Archive for April, 2009
bemoko is delighted to have been selected as the official mobile web partner for the prestigious MEX 2009 conference to be held on the 19th – 20th May.
The organisers of the conference wanted a site that delegates could view on their phones which gave them information about the event. We built http://mex.bemoko.com in less than a week using the unique templating and inheritance capabilities of the bemokoLive platform. The site incorporates a Twitter feed, online survey, agenda and venue details.
We’ve had some great feedback on the site so far and it seems that people are finding it not only useful, but also very easy to navigate. As Marek Pawlowski, of MEX, says
“We decided to work with bemoko to create a mobile version of the MEX agenda and they’ve really excelled themselves. Not only have they built an easy-to-use site optimised for any handset, they’ve also added a survey capability so we can get some insight into how the 100 leading thinkers at MEX view certain issues and a Twitter feed so everyone can see the buzz on #mex09.”
If you are going to the MEX conference, we will see you there. We’re looking forward to some great debates!
The following text is an extract from the bemoko whitepaper on mobile. The full version can be download from our website.
In 2008 users really took to using mobile to access and interact with information using the web. According to Nielsen, the mobile web in US added on average 13% more reach over home PC traffic for leading web sites. Even celebrities are taking to it, with Stephen Fry saying “the great thing about Twitter is you can use it on your mobile phone. You just send things”. Now that it easy for content to be provided whenever and wherever, the boundaries between the content provider and the consumer are being blurred – the mobile phone is a crucial factor that is making this happen. People want to interact with these services and they are turning to services that provide a decent mobile experience. Even turning away from services that are not mobile-ready.
The usage of smartphones increased massively through 2008 with the audience for smartphones “increasing from 3.7 million to 5.7 million mobile subscribers”. Now why do we see that as important? “Only 24% of feature phone users browsed or downloaded from the Internet in July 2008 compared to 56% of smartphone users”. A Smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced capabilities beyond that of a typical mobile and it allows users to receive rich experience from applications on their phone, whether that be mobile web applications or downloaded applications. Turning this the other way around – it allows service providers to take control and deliver an experience to the user that compliments their digital and non-digital marketing campaign. No more need to compromise.
The mobile market is fertile and users are hungry for good user experiences. We are transitioning from the point where mobile is about used by 10-20% of the UK population, to a point where it is an integral part of your digital marketing campaign. With demand for users to interact with the community and the brand increasing and the user wanting to interact through the channel of their choice, there will be time in the near future that, without a mobile channel, you can easily get left behind.
The Blackberry is a popular device, no question. It’s got a decent sized screen, good keyboard and it’s easy to access the internet on it. So why is the browser deliberately throttled to give the poorest user experience possible on most websites?
Any half decent web designer wouldn’t think of creating a website without using CSS so consequently all but the very worst sites rely on stylesheets to work.
Given this, why is the CSS support for the Blackberry browser turned off? It’s not as if the browser can’t support CSS, it can, but you have to trawl through the menus to find the option to enable it. Most user’s aren’t going to do this, so we have to deisgn Blackberry sites to the lowest common denominator.
This means a very Web 1.0 feel for sites viewed on the Blackberry which doesn’t exactly encourage the use of the mobile internet for one of the devices most suited to it.
Many mobile sites we see either don’t recognise the Blackberry or don’t care as they still try to load a stylesheet and rely on it for the look of the page. This gives a poor user experience.
We normally tweak our sites for the non-CSS Blackberry so that they at least get a decent look and feel. Fortunately the platform we use to deliver mobile sites, bemokoLive , will recognise if the Blackberry has CSS enabled and deliver the best looking version of the site to those users lucky enough to have found the option. Those who haven’t found the option will, at least, get a site that has been designed with no stylesheets and so will hopefully come back for more.