Best and Worst Of The Mobile Web
e-Book: The Best & Worst of the Mobile Web. A panel of top mobile marketers share their winners and sinners.
There are some fantastic mobile websites out there – but there are also some turkeys (and some sites that get it almost right).
This free e-Book takes you through the key principles behind mobile web success as highlighted by our distinguished panel of mobi-gurus (including contributions from the Yankee group, Gartner, Yahoo! and top marketing agencies and service providers).
There are plenty of examples of the winners and sinners, so get out your smartphone and get ready to browse some great and not-so-great mobile sites.
“They seem to have taken a one-size-fits-all approach instead of using device targeting.”
“…browser crashes, poor information display and limited functionality.”
“They’ve kept it clean, easy to read and crisp – and it’s advertiser-friendly, which can be overlooked by publishers.”
Here is a snippet of whats inside...
The mobile web is reaching critical mass.
After years of anticipation, all the pieces are finally falling into place. The devices, networks, users and brands are all on the same page…and it’s about 128 x 160 pixels (and growing).
As this “Best & Worst” survey shows, 2008 is the “late early stage” of the mobile web: the end of the beginning. There’s a huge disparity between best practice and common practice, with most mobile websites still clustering around the bottom of the effectiveness scale.
But from this cluster, a few brands are leaping out; they’re getting it right and reaping the rewards. They’re creating simple, compelling mobile web experiences that entertain, satisfy a real need or do both.
To take a snapshot of the mobile web today, we asked a panel of distinguished mobile-marketing experts to tell us their favorite mobile sites and the ones they found disappointing or needing improvement.
BBC.mobi home page: “ It’s not the prettiest or the fastest, but if you want good news, it’s hard to beat.”
eBay.mobi home page: “ How often have I got really annoyed when I missed out on winning an auction as I couldn’t be next to the PC? That problem is solved by eBay’s mobile site"
Hello,
I've just read the report and I did find a few surprising statements IMO, so maybe you can explain what is said on page 18:
"Shameless plug: .mobi is the only domain name that also gets a listing in the Internet Zone Files, so your site is more easily found by search engines."
I don't see how just having a TLD (in this case .mobi) can help you get indexed in mobile search engines. Or maybe you're talking about www.find.mobi (owned by mTLD) ? If yes, then how come www.google.mobi doesn't even come up when I search for "google" http://find.mobi/search?q=google&s=8&cat=web
I think people need some clarification on this point as just having your .mobi clearly won't change anything in your mobile search indexing.
Thank you
Thanks for your comment, Nadir. Search engines start their crawls with the Internet Zone Files. Each site only gets one entry and if you're using ".com" or ".co.uk", chances are your site has already been indexed for your desktop homepage. So, if you're using something like m.site.com for your mobile site, search engines may not find your site and recognize it as mobile content. However using a .mobi is the first way to indicate to search engines that your site is made-for-mobile. We recommend that you maximize your "findability" but using all points of entry for mobile and that your .mobi should be your primary mobile site address for clarity to the user and of course for the reason I outlined above. For more information on mobile SEO, please read our Mobile SEO Best Practices paper at http://mobithinking.com/best-practices/mobile-seo-best-practices. Oh, and google.mobi works great :)
Thanks,
Amy
Hi Amy, thanks for your reply. I've been doing SEO for almost 4 years now, and it's the first time I hear such a statement ("Search engines start their crawls with the Internet Zone Files").
Search engines are using links to find new websites and build their index, not registrars' databases. I think you're wrong when associating TLDs or URLs with crawling and indexing. Your mobile site will be indexed regardless of your URL format or TLD, GoogleBot Mobile will decide if your site is mobile based on your page size, your doctype, etc, but not your URL. And they're right to do that, because a .mobi site is not more or less relevant than site.com or site.com/m or m.site.com or whatever. What matters is content and links.
I'm OK when dotMobi says that .mobi can help end-users find mobile sites more easily (though I would love to see how many people have actually tried to type directly anybrand.mobi to see if they had a mobile site). But you're wrong when saying that .mobi will help your Mobile SEO efforts because clearly it's not the case.
Sadir, you’re very right in that the TLD or zone file entry is not the whole solution to mobile search. But it does serve as your entry ticket. In other words, it’s the ante but not the full bet. The zone file entry means that you’re considered for the crawl whereas what you do with SEO impacts your positioning after you’ve been considered. Our best practice recommendations are about mobile site “findability” – one of the key challenges for any mobile site. As you know, mobile search has some fundamental differences from PC search and SEO. Firstly, the mobile web is very poorly linked. Because of their limited real estate, most mobile sites don’t consume highly valuable space with links. Auto-detection is another complicating factor for site crawlers. But our recommendations for what is a complicated issue are simple:
1. Use your .mobi for two reasons. Firstly, you will get that unique zone file entry to make sure you’re considered and included in search. Secondly, it provides for a short and easy name for users to recognize and differentiate from your PC site. It’s simply more consumer-friendly.
2. Work mobile SEO! Make sure that you have all of the popular search engine site maps and that your relevant keywords are there.
3. Use auto-detection. Most people will go for the name that they know and that might be a .com, a .co.uk, a .de, a .org, a .net, or some other TLD. Auto-detection helps satisfy their need to do this. It is one of the reasons that dotMobi provides DeviceAtlas – it will help you quickly and painlessly perform auto-detection.
4. Provide a mechanism for users to easily switch between the PC and mobile versions. Links or icons are great examples of these mechanisms and provides the consumer with choice if they’ve found one version and intended to find the other. mobiForge provides switching icons for free download at http://www.mobiforge.com/designers/page/mobile-and-desktop-switching-ico...
5. Finally, in addition to .mobi, it makes sense to cover your bases with other popular mobile naming conventions. Again, if someone goes to the pain of typing it into an address bar, you will want to satisfy their request. The ones that you should cover based upon popularity are wap., mobile., and m. Use your .mobi as your primary site and make sure these other designations redirect to that content. Owning a .mobi address is typically around $10 per year and an inexpensive entry ticket to mobile findability.
Hope this clarifies.
The iPhone is a nice device. However, the stark reality is that the current market share is less than 1.5%, the cost remains prohibitive and the majority of mobile phone users barely know how to send a text message or use their camera phone. When the iPhone is unleashed from the jaws of ATT (at least here in the US) there may be more significant traction; and don't forget that the iPhone is experiencing growing pains and difficulties penetrating Asian markets. I use a Nokia N95 8GB (which I won), and it is a shame they are not sold here in the US, many colleagues thinks it's a very cool phone when I do my hallway demos.
I was very disappointed not to see many great mobile web sites on the ebook. From the mobile versions of AdAge and Engadget to Netvibes and the amazingly useful DIRECTV's Mobile DVR Scheduler, you definitely missed a lot of great functionality and a lot of great content. I didn't even see Hotmail or other email providers on the list... Hmm... Maybe next time
Interesting report. However, all the sites seem to look very similar. It would be interesting to see a some successful sites that looked different.
It's amazing all the lip service given to the iPhone, and certainly Android will be right behind. While these devices have created a huge buzz in the industry, they represent a very small penetration. Why limit your marketing scope to less than 3% of the total phones in use? What about the 100,000,000 plus web-enabled Katanas, Razors, Samsung & LG flips? While much more basic, these can also be tools in the hands of marketers, capable of downloading brand specific applications. You just have to give the audience a good reason to do so, more than just the ‘Cool Factor’ of the iPhone. How many of the millions of apps downloaded to iPhones will still be used on a daily basis come January…other than at cocktail parties or as office meeting diversions? Now, an app from your bank, favorite clothing store chain, preferred casino, those will be opened on a weekly, if not daily, basis long into the future. And with the Holy Grail of true location based message delivery (see www.acuitymobile.com) within the grasp of marketers, brands can personalize messages, content and offers and deliver it to my device at the time and place I am most likely to want it!
Hi. I think you should put name and date on the PDF, so it has more value as a document and we can use/cite/quote it on academic papers. There's no author name, neither creation date. I think it is news, from 2008, but should have a date on the document. Congratulations for the excellent paper. Best!
Hi,
I am planning to develop a website for mobile but i do not know which language so that it can be access by all major phones (browsers) and can be access fast. Shall i go for JAVA,PHP or ASP ? please help.
...great and informative dialogue between Nadir & Amy, Im waiting for the former's response ... Iv officially learnt more from thier comments tham my course!
...as for iPhone haters, hate on, your lip service is giving us more hits ... but beyond that raspberry, Iv waited long & patiently with my Palm, having bought each of their flagship models,I 'upgraded' to & appreciate the iPhone3G, despite its unacceptable 'teething' issues (cut&paste,info searchability,bluetooth communication,camera(zoom&recording),tab key) ... Im holding my breath for a firmware update to fix all these ... wishing all a very merry festive season & a great 2009 ...SAFE!!!
I like the mobile web directory http://mobile-sites-directory.com and their mobile version http://m-dir.mobi. It's well structured, has different interesting categories like What's Cool, Most Popular, and Must Have. Their search engine seems to work well, too.
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