Best in Female Entrepreneurship Mobile Premier Award, is offering voice calls that use search listings and social media data as a supplement.
That means a mobile user with an Adaffix app running can call a taxi service and get no answer but know that, upon hanging up, three alternative listings will be presented. The taxi services can offer coupons to try to scoop up the business. It’s a high-tech way to advertise that could serve traditional Main Street businesses well, said Adaffix founder and chief executive Claudia Poepperl.
Most important, understand that mobile and Web audiences are very different, said Mr. Harper of Percent Mobile. Someone at a home computer who checks out your restaurant’s Web site may be interested in videos of your chef or a PDF menu. Someone accessing your site by mobile is more likely to need to get directions instantly or to see if you have an open table. If you know, Mr. Harper said, “how the majority of your users are accessing your brand on mobile — are they using iPhone or BlackBerry or something else? — and what content they mostly need, you can be sure that they have a positive experience.”
What’s your PercentMobile?
We naturally recommend that you measure and analyze the mobile traffic to your Web site for free with PercentMobile. Once this reality check is in place you can plan a rationale mobile strategy. Request an invite.
At PercentMobile we care about details.
We recently developed a unique approach that segments Apple iPhone Users into 3GS and 2G/3G Models, rather then into Apple iPhone OS versions that run across multiple models. We hope you find this attention to detail useful.
Meanwhile, here are some usage numbers of selected countries, compare your data against the usage numbers of selected countries below. You may find that your users represent the general trend or are very different.
% iPhone Users in Various Countries Using 3GS