Tag Archives: mobile Web

Desktop PCs from a Mobile Perspective

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This blog started out with the tagline, the Mobile Web from a Desktop perspective.  Many assumed that tweaking the web pages on standard websites would make them suitable for smart phones surfing on the mobile Web.  Progressively that has become less and less tenable.  Nevertheless many seem to assume that the real Internet space is that visited via a desktop PC.

There are a number of factors that mean that it is only a matter of time until the Mobile Web becomes the predominant cyber-space.  Consider a few of them:

  • People are increasingly ‘on the go’
  • Small is beautiful
  • Small is cheaper
  • Cloud computing puts the software ‘out there’ and only a simple input/output device is needed
  • Speech technology can overcome the extreme challenge of those tiny keypads

If you don’t find those arguments compelling, then perhaps you need to study the behavior and attitude of those who can accelerate the pace of change.  On that, the headline says it all.

Google Adopts a New Strategy: Mobile First

At the Mobile World Congress tradeshow, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that more of his company’s focus is now on smartphones than on desktops. He summed this up with a new motto: “Mobile First“.

With this rule, Google developers are now creating versions of new services for smartphones before creating ones to run on PCs.

In his opinion, the key reason for this is the importance of cloud computing, where applications and data are handled by the Internet.

Google is a leading proponent of cloud computing. Its Android operating system for smartphones depends heavily on always-on, high-speed wireless data connections, since many of its more advanced features are handled in the cloud, such as speech recognition.

I believe it’s the time for us all to smell that coffee.  It’s certainly on the go.

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Are You Mobile Web Ready?

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In some parts of the world, more of your customers would be trying to find you on a mobile device than via a regular computer.  That mobile device might be an iPhone or a Blackberry or even a cell phone. 

If you rely on local customers visiting your establishment, then the odds go up dramatically that some customers will be trying to find you while they are on the go.  If you hope that your existing traditional website will be visible and give a pleasing introduction to your company then you may be in for a big disappointment. 

Some mobile device browsers such as the Opera Mini browser do a remarkable job in doing the best they can to make a traditional website mobile friendly.  However only a very small fraction of mobile users are using this browser.  Even if they do, a website that has been designed to give a good user experience at a typical screen width of 1064 pixels presents challenges at even 300 pixels.  It implies an unacceptable amount of downward scrolling.

Another factor that brings the mobile web closer is the increasing popularity of Twitter.  People are used to working with very small snippets of information.  One Web Is Here is how F J van Wingerde sees it.

This is not new.  Even back in 2007, Johann Burkard was encouraging all to Get your website ready for the Mobile Web in 10 steps.  His steps were:

  1. Keep page sizes down
  2. Add shortcuts
  3. Use few images
  4. Use less text
  5. Avoid horizontal scrolling
  6. Provide a handheld style sheet
  7. Be careful with JavaScript
  8. Get emulators
  9. Get mobile devices
  10. Keep mobile browser statistics

lbost (Local Business Online Smart Tips)

There some good suggestions there but this oversimplifies the problem.  What is required is a website designed specifically for mobile devices.  It must be very much simpler and ideally should require minimal scrolling.  SMM has such a mobile website at www.lbost.com.  It offers Local Business Online Smart Tips (LBOST). 

It uses a CSS stylesheet appropriate for mobile devices with one small addition that only operates on traditional computer screens.  In this case a maximum width of 300 pixels applies.  This means that even on a traditional screen, you see the website as you would on a mobile device.

This is achieved by the following lines in the CSS stylesheet together with putting the whole web page within a div with the id container: 

@media screen	{	#container	{
		width:320px;
		margin: 0 auto;
			}	}

It is useful to see the mobile content in a more limited width like this. It is a constant reminder of the challenges that are faced in trying to keep it simple for a mobile device.

Communicating well with that growing audience of local customers who are on the go is not just a question of having a good mobile device display. As in the traditional Web, a big determinant of the number of visitors is visibility in the search engines. Google et al. are having some difficulties in doing local search effectively. Important showcases here are the Google Local Business Center and Google Maps. 

LBOST provides a window on this rapidly evolving scene.  To be on the leading edge, subscribe to the RSS news feed and get the news as it happens. 

If you accept that keeping up with the competition requires that you have a mobile Web presence then why not contact us now.

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Mobile Web Pages Must Be Small

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Two news items about the Mobile Web bring to mind that troubling truth about Screen Resolution.  It is like the Gordian knot of web development.

Web designers now regard the minimum screen resolution for a desktop PC as 1024 pixels by 768 pixels.  On the other hand (most appropriately), a smart phone may be as large as 480 pixels by 320 pixels.  Looking at the cell phone, you are down to possibly 128 pixels by 160 pixels.

The mathematics of this mean that if you try to look at a desktop PC web page on your smart phone you must scroll down 5 times as much as you did on the PC.  The cell phone is even worse forcing you to scroll down 38 times as much.

Nevertheless, the word is that The Mobile Web is the New Hangout.  One indicator is that the Opera Mini Browser Sees ‘Explosive Growth’

Opera claims that the browser has seen a whopping 157% year-over-year growth, with more than 23 million people using Opera Mini in March 2009. This represents a 12.1% increase from February 2009 and more than 157% up from March 2008.  The page view figures are impressive too, with users viewing more than 8.6 billion pages during March 2009, up 17.4 per cent on the previous month, with year over year page views increasing 255%.

We can assume that this did not involve all that scrolling down that would be involved if they are looking at desktop PC designed web pages.

Not surprisingly given this explosive growth, the BBC is asking, Is the mobile web coming of age?  The article has some most interesting quotes.

EBay’s senior director of platforms and mobile Max Mancini states:

The first hype cycle on mobile failed because people wanted to recreate the desktop on the phone.  The mobile device is not an alternative view into the web. It is a different experience.  It might be an extension to different things on the web, but the real winning application on mobile will be the things that will be very unique to what you can get from a mobile device like the camera, the location, the address book and the communications.

Ernest Doku, of comparison site Omio.com, agrees:

We should not be looking at replicating the desktop on mobile.  What people want on their phone is very different from what they want to experience seated in front of a PC.

Others are of a like mind.  One of the most insightful comments is from Sir Tim Berners Lee, who told the BBC:

In developing countries it’s going to be exciting because the Mobile Web is the only way that a lot of people will actually get to see the Internet at all.

Google’s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said the migration to mobile was a natural progression for the world’s leader in internet search.

The entire world is moving to mobile and mobile is the most personal of all personal computers. This year we are going to sell more internet-connected phones as an industry than the entire notebook market. These devices will become our agents, support us with advice, be our friends.

The explosive growth is not new.  Last year it was noted that Small sites drive big traffic on the mobile Web.  The question was asked whether website owners were ready for the Mobile Web, which was the Next Big Thing.

The preferred solution at that time was to design websites with The One Web Principle in mind.  By a process of Adaptation, the website would deliver the appropriate web page content dependent on the mobile device that was attempting to display the web page.

That is a very challenging approach.  Clearly there are some things that should be avoided in mobile web design.  Some major effort must be invested if Web Sites Are To Adapt to Mobile Access.

Perhaps a surer route is the approach that some adopt, which is to have a number of parallel websites, each designed for a particular range of devices.  It is what has been called The Multi-Web Practice.

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Strong Mobile Device Usage Growth Despite Recession

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Previous figures had suggested that the recession was slightly dampening mobile web growth.  You would hardly know that from the latest Comscore  data showing that the number of people accessing news and information on their mobile devices more than doubled in the past year from January 2008 to January 2009.   (Tip of the hat to Warren Riddle)

Among the audience of 63.2 million people who accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, 22.4 million (35 percent) did so daily; more than double the size of the audience last year.  Here is a table from their press release.

comscore access jan 09

That excludes access to social media but as Frank Reed suggests, the increased involvement with social media, whether Facebook, Twitter or some other is changing the way people, particularly those under 35, are accessing their online contacts and information.

“Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives,” observed Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, comScore. “This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.”

“We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone, and by text-based searches. While smart phones and high-end feature phones, like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access,  70 percent of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.”

In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded application. Maps are the most popular downloaded application with 8.2 million users, while search was the overwhelmingly favored use for SMS-based news and information access, with 14.1 million users. Overall, 32.4 million people used SMS to access news and information in January.

This is all good news for advertisers, who are struggling to find an effective place to reach people in a year in which their budgets are significantly smaller than last.

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Mobile Web Design And SuperBowl Ads

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Anything that appeared at SuperBowl XLIII is obviously getting mass attention and in turn the attention of those CEOs who are attempting to market to those masses.  The mobile web experts seem to indicate that SuperBowl advertisers are finally starting to get mobile and understand its huge potential.

Kim Dushinski took perhaps a closer look and she found there were mobile misses as well as mobile successes among those SuperBowl ads.  Nevertheless the trend is really taking off.

Leaving aside the whole question of usability when it comes to mobile devices, which is a huge topic, even what needs to appear on the screen needs to be carefully considered.  It all relates to the need to follow the KISS principle or even a slimmed down version of that, perhaps call it the KISS-lite principle.   Putting that in other words, as Andrea Hill points out, Web Design Must Go Backwards.  User expectations will result in changes in how we design for the web.

  • Images -  Do you need all those images, or do we need return to the days when content was king?
  • Flash – No Flash support – information needs to be available in HTML
  • Other Interactions – Information (including navigation) that is only available on hover is now unavailable.

If you are looking for resources for Mobile Web Design then Cameron Moll’s book on the right can be recommended, despite its somewhat somber cover.  A good online resource is the article, Designing for the Mobile Web, by Brian Suda.

Perhaps a good place to show you what is possible is the article on Mobile Web Design Trends For 2009 by Smashing Magazine. If that doesn’t whet your appetite, then just think of the profit potential that all those SuperBowl advertisers were envisaging as they exploit the Mobile Web.  If you exploit it now, you may be ahead of the pack.

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Nuance Grows Even Stronger As It Rides The Sound Wave

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Dave Mock of the Motley Fool suggests that Nuance Bucks the Trend.

Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN) doesn’t top any lists as a recession-resistant stock, but the company is at least showing some solid strength in a tough economic climate.
…
The company says its flagship
Dragon NaturallySpeaking has gotten an enthusiastic welcome since its release. And the mobile sector continues to be strong, as device makers such as Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), and Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) make speech-based interaction a standard feature in new devices.

What had got everyone’s interest was the news that Nuance Buys Philips’ Speech Recognition Unit For $96 Million.

The Philips unit, officially called Philips Speech Recognition Systems (PSRS), is based in Vienna, Austria, and provides a wide variety of speech-recognition solutions in 25 languages to meet medical documentation requirements for hospitals, physician practices, and other health care organizations.

Nuance noted that speech recognition is becoming ubiquitous in European health care markets. Adding that it plans to integrate PSRS’s solutions with many of its existing speech-recognition products, including its Dragon Medical SDK, Nuance said that it plans to fully support all PSRS customers and partners in the future.

Such good results may well be a confirmation of the strength of speech technology, given the growth in the mobile web. Undoubtedly the activities of Google with Android can only help to stir up interest.

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Searching With Your Google Phone

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If it is Google, it must be search

If it carries the Google label, then undoubtedly search will be involved. Marc Vanlerberghe, Google’s Product Marketing Director, has been explaining how Google is integrating search into Android and the T-mobile G1 phone and it’s already impressive. There is also a Google video that goes into more details. (Tip of the hat to SearchEngineWatch)

What becomes more exciting is when you mate up search fully with speech technology, which cannot be far down the road.

For a glimpse of what is coming, see the Google video where human language technology experts at Google, Franz Josef Och and Mike Cohen discuss their exciting research in machine translation and speech technology with Alfred Spector, Google VP of Research and Special Initiatives. GOOG-411 was just the tip of the iceberg. (Tip of the hat – Google Operating System)

Related: G1, Gphone, Tphone – what will you call your Google phone?

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Location, location, location

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Google knows where you are better.

Location is a word that gets a lot of attention in commercial or residential real estate. However with the explosive growth of the mobile web another application of that word may take over the spotlight.

The mobile web is so attractive because you access it wherever you are. Sometimes where you are can be critically important in terms of the information you would like to get. In any day just think of the number of times you ask a question where that comes into play:

  • Where am I?
  • Where is the nearest post office?
  • How do I get to the railway station from here?
  • How far is it to your office?

Now Google is sharpening the location service it offers by pinpointing as exactly as possible your precise location. As they say, smaller is better.

Hundreds of location-enabled iPhone applications, including the Google Mobile App, use Google’s database of cell towers to determine approximate location. And just last week we announced Mobile Search with My Location, powered by the Gears Geolocation API.

With today’s launch, your location estimate will be centered closer to your true location, and we have also improved the calculation of just how good our estimate is.

Of course as usual this further refinement of the Google location service means they can target advertisements better. Perhaps it is a small price to pay for such improved information.

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Better Marketing Through Dialogue

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There are many ways you can interpret that phrase, ‘better marketing through dialogue’. They are all important in highlighting some of the truths in marketing more effectively.

In thinking dialogue versus monologue, it brings out the whole notion of push marketing versus pull marketing. A supplier can push advertising at prospects whether they want it or not. That is a type of monologue. Prospects are increasingly upset at this kind of intrusion. In thinking pull marketing, the aim is to get prospects seeking out information from the supplier. Such dialogue is more likely to result in a purchase.

The other aspect of dialogue is that the two parties get to know each other better. It is the old sales person’s rule that you sell your self first so that the prospect then wishes to buy from you.

What is the best way of setting up a dialogue? Often nowadays people decide that a blog is the most convenient way to do this. A customer or prospect can usually comment on particular blog posts that are of interest to them. This is the way the dialogue gets going. By coincidence, a topic has started up at the Crea8asite Forums that is particularly relevant here. Stories, The Great Competitive Advantage, And Video, Oh My. Watching a video of the author can give much more information about the author that can help establish a connection. It certainly enriches the dialogue.

In that light, we will be adding short videos from time to time to blog posts to expand on the topics being discussed. What follows is largely an introduction to this blog, however it also deals with the likely explosion of the mobile web given Google’s entry this year.

The corresponding video, StayGoLinks, a blog about the Mobile Web, can be found on YouTube.

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Google Gphone. Which One?

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The Google Gphone is coming. The Gphone is coming. But what exactly will it look like. TechCrunch opined a month ago that Gphone may really happen, and the Ammunition Group may be designing it. That goes against the more prevalent view that Google will be backing an open source mobile operating system that could finally break the carriers stranglehold on the mobile market. That stems from their involvement in the Open Handset Alliance and Android.

Now the New York Times seems assured that T-mobile will offer the first mobile phone with Google software. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.

Apparently Google is eager to get the Android platform on phones quickly because it thinks that the mobile Web is vital to the long-term growth of its digital advertising business. We can make more money on mobile than we do on the desktop, eventually, Eric E. Schmidt, Googles chief executive, said in an interview on CNBC this week.

Daniel Langendorf feels that Google should have developed its own Gphone.

In his Gphone fantasy, Google forms its Mobile Dream Team and works closely with the worlds leading cell phone manufacturers. Maybe they come up with two form factors one with a BlackBerry-like keyboard, one all-touch like the iPhone. They establish a consistent Gphone design language that can be executed between manufacturers.

That does not seem to be happening.

Going out on a limb, I have often wondered whether the Google Gphone will be a very cheaply available mobile phone that can help to reduce the digital divide. That would certainly be dear to the heart of Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. You would have to read between the lines of his most recent pronouncement for confirmation of that.

We’re nearing the tipping point for mobile computing to deliver timely, geographically and socially relevant information.

Closer to home, we’re at the cusp of a truly global internet that will bring people closer together and democratise access to information. We are all free to innovate on the net every day and we should look forward to more people around the world enjoying that freedom.

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