The 5 Commandments of Mobile Web Design
A one-size-fits-all approach to solving problems rarely seems to work in the real world, and the mobile Web is no different.
Up to this point, most mobile sites have been developed by re-hashing traditional Web content and squeezing it onto the small screen—an unfortunate “Mini-Me” approach to mobile Web design. The result? While the traditional Web becomes more useful and creative every day, the significance of the mobile Web has largely stalled. The mobile Web has yet to realize its awesome potential, and the problem isn’t a technology issue like you may be already thinking. The problem is design, or rather, a lack thereof, within the mobile medium.
1. The Mobile Web is Not the Little Sister of the Traditional Web.
What makes a mobile site so different?
It’s not the screen size—it’s the intent of the user. Very often, traditional Web users browse the Web for entertainment or to kill time. Even when traditional users need to perform work-related tasks, they are easily sidetracked by Twitter, YouTube, or any of the thousands of social networking sites.
Mobile users, on the other hand, typically browse the mobile Web when they are in need of specific information. These experiences tend to be much shorter than they are on the traditional Web, and users rarely browse for entertainment purposes. Let’s just be honest with ourselves—if a user could be in front of a computer, that’s where he or she would be.
Suppose that you were offered a chance to view a new Red Hot Chili Peppers music video on your phone. Would you actually navigate to the video and watch it, when you could just as easily view it on a speedy home computer? Re-purposing traditional Web content and stuffing it into a mobile browser is a recipe for disaster. Instead, it’s time to look at the mobile Web as a uniquely distinctive medium.
2. Give People What They Want, When They Want It.
All mobile Web users across the globe want the same thing: the ability, at any time, to easily access any information.
What this means for mobile Web designers and developers, is that first and foremost, we need to approach mobile Web sites as an information-architecture problem, and NOT as a technology problem. Mobile Web sites should be formatted in a way that allows users to easily navigate and make decisions. Users don’t want to dig through the clutter of a traditional Web site to find the tiny link they were looking for.
Companies that merely ensure their existing Web site is viewable on mobile phones, have, for the most part, wasted their time and money. This is primarily because this type of mobile Web site will likely be hard to navigate through, or be terrible looking. All too often, users get frustrated when they can’t find the content they are looking for. This fact is exactly why wireless carrier “decks” exist.
3. Build Unique Mobile Content, or Don’t Bother Building Anything at All.
Mobile is a unique medium and it should be designed with this idea in mind. If you are not willing to rewrite, modify, or create custom mobile content, then don’t bother creating a mobile site in the first place.
This point is best illustrated by an example:
A university could easily mobilize its existing Web content to create a mobile Web site, but do freshman really need to be able to schedule classes from their phone when they are lost in the Quad? The answer should be, obviously, no.
Wouldn’t the university mobile site be more effective if it was limited to custom information that is relevant for on-the-go students—such as mobile maps, a one-click phone number directory and faculty office hours? The answer is yes.
4. Make It Useable. Make It Useable. Make It Useable.
Mobile Web sites MUST always work on every phone. Period.
What this means is that mobile Web designers need to consider multiple screen sizes, as well as multiple technologies. A mobile Web site should dynamically transcode content such as forms, images, videos, ringtones and layouts, so that any user, with any phone, can enjoy a seamless browsing experience. Users should never have to tell a mobile site what kind of phone they have—it should already know.
Consider that for the traditional Web, designers and developers need to account for differences between Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Opera, screen sizes, color depth, Flash versions, and more. Why would mobile be any different?
5. Don’t Forget About Design. Seriously.
Mobile Web surfers are still consumers, and consumers are deeply impacted by design. Don’t believe this? Allow us to introduce you to a fine company called Apple.
Because the concern at the forefront of people’s minds has been technology, brands and agencies often neglect the importance of design in the mobile space. It is almost assumed that because the mobile Web has to work on every mobile device, it can’t also look great. We couldn’t disagree with this mindset more.
When a mobile marketing firm approaches a mobile Web design project, it should design a series of visual layouts for a client that illustrate how the mobile site will look on a variety of different devices. For example, our firm refines a selected visual design concept into a WML layout (old school WAP 1.0), an XHTML-MP (WAP 2.0) layout at several different screen sizes, and (when possible) an iPhone-specific layout. The goal here is to ensure that no matter what phone is viewing the content, it will look its absolute best.
In Summary:
1. Think about the mobile Web in a new way. Get creative.
2. Clear and concise information-architecture specific to mobile is an absolute must.
3. Create compelling mobile content or don’t bother at all.
4. Mobile sites have to work—always. No ifs, ands, or buts.
5. It’s called mobile Web DESIGN. Not mobile Web cram-it-on-the-screen.
About Punchkick Interactive
Punchkick Interactive is America’s first design firm to focus exclusively on full-service mobile marketing. The firm specializes in creating text-message campaigns, mobile games, Flash Lite content, branded mobile Web sites, custom BREW and Java ME applications, iPhone apps, mobile media distribution systems, Bluetooth proximity marketing campaigns, and more. For additional information about mobile marketing visit http://www.punchkickinteractive.com or call (800) 549-4104.
Mobile Banner Ads Have Same Brand Recall As TV Spots
You really do learn something new everyday.
Apparently, “[m]obile banner ads…produce click-through rates that are ‘exponentially higher than online’ banner ads, where CTR has fallen to about 0.3%; mobile banners produce an overall click-through rate of 2%, even ‘slightly higher for entertainment brands.’
Very interesting stuff.
Very recently, Punchkick Interactive was asked to create a mobile marketing campaign by a client representing Motel 6. The goal of the campaign was to influence the buying behavior of Hispanics who are traveling on spontaneous road trips.
The SMS campaign integrates with traditional radio advertising, and offers travelers a way to sign up for alerts of fun events in their destination city. Travelers who sign up receive three days of event information. Mobile Marketer wrote a great article summarizing the details of this campaign.
Mobile Marketing Statistics Highlight Worldwide Usage
An new Experian study revealed a number of mobile marketing and text messaging statistics that I have not seen before. The short list is outlined below:
- By early 2006, thirty countries had exceeded 100% per capita cell phone usage
- In 2006 there were about 241 million mobile phone users in the United States — or, approximately 80% per capita mobile phone penetration
- According to industry estimates, it won’t be until 2013 that the US will top 100% per capita penetration
- Two thirds of mobile phone users are “active users of SMS text messaging.” What does that translate to? Approximately 1.8 billion people are actively texting today
- Globally, there are twice as many active users of SMS as are active users of email
- In the U.S. alone, roughly 300 billion text messages were sent in 2007
- SMS is typically read within an average of 15 minutes after receipt and responded to within 60 minutes
- While 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam
- 19% of text messagers say they use text messaging as a means of communication between themselves and colleagues
- 62% say they use text messaging to communicate with friends
- 55% say they use it to communicate with their significant others
Source: Mobile Marketing Watch
Additional mobile marketing statistics
We are working on a project for a client that has a very troublesome requirement as part of the custom content management system—the ability to enter ANY image URL into an HTML text field for use within a custom Flash application that we built.
This is troublesome because although the client does own the rights to the images they are using, they do not have any easy way to implement crossdomain.xml policy files on their image servers.
SO, we needed to come up with a workaround—hence the example below. Please keep in mind that this is just an example and the version optimized for other image types/videos/error checking/etc. is not posted.
<?php
// GET THE PATH OF THE TARGET IMAGE
if (isset($_GET["img"])) {
// READ THE CONTENTS OF THE IMAGE
$handle = fopen($_GET["img"], "rb");
$contents = "";
while (!feof($handle)) {
$contents .= fread($handle, 8192);
}
fclose($handle);
// DISPLAY THE IMAGE
header ("Content-Type: image/jpeg");
echo $contents;
}
?>
50 Useful iPhone Tips for Librarians and Researchers
College@Home created a list of 50 useful iPhone tips for librarians and researchers, and it actually brought up a few points directly related to mobile marketing…
2. Creating a texting service for patron questions. Giving patrons the option of texting in their questions to the library can make it easy for those who prefer to avoid telephone conversations the ability to get quick and easy answers to simple questions, and if librarians within your library are using iPhones they can respond to questions in between checking in or shelving materials and other tasks.
5. Check how your site looks on an iPhone. Many sites don’t quite translate well to mobile devices like the iPhone. Check how your library’s webpage looks by using an online tool like iPhoney or by checking it yourself on an iPhone.
7. Optimize your site for mobile devices. If you’ve checked out how your site looks on an iPhone and the result is not so great, consider creating a special page for mobile users to access your site. Many libraries are already doing so to maximize the usability of their webpages by patrons.
18. Track requests. You can use your iPhone as an easy way to alert patrons that their requests have arrived whether by phone, email or text and you can record and keep track of these requests as well.
23. Create content that’s easy to browse over an iPhone. If you’ve decided to develop a version of your site that’s more easily compatible with mobile phones, consider scaling it down the the basics. Simple search tools and information will be easiest to browse on the go.
Certain SMS Messages Fail on the Palm Treo
This is just a quick note for all you mobile marketers out there. A very specific text string in an SMS message will not work on the Palm Treo—regardless of wireless carrier.
The issue is as follows. Sending a link WITH “http://” but WITHOUT “www” will not work. For instance, “Visit http://groups.google.com” won’t be delivered. However, “Visit http://www.groups.google.com” will be delivered. Very strange, but very fixable.
This is very exciting news as I can’t think of a single thing that could more quickly expand the reach of Flash Lite.
Sony Ericsson announced today at its Developer World conference plans for a new technology that bridges Adobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms.
The technology, called Project Capuchin, allows Java ME (formerly known as J2ME) applications to use Flash Lite as the front-end interface for mobile phone applications.
“In using Flash, you typically can’t access properties of the phone. But with Capuchin, you can get at information and applications in the phone and use that info with the Flash display,” said Christopher David, director of long-term platform planning at Sony Ericsson.
The Java ME/Flash Lite connection will be a two-way street, so both can invoke the other, according to Ulf Wretling, director of Sony Ericsson Developer World. But most importantly, Flash content is packaged as a Java JAR file for use on Java ME-compatible mobile phones.
Read the full article on InternetNews.com
The Rather Difficult Font Game
I just stumbled across a great game on ilovetypography.com called The Rather Difficult Font Game. If you’re a fellow typophile, you should check it out. And, should you have the hardware, there is also an iPhone version to play with as well.
It would seem that WiMAX’s impact on mobile technology in the United States might be closer than we all originally thought.
NextWave Wireless Inc. (Nasdaq: WAVE), a global leader of all things WiMAX, announced that it has retained Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank to explore the sale of its extensive spectrum holdings in the United States. NextWave’s U.S. spectrum footprint covers over 251 million people in the United States and includes major markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, and Detroit.
What drove the surge? Possibly Allen Salmasi, chief executive officer and president of NextWave Wireless, when he remarked:
Since the completion of the recent 700 MHz auction, we have received multiple offers for our U.S. spectrum assets. [N]ow is the perfect time for us to sell these valuable assets while network operators are trying to finalize their band plans and spectrum holdings for their continuing 3G and planned 4G rollouts. Monetizing the value of our substantial spectrum assets would allow us to further strengthen our balance sheet, retire debt, and continue the commercial introduction of a wide range of innovative wireless broadband and multimedia solutions such as our high-performance WiMAX and RFIC chipsets, advanced multi-mode, multi-band TD-CDMA, WiMAX and LTE enabled base station platforms, breakthrough MXtvTM and TDtvTM mobile television systems.
