Perspective
Effective
Optimization of Web Sites for Mobile
Access:
The Transition from eCommerce to mCommerce
Marci Troutman, Steve Timpson
Siteminis Incorporated
Abstract
As the number of mobile phone users
exceeds that of PC users in many countries, how to optimize PC-based
web sites for mobile phone users becomes an important issue. This
article reviews several popular approaches and introduces a method that
the authors' firm has developed. Major advantages of this method are
that firms can use the same URL for both PC-based and mobile
phone-based Web sites and both groups of users can get the layout and
content that best fit their devices. The article presents examples to
illustrate the features of the optimization process.
Keywords: Mobile site optimization, WAP, e-commerce.
The transition from "2G" (voice-only) systems to "3G" (high data speed) or "2.5G" (medium data speed) systems is almost complete. Almost all phones sold today in the United States include a color screen and some way of accessing the Web, referred to as smartphones herein. More people use their smartphones (Blackberry, Treo, Blackjack, RAZR, Sidekick, and now the iPhone) to gain access to the Internet than ever before.
The United States added a total of 25.7 million new mobile phone users to its ranks last year, a record number for a single year, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA). In addition, the CTIA notes that 6% of U.S. households only use wireless handsets (see Figure 1; http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/04/07/77227_HNcellphonerecord_1.html). In contrast, strong growth in the U.S. market last year brought the total number of mobile phone users to just more than half of the figure for China, not quite as many as China's largest mobile phone service provider. This discrepancy reveals the huge market potential for m-commerce from a global perspective.
In February 2007, the Netcraft Web Server Survey found 108,810,358 distinct Web sites; millions of companies are represented online with a Web site, yet only approximately 700 Web sites worldwide are compatible with smartphones. Informa Telecoms & Media recently published a study that shows that the number of cell phone subscribers will reach 2.14 billion worldwide this year. Comparing the small number of mobile-ready sites with the large number of potential available applications that require a mobile-ready site suggests the range of opportunities. In addition, the ratio of PC/MAC-based Web sites optimized for mobile is extraordinarily small compared with the vast amount of sites that exist (for a list of mobile-ready sites, see http://themobilemarketplace.com).
Figure 1. U.S. Mobile Phone Market Subscriber Base Size and Phone Type Breakout
| Year | Cell Phone Users | Regular Cell Phone | Smartphone | iPhone |
| 2007 | 250MM | 61% | 37% | 2% |
| 2008* | 304MM | 54% | 43% | 3% |
| 2009* | 350MM | 31% | 65% | 4% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. * Projected.
Current Web sites are accessible by Internet-compatible phones, but only with regard to text; for example, online shopping via smartphone is virtually impossible for most mobile sites. To enable online commerce, mobile-configured online stores generally rely on third-party hosts or require an application to be installed on the mobile user's smartphone. In the case of a third-party-hosted site, the mobile user gets redirected from the regular Web site to the third party's site. The URL of the third party appears to the mobile user and thus creates some confusion. The hosting site charges a fee (per transaction or as a percentage of the transaction revenues). Furthermore, there needs to be an application that enables the retailer to manage the content on the mobile platforms. The solution that requires an application installed on the smartphone usually works only on a particular network's devices (i.e., not universally, such that AT&T smartphones conflict with Verizon smartphones, for example). In addition, the network charges fees per transaction or as a percentage of the transaction revenues.
In both of these situations, the service provider consumes a portion of the retailer's margins, or the retailer lacks access to an entire wireless user group (e.g., AT&T or Verizon customers), as well as control of the content-driven marketing to its own customer base.
Current Status of M-commerce
Most sites transfer their entire content onto small mobile screens. Despite the significant buzz about the iPhone and its Internet interface, it suffers inherent issues, including its small screen size, which must receive content and load from larger PC/MAC formats, minimal market penetration, and competition from other smartphones in the marketplace. This scenario often creates long waits for text, links, and functionality to load, followed by another significant delay as the images load on top of one another. The images shrink to fit the screen and, in most cases, become unreadable. Sites therefore become linear, meaning that the pages scroll at more than 20 times the height of the screen to fit all the content and images. After the first page loads, passwords, usernames, and most functionality are clickable but not functional, meaning that users can click through to the next screen, but data collection behind the scenes does not always work, leaving the user frustrated.
Several different scenarios currently exist in the mobile commerce marketplace, yet they still do not provide a real solution for companies that want to manage their brand and offer their consumers a user-friendly interface to view products and make mobile purchases.
WAP Approach
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) represents the most widely used solution to date for mobile content and mobile functionality. It takes content designed for the PC/MAC world and forces its conformity with the mobile platform, which requires removing some content and alienating the original user interface and functionality to make sites fit the mobile platform. Specifically, WAP technology removes anything that is not mobile compatible, often completely destroying the usability, intended flow, and brand of the site. With this approach, the mobile Internet provides a difficult interface for end users, and the general public therefore avoids the mobile Internet. Internet Web sites generally are created with one platform in mind, namely, the PC/MAC world.
The Major League Baseball site (wap.mlb.com) provides an example of an ecommerce site designed for the PC/MAC platform that has been forced onto a mobile platform through the WAP approach. All commerce charges sent through this site are added to the customer's phone bill, because the functionality does not flow properly through WAP.
The .mobi Approach
Another commonly used option, .mobi provides an extension that retailers and companies may use to guide consumers to a URL that becomes, for example, http://url.mobi. This extension also does not feature any software that rebuilds the site but instead allows the site to be viewed as it would in WAP or by pulling all data from the large screen to the smaller screen in smaller, nonfunctional versions.
The BMW mobile site at http://bmw.mobi offers an example.
Most retailers have not purchased their .mobi URL, which creates the concern that any company or individual could purchase the .mobi extension of a retailer for its own gain. If a domain name with the .mobi extension is available, anyone may purchase it for their own purposes, which could result in significant security concerns.
The One Site for All Approach
In this third approach, all content on a PC/MAC site forces itself into the mobile application as best it can, which simply does not work. The text and links populate first, which can take a full two minutes, and once that process finishes, the images start to load in, one on top of one another, until the site is completely "pushed" into the mobile screen. The entire site therefore gets crammed together to fit in a space it was not designed to fit, creating site confusion and difficult site navigation .
The Bloomingdale's site at http://www.bloomingdales.com offers an example. Note that the entire screen must finish loading before users may click through to log in.
When a user clicks the next screen, the long loading process for all data and images follows the same tedious process, and so on throughout the site. Should users choose to return to a previous page, they discover that the pages do not cache. In other words, the information is not stored in the mobile browser windows, and users must again wait for the entire page to reload to view it again. Each page follows this download process, making it nearly impossible to navigate sites, let alone buy from them. Even if consumers know exactly which product they want to purchase, and the exact path to reach it, smartphones still demand an estimated 15 minutes to find the product and add it to a shopping cart, which rarely works on the small screen. Thus, the overall effort represents a waste of time and energy and makes mobile commerce an impossibility for most retailers.
Fundamental Issues of Web Sites for Mobile Audience
PC/MAC site usage. Mobile screens inherently are too small to accept the content of the regular PC/MAC screen for which the content originally was designed. On an 800 × 600 screen, scrolling to view content on longer pages has become acceptable practice (see Figure 3), as has the use of jump menus or smaller inset screens to navigate longer text, but for shopping purposes, these practices are not as widely accepted. Users have become accustomed to a one-click scenario that enables them to search and buy their product of choice quickly. The previously cited example sites reveal the extensive scrolling requirements associated with pushing PC/MAC pages into a mobile environment.
Need for a second site to house the mobile content. As a result of the inherent issues of the mobile screen environment, retailers must accept that PC/MAC content cannot succeed on mobile browser windows. The long per page download times are extensive, even if users eliminate images and logos. When these elements remain, the page load time can reach more than four minutes. Consumers will not accept this time-intensive process but instead demand a user-friendly environment in which they can shop, browse, and learn more.
Unconfigured content/functionality in transition from PC/MAC to mobile. Another fundamental problem with mobile user interfaces that require a user to authenticate his or her access (e.g., passwords, IDs) is that most technology used to accept the input will not allow these data to flow over the mobile landscape. Thus, even this step needs to be reconfigured.
Adaptability across platforms. In the current world of mobile carriers, each wireless company uses unique browser windows. A straight HTML page will not launch across all browser platforms in the same manner. In each of the current browser types and for each mobile carrier, mobile technologies deliver the content differently. Without a solution to this difference and without quality assurance of all phones, retailers will certainly lose customers in at least some of the wireless carrier markets.
The problem is shown in Figure 2. Both phones show the same site. Ex. 1 is still loading, as the red x and the word "receiving" at the top left of the screen show. It is just loading the text and links. Ex. 2 is the same site when finished loading, with images. The scroll bar on the right side of each screen becomes much smaller in Ex. 2 compared with Ex. 1, which indicates the greater content on the page. The Ex. 2 scrollbar reveals there are more than 15 pages worth of content loaded into the one screen.
Figure 2. Examples of Sites Loaded on Mobile Phones
The SMI (Siteminis©) Approach
Siteminis (at siteminis.com) has developed a solution that overcomes all of the disadvantages of the WAP, .mobi, and nonconforming approaches discussed previously. First, it allows the retailer to maintain complete control of Web content in a mobile environment within the company IT structure, without interference from a third party. Thus, the retailer can keep all data mining opportunities in-house. In addition, this method offers a resulting improvement in secure transactions for consumers, because it employs the company's main URL rather than a third-party redirect site (as in the WAP and .mobi scenarios).
Second, the approach offers improved ease of use across every wireless platform rather than capturing just a single wireless user base. No mobile user lacks the ability to interface with the client Web site. The SMI method also creates a simpler user interface than other protocols and enables the company to retain all functionality and imaging it has designed for its PC/MAC site.
Third, along with easier customer use, more secure transactions, and in-house data storage, the SMI approach creates improved one-to-one marketing applications, such as those associated with viral Internet marketing strategies. It also provides the ability to offer real-time information to the consumer through the use of the mobile appliance rather than the stationary PC/MAC universe.
As e-mail became a popular marketing tool, many consumers became comfortable with click-throughs that granted them access to an advertised site and accustomed to employing this method to purchase from retailers; however, con artists also quickly picked up on this avenue. Sites that mocked retailers sites or PayPal, along with false e-mails, drive retail or banking consumers to a "different" URL to access their data. Once these data were accessed, accounts could be drained. Such thefts were common on the PayPal site before consumers realized that if a retailer owns, for example, www.bloomingdales.com, they can trust content within that URL and behind the Bloomingdale's firewall. However, if directed to another URL, such as www.e.bloomingdales.com.co, consumers realized that URL could have been purchased by another entity that did not offer the same securities. This point is where the SMI redirect creates a safety wall, such that SMI software supports the safety of the retailer's URL and offers consumers continued comfort that they can shop safely while also offering retailers the ability to deliver the content and imagery that they want on their mobile sites.
Many mobile-configured Web sites are hosted by a third party, so when a mobile user accesses the targeted site, he or she gets redirected from the regular Web site to the third party's Web site. In these transactions, the URL of the third party appears to the mobile user, creating confusion. (For example, when a mobile user accesses www.delta.com, he or she is immediately transferred to the URL of Delta Airline's third-party host.) To generate revenues, the third-party hosting site usually charges a fee (per transaction or as a percentage of the transaction revenues).
The SMI redirect technology does not require any specialized software on the mobile device to allow users to view the site. Many third-party mobile Web site designers provide mobile services by relying on an application that loads onto users' phones. In this approach, the phone-based application tunes to a specific telecommunications network, and the applications usually work only on that particular network's devices. Again, the network charges fees per transaction or as a percentage of the transaction revenues.
The SMI approach, depicted in Figure 4, instead leverages existing investments by clients in their Web sites.
Figure 3. The SMI Approach
Siteminis© establishes a new platform directly connected to the client's Web site. The proprietary mobile-redirect® software is installed on the client's site and can identify and differentiate any principal phones on the market today. It updates continually when new devices are introduced to the market; thus, the client site is accessible, regardless of the type of phone consumers use to access it. When a mobile user accesses the client's Web site, mobile-redirect® detects this effort, and the mobile user gets moved to an adjacent, mobile-optimized Web site with the client's own URL as an address that resides in the client's Web site server.
On http://www.gasrunner.com, the mobile-redirect software enables mobile customers to see the optimized site on either their mobile or their PC/MAC-based platform a single URL.
Mobile-Optimized Web Sites
A mobile-optimized site, as depicted in Figure 4, provides comprehensive capabilities to the phone user. The visual presentation is configured to the size of the phone screen, so the retailer can control page layout and the way it scrolls on the phone screen. The navigation across the site also is tuned to the phone screen; navigation buttons are ergonomically positioned on the phone screen, and they move the user to specially designed locations within the Web site.
The user also receives full graphic capabilities, so the retailer can control background images and closely manage the visual design and branding of the site. The Web site also can feature embedded images that may be designed specifically to accommodate the size of the phone screen. Media capabilities allow animation, interactivity, the integration of video clips in the Web page, and rich Internet applications.
The mobile-optimized Web site also provides streaming media capabilities, which enable real time or on-demand distribution of audio, video, and multimedia to the phone user. A "streamed file" simultaneously gets downloaded and viewed; the phone can start displaying video or playing audio as soon as enough data are received and stored in the phone's buffer. The mobile user thus does not have to wait until the entire file has been received.
Finally, mobile-optimized Web sites can provide database-driven content (e.g., an expert database that delivers answers to questions in real time) and thereby offer comprehensive data and information to users.
Figure 4. Example Screens for a Mobile Experience
Mobile-optimized Web sites benefit a variety of purposes, especially those related to marketing and advertising and mobile commerce.
Mobile marketing (mMarketing) and advertising. Through the use of mobile-optimized Web sites, businesses can develop a wide variety of capabilities for marketing to mobile users (a particularly attractive demographic for many retailers). Landing pages can be targeted specifically for mobile users and designed to meet the branding and image requirements of the retailer. The Web site can provide access to comprehensive data stores, such as "ask the expert" databases.
The Web site also can provide numerous location-specific (or point-of-sale) capabilities to the retailer, such as "enabled" coupons, "at location" guides, or "at location" interactive sessions.
Retailers might take advantage of a full suite of SMS technology-driven applications for mobile marketing as a conduit into the mobile sites. Readers may text the keyword "siteminis" to 23933 in their phone to experience this marketing application.
Mobile commerce (mCommerce). With mobile-optimized Web sites, retailers gain robust capabilities for selling to mobile phone users. Mobile shoppers can access the same online catalog capabilities that are available to traditional users of an online store (e.g., browse, search, shopping cart, wish list, checkout, and shipping). Online catalogs appear to the mobile users in mobile-optimized formats and navigation paths, as Figure 5 shows.
Figure 5. mCommerce Capabilities
Proprietary re-direct software placed on client server provides conformity with all mobile platforms, with patches and updates delivered throughout the year, which keeps the software in line with new platforms and mobile technologies as they appear on the market.
Mobile catalogs. Unlike the WAP, .mobi, and unconformed approaches, the Siteminis© system allows an online retailer to manage its merchandising, presentation, pricing, and transaction-execution of the mobile-optimized online store easily. This capability stems from Siteminis's© proprietary mobile-optimized system®, a portal between the retailer's catalog (which may be the same as that used in its traditional online store) and its mobile-configured online store. All data loads to the mobile-configured online store occur through this portal, and at the portal, data security is enforced and data maintenance performed.
This system also provides a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) platform for managing the mobile-configured online store and the presentation of the catalog. The SMI solution allows images and image labels to be individually formatted, including font, size, and color. The operational simplicity of the system enables simple catalog management. For example, a retailer might switch out images to show seasonal attributes, such as snow in the winter or changing leaves in the fall. The text accompanying an image also can be reworked easily, and prices can be changed rapidly, providing for more effective revenue management.
Further Developments
Several elements require additional research, including how consumers interact with their smartphones to make purchasing decisions and gather information. Some evidence suggests that consumers already are comfortable downloading simple things from their mobile carriers (e.g., ringtones, applications, music), but little information exists regarding how many attempts users will undertake to make a purchase before they give up (and for what reasons).
Research also should address consumer trends in the use of smartphones to communicate compared with the use of PC/MAC functions (e.g., e-mail, texts, IM). Finally, additional studies must consider trends in marketing to single consumers using data mining techniques through either Internet portals or mass media. Understanding these factors will help create more efficient programs that push content and create conversions at the point of contact with customers.
Retailers and other Web site owners will always need for two sites, a PC/MAC version and a mobile version. If a marketing company designs a billboard, and then must create a postcard for a direct mail piece with the same content, it will have to pare down the content from the larger ad to allow consumers to read the smaller ad. The same concept applies to the mobile versus PC/MAC worlds; the same content on a bigger screen cannot be user friendly on a mobile screen. Even if users are willing to turn their mobile devices sideways, retailers need to provide a separate site that pares down the content to a reasonable size so that the consumer can understand the key message. The screen size of a mobile device will never reach the screen size of a PC/MAC, because doing so would negate the "pocket phone" concept of use.
The size of the mobile marketplace and its continuing explosive growth makes it critical that businesses realize the unique characteristics of mobile users and their appliances to gain greater market penetration and create new, broader market opportunities.
About the Authors
Marci Troutman is the founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Siteminis Inc. Siteminis is the leader in mobile optimization software and technology used to improve marketing and commerce performance of retailers through mobile devices. Ms. Troutman has more than 15 years of experience in the retail and internet industry, including 7 years with The Home Depot where she held positions responsible for the design, development and implementation of the internet platforms for Home Depot companies.
Steve Timpson is the Chief Operating Officer of Siteminis Inc. Mr. Timpson is a seasoned executive with 25+ years of senior management experience in Big Box retail and Manufacturing companies serving consumer and industrial products industries. Relevant extensive knowledge includes Strategic Planning, Sales, Operational implementation, Marketing, Product Development, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Distribution.
© 2008 Journal of Interactive Advertising