Stop cramming your PC website into the mobile space. This is why your desktop-centric site design and measurement need to evolve.
If one out of every 10 shoppers passing your shop on the street was presented with a confused and jumbled display, it wouldn't take long for you to identify the problem and do something about it. But in effect, that is what is happening on some websites. Up to 10 percent of a website's visitors are accessing it from a mobile device. Yet, when Bango recently surveyed the top 20 most trafficked websites (according to Nielsen Online, July 2008), we found that half of the sites did not work well on leading mobile phones. Text and images were not rendered properly, and sites could not be easily navigated.
The problem is that websites, which have traditionally been developed for viewing on a PC, are simply not adapting fast enough to match the growing mobile browsing trend. By failing to present mobile-friendly versions of their sites, companies are letting down their customers, staff and shareholders.
Some operators transcode the desktop versions of their websites so they work better on subscribers' phones. While this improves the user experience, it is no substitute for a properly designed mobile-specific site, with thought given to relevant content, the right mobile feature set and easy mobile navigation. Made-for-mobile websites generally have a simpler layout, with content that's relevant for a mobile user on the homepage.
Brands have been reluctant to make the move to mobile versions of their sites because they still see mobile visitors as an unknown quantity. When asked, many online businesses admit they don't know how much mobile-originated traffic is hitting their site.
Contrary to what Apple may like to think, it's not just iPhone users that are regularly accessing the internet from their phones. Researchers at IDC estimate that 1.3 billion people connected to the internet via mobile phones by end of 2008, and the vast majority of these mobile browsers are using mass-market phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
In fact, a high proportion of mobile traffic now comes from countries like India, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa and Pakistan, where cellphone penetration is growing fast and there's a huge appetite to get online. It is in countries like these that 90 percent of mobile browsing is done by the least expensive 90 percent of handsets.
Making the mobile move
So how can brands stay abreast of the trend toward mobile browsing? The first step is to find out how many people are visiting sites from a phone. Analytics tools are available to help you measure the number of mobile phone users hitting your website, along with detailed metrics including the percentage of mobile traffic as a unique visitor count, plus the country, network and devices through which mobile users are connecting. Such data can help online brands develop appropriate mobile web strategies.
Developing a made-for-mobile version of a brand's site is just the beginning of what marketers can do to harness the trend toward mobile browsing. Today, there are significantly more mobile phones than there are PCs. In fact, more than 50 percent of the world's population now has a mobile phone, and the majority of new phones come with internet access as a standard feature. 2009 will represent a tipping point at which significantly more people access the internet on their mobile phones.
To take advantage of this massive new mobile audience, it is vital for brands to understand how people interact with mobile websites and which types of marketing campaigns are most effective. Website owners need access to information regarding their number of unique mobile visitors, conversion rates and effectiveness of mobile marketing campaigns, new and repeat visitors, as well as information about the handsets, locations and mobile networks being used.
To ascertain this information, it is necessary to use two different techniques for capturing mobile metrics: link tracking for campaign analysis and page tracking for site analysis. With access to the two most-sought-after metrics -- the number of unique visitors browsing a site and conversion rates from mobile marketing campaigns -- website owners can get a real picture of the value of the mobile versions of their websites.
Site analysis is easy to implement: All that is needed is one line of HTML code placed in each page to be tracked, without the need to install anything on the server. Web analytics for mobile sites requires different tools than those used for PC versions of sites. Some of the techniques marketers rely on for the desktop versions of sites just don't work on mobile. For example, cookies aren't reliable on mobile phones, most mobile browsers can't run JavaScript, and IP addresses belong to the network operator rather than the end user. So, instead, for each individual that clicks on an ad or browses a site, a privacy-protected user ID should be created, which makes it possible to distinguish between new and repeat users, and therefore quantify precisely the number of unique visitors.
Looking to the future
We are already seeing more mobile web browsing as operators introduce flat-rate charging, mobile broadband speeds increase, and more phones with bigger and better screens become available. In recent years, people have started to cancel their landline service in favor of using their mobiles for all voice calls. We are now seeing people canceling their broadband subscriptions and upgrading to smartphones for their internet access.
We are also seeing a move toward a more open-search model in which search boxes are prominently displayed on the portal homepages of mobile sites. Thus, searching on mobile is now just like it is on the PC. However, the quality of mobile search needs to improve dramatically to achieve mass-market adoption.
As mobile internet browsing gains pace, we are seeing the previously separate worlds of the PC and the mobile phone collide. It's time for brands to recognize that mobile needs to be taken seriously if they are to provide a good experience for their visitors -- no matter where they come from and what device they use.
Sarah Keefe is vice president of marketing for Bango.