With the advent of the iPhone and the general (and probably subsequent) explosion of mobile web availability in the marketplace, it's a bit baffling why interactive agencies as a whole haven't jumped on the mobile content bandwagon.
I recently saw an article (I think it was from marketingsherpa) that 64% of decision makers are viewing your email on their Blackberrys. That's a hefty amount by any standard and certainly enough to warrant a look into creating more mobile content. With all of the buzz created by Web 2.0, what happened to mobile? It certainly has the power to pull in the community aspect.
One part of the article I disagreed with was that it suggested to research whether the concept was cost effective. The truth is that the web has not always been created that way. Some of the best products have been created by the "if you build it, they will come" attitude. I think the mobile web will definitely mature that way.
Heck, the infrastructure is already there. Connection speeds will go up and prices will go down if people see there's valuable content to be found. So here, in my opinion are some of the people who are doing it right.
1. Bank of America- In terms of functionality, they've always done it right. bofa.mobi works on several levels. The to their success is that they focus on customer wants, not their business objectives.
2. Twitter- to me Twitter was made for mobile. m.twitter.com
3. BBC - clean fast load, straight up news. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbc_news/index.wml
4. Google - still my homepage, mobile or not. As Microsoft-esque as they're becoming, they sure know how to do search, email and other mobile stuff well. The mobile Google Maps is a MUST HAVE for the Treo (I have 700p). It has found me many a time.
5. Weather.com - While it does take a while to load a map, you do have the choice to get basic info quickly.
To me, the key is to let go of all of those creative juices and business objectives and focus a laser on a solely user-centered, task-based web experience. Nothing else.
If web users are impatient, then mobile users are crazy insane. It's hard enough to maneuver through a web page not designed for a mobile user. It's even worse to find a site that IS designed for the mobile user that attempts to fit a 2-foot package through a 1-foot opening. It's not rocket science but it takes definitely takes a straightforward approach.
If you build it right, they will come.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment