Seven essential ingredients of your mobile strategy

There isn’t a single web trend report or an analyst who isn’t screaming “MOBILE!”. The tipping point for mobile web access has arrived. It hasn’t quietly snuck into the room like a shy debutante, but is more reminiscent of Lady Gaga’s red carpet “meat dress” parade. It is the elephant in the room that has suddenly been noticed by everyone.

More importantly, mobile is the leapfrog web technology for Africa.

The statistics are ballistic, if you’ll pardon my rhyme. I’ve put together some key points from AdMob Mobile Metrics and Opera’s State of the Mobile Web:

• There are more than 200-million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• In May 2010, smartphones generated 46% of traffic in the AdMob network, up from 22% two years ago.
• From June 2009 to June 2010, page views in the top 12 countries in Africa increased by 182%, unique users increased by 124%, and the amount of data transferred increased by 160%.
• Growth rates in Africa: Sudan and Ghana lead the top 12 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (4,645.6% and 916.5%, respectively). Sudan and Ghana also lead the top 12 countries of the region in growth of unique users (1,225.0% and 498.8%, respectively).
• 229 million requests from South Africa in May 2010. In the same month, smartphone traffic share was 26%.
• Page-view growth in South Africa since June 2009: 129.1%. Unique-user growth since June 2009: 94.1%

Clearly your company needs to implement a comprehensive mobile web strategy. This isn’t just a friendly suggestion. A mobile strategy is not a “nice to have”, it’s now an imperative.

But what exactly should your mobile web strategy entail?

1. Recognise mobile access

More often than not, users will be accessing your site via a Google search. Due to your SEO, the search will normally bring up your website domain. If someone is using a phone to access your site, you should redirect them to your mobisite. How can you do this?

• Scan the platform (using .asp HTTP_USER_AGENT strings)
• Scan the browser type (using .php USER_AGENT strings)
• Check for which device they are using

I don’t recommend an automatic redirect. I use wireless connections to the internet often and sometimes I try and visit a website, but I get automatically redirected to the mobisite because the code “thinks” I am accessing the web via mobile phone, rather than wireless notebook connectivity. This is extremely frustrating.

The best sites, I have noticed, will pop-up a notification saying: “We have detected that you are trying to access our website from a wireless/mobile connection. Proceed to mobisite click YES. Proceed to main site click YES”. This is called an Interstitial Page. This then offers me the choice depending on what I believe will serve my interests best. Of course, your mobisite and your website should have clearly visible links to each other.

2. Optimise mobile content and useability

The most common mistake is to strip down the HTML of your main site to make a mirrored mobile-friendly version. Of course you can (and must) repurpose content for mobile, but simply making a mobile friendly version of your website is not ideal. Of course, limiting the functionality of your mobisite is also a bugbear because users might be looking for functionality that is on your main site that you have neglected to host on your mobisite.

A great tip for designing for mobile is to literally copy the menu navigation lay-out and design of smart phones themselves. This sort of navigation on a phone is familiar to the mobile user and they will instinctively know how to navigate your site. Consider grid navigation with large icons. Remember, many smartphones now have touch screens, which means you should make links clickable in a larger area.

Trying to click on tiny links right next to each other with a big fat forefinger is irritating and gives you a conscience about the size of your pork sausage fingers.

The number one rule for mobile content and navigation is K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Stupid! Intuitive grid navigation, white space, few images, prioritised content based on constant usage monitoring, code so clean you could eat off of it – check, validate and recheck your markup etc.

Check out YouTube’s Mobile Site for an example:

3. Get to know the most common Operating Systems, Browsers, Screen Resolutions and Sizes

The top mobile operating systems are: Windows Mobile (and now Windows Phone 7), iPhone iOS, Palm webOS, Mobile Linux, bada (Samsung), Symbian OS, BlackBerry and Android. You’ll also need to be aware of the mobile browsers that are used by these handsets. Some of the most common browsers include Safari for the iPhone, Android browser, Opera Mobile, WebOS browser (on Palm devices), BlackBerry, and Internet Explorer Mobile (on Windows Mobile devices). There are also a number of other proprietary browsers out there.

Then you also have to consider a myriad of different screen resolutions and sizes from 128×128 all the way to 960×540.

You will need to know the design and useability restrictions of these systems in order to offer the best user experience possible.

4. Know your mobile user

The mobile user is totally different to the desktop PC browser. The mobile user is usually – and this may come as a shock – mobile. They are on the road, in their cars, at the shops, waiting in queues. They often need to know information as quickly as possible.

Many mobisites don’t even offer “click to call” functionality for the phone number, for example. Most smart phones will automatically turn a phone number into a click to call link, if the number exists in typical text formats for phone numbers, but not all of them do. You can use the ‘tel’ attribute on an “a href” tag to make the phone dial that number when the phone number is clicked. e.g (a href=”tel:555-555-5555″)

Think about what the mobile user is doing. He will often want directions and therefore maps should be an essential part of your mobisite. Using Google Maps for Mobile is a great tool.

Take into account your customer base and your business model. What would a mobile user be looking for when it comes to your business?

Let’s take a chain of restaurants for example. A mobile user will most likely want directions, a contact number, a menu, reviews, store locator, simple online reservations.

Additionally, a mobile user is often in buying mode – the Holy Grail of marketing. Offering mobile coupons and discounts to your mobile user will often drive them through your door. For example, they search “coffee shop” in Google Maps. Your Google Places listing pops up and it offers them a discount coupon. The user will surely pick your venue over the 100 results within his vicinity.

5. Consider a mobile phone’s functionality

Today’s smartphones are very powerful and it pays to bear in mind that these devices often have the same, if not more, functionality than a desktop PC.

• Geo-location is a fantastic feature. Imagine adding a “Click to find your nearest store” button on your mobisite. The customer clicks and you detect via geo-location where he is and which store is closest and then via Google Mobile Maps you immediately give him directions to your nearest store. You must consider geo-location in your mobile strategy.
• It has a camera and a video camera, which you can get customers to use for competitions and user-generated content. Additionally, this applies to QR Codes and their use.
• It plays music. Offer free music downloads or ringtones.
• It plays video. You can use short videos to give a multimedia experience, but please ensure it’s as bandwidth-friendly as possible.
• It can email and it has a calendar. People can automatically populate their calendars with important brand events and promotions by simply clicking “Add to Calendar”, or they can email you on the spot.
• It is a payment device. Mobile payments are going to explode and it’s a good idea to get on board and test it out now. I suggest AMMO or wiWallet.

6. Go Social

As mentioned there are 200-million mobile users of Facebook who are active on the site twice as much as desktop users. Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112% from January 2009 to January 2010 (Source: comScore).

Of course, this is just mobile browser statistics and doesn’t even take into account mobile app usage, which is arguably even more popular for accessing social networking on mobile.

If your company hasn’t already implemented a social networking strategy, perhaps these mobile stats will convince you. Your brand must maintain a presence on the social media touchpoints. People don’t care if you have an award winning mobisite if they use Facebook as their primary mobile interaction platform.

Top 3 mobile access sites in South Africa (unique users) (Source)
1. facebook.com
2. google.com
3. mxit.com

Speaking of MXit, since its inception in 2003, the service claims to include almost 27 million users worldwide, with about a third of those being South African (making it 3 times bigger than Facebook in this country), and is adding 40,000 new users every day. If your brand is serious about a mobile strategy in South Africa then MXit should be an essential part of that mix.

Additionally, you must make your content as easy to share on social networking platforms as possible. I find Share This to be the simplest way to add sharing functionality to your content. People using social networks on mobile phones need extremely simple ways of sharing content. Even copying and pasting a URL is an effort, so one-click sharing is an essential aspect to your mobile strategy.

7. The Tablet Explosion

Mobile phones are not the only portable web access devices. The iPad has ushered in the tablet platform that has literally exploded. Creating iPad specific content is becoming popular and many are looking to tablets as the salvation for the declining print industry. WiReD magazine offers an iPad issue and Richard Branson’s Virgin Mag for iPad, called Project, launched this week (although Virgin also plans to make the magazine accessible for the iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices).

If that doesn’t tell you something about how the iPad is changing the game, then how about Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp hiring over 100 journalists to kick off The Daily, which has no print edition and will only be available in digital?

There you have it. Mobile, mobile, mobile! It is the new internet mantra.