This article struck me as particularly misleading for those seeking genuine advice on mobile strategy and creating a future friendly mobile web presence. After some interesting discussion around this on Twitter it’s become apparent that there are many mixed messages out there leading to a significant misunderstanding of mobile web on design, usabilty and delivery to multiple devices.

It is only possible to adopt the  methodology of “one site fits all” if you are using a technology platform that optimises the content to each device at a granular level. If you don’t use such technology and decide to approach mobile web with only an understanding of web practices then you would disregard a decade of experience and development held by mobile web specialists. Additionally you could very well be making some critical errors in mobile design, user-experience, device rendering & marketing such as those made by American Airlines (placing QR codes in their in-flight magazine) or I Cant Believe it’s Not Butter (series of iPhone ads linking to a non-mobile optimised site).  Specialists ensure successful implementation of mobile friendly content suited to all, rather than just a small screen desktop or a discriminatory experience that discounts a large percentage of your consumers.

Over the coming few weeks I aim to talk in greater depth around these issues dispelling some of these myths and clarifying what a mobile web specialist can offer over and above a web agency and would welcome your thoughts, feedback and questions on this topic.

Coming Next: Demystifying Mobile Web Development | Design and Usability

Many brands heeded the go-mobile call and attempted to ensure some form of mobile presence in time for the festive season with some doing it well and other’s still low on the learning curve. This move has been a wise one and shows they recognise the growing importance of their mobile consumers, especially in the retail industry.

Some mobile sites delivered exactly what their customers wanted whilst others are struggled to get it right. Common oversights have been; not including location map or store finder and in some cases product lists. Click to call links have also been commonly missed and yes there are still the slow burners trying to force an entire desktop site onto a small screen!

Despite some fails, IBM reported the much expected increase in online traffic from mobile devices. On Christmas and Boxing Day 18.3% of all online traffic came via a mobile device and 14.4% of all actual purchases were made via mobile. Earlier predictions that 2012 would see mobile traffic hit 20% look set to be surpassed.

It is important to understand thatthis data reflects mobile web consumption is growing as a whole and is not just a Christmas fad. According to research by Barclay’s Corporate late last year, 52% of consumers are already using mobile devices at one or more stages of the shopping process. It is conceivable that with the growing trust in mCommerce and more brands releasing fully functional mobile commerce sites that this 52% could willingly and easily utilise mobile for the entire shopping process.

So what do all these percentages and traffic mean in terms of sales? Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research in Great Britain, believes that mobile Christmas shopping in the UK totaled about $2 billion, that’s £1.3billion!

Those who didn’t implement a mobile strategy in time for the festive season not only missed their share of these sales but may also miss out on future sales as consumers offer their loyalty to brands who delivered them a merry mobile Christmas.

If you’d like to discuss your Mobile Strategy we’d love to hear from you.

DM: So Anne, give us the 2-minute guide to Wapple if you would please?

AT: Sure. We started out in late 2002, Rich (Holdsworth, CEO) and myself. It was an opportune moment. Rich had a contact in the games industry who had started doing some mobile content stuff with Bango and we thought this could be fun, so we decided to create some content ourselves, ringtones and wallpapers, and see if we could sell it to this niche market of very early mobile web adopters.

So off we went and we were one of Bango’s first 10 customers. We made some fairly crude wallpapers and ringtones and charged £1 a time for them, and the first night we made £50, then £80 the next night, then £150 the night after, so we decided to build multiple sites, including adult sites, and cross-promote them. At the same time, Bango improved its services, which meant we could do more dynamic stuff, and our revenues went from £3k a month to £20k a month, so it was happy days.

By 2004, we were confident we had the makings of a proper business, so we formed Wapple and incorporated the company. One of the reasons we were so successful was because we could deliver to all these different handsets and consumers. We had created our own databases and were becoming much more low level and flexible, to the point where we could say that any given site was optimised for any given device.

We knew what technologies to use to make sure that images rendered perfectly to the screen size, and this meant that we exposed the network to early mobile marketing stuff. We used to build a lot of MIG’s (Mobile Interactive Group) mobile marketing campaigns, because we had a platform that could deliver mobile experiences. We were doing d2c (direct-to-consumer), but we could easily adapt it to mobile marketing, so when Motorola launched the Razr for example, we powered a campaign where the phone was promoted during ITV Movies, and viewers were invited to text in to get a link back to a mobile site with more information and photos.

So we’re now up to 2005, and we were seeing a lot more activity in the ringtones and wallpapers space, with big brands like Disney getting involved and we could see it would become flooded, so we decided to move out of that space. We had a platform so we decided to license it to people who wanted to use it for mobile marketing, or to sell their ringtones and wallpapers, so we created a simple licensing model.

DM: That sounds like a brave decision.

AT: I guess it was, and we did see a massive dip in revenues when we moved away from the d2c stuff, so we sought investment and took some Angel money and started our marketing around that time, and we grew steadily but not rapidly.

The iPhone came out in 2007, but it was around 2009 that things took off for us. By then, we had become a Master Vendor to Microsoft, and we also took on Skype as a customer, and we gained a great reputation as a company providing the best technology. Because when a mobile site is presented with a device arriving at it, our system seeks out the device, listens to the one coming in and does auto-adaptation to that device and that version of the device. The moment the iPad came out, our system could cope with it, because of our underlying technology.

DM: So when did you develop the device-identifying tech?

AT: It was late 2005, early 2006 that we developed it, and early in 2007, we patented the ability to do this dynamically and ensure that we are always delivering the right version of the functionality to every device coming in. Because people build a mobile page and they think it will work on every phone, but there are thousands of different devices out there, and you need different versions of the site for each one.

DM: And you have just received a UK patent for the technology, can you explain what the patent covers?

AT: When a device goes to a mobile URL, that device has unique capabilities. So we don’t deliver a page; we deliver a number of functions that generate a page, and that is what we have patented. You cannot deliver static content to a mobile device. You can on the web but not on the mobile web, because a new iPhone will have different capabilities to an older one. Devices differ in terms of the screen size and resolution, support for click-to-call functionality, and all sorts of other stuff.

DM: And what does it mean to have been awarded this patent?

AT: It strengthens the value of our IP, not so much for our sake, but for a potential acquirer. We genuinely have this IP. A lot of people have smoke and mirrors technology, and then you find that under the bonnet, there are 20 programmers programming each mobile experience, but we have something scalable and which can be licensed. It’s one of the reasons why our headcount is relatively low at 23.

DM: So are you looking to sell?

AT: We are not in a rush to exit, but this could go one of two ways. Either our licensing model takes off and we carry on independently, or we pass it over to someone who can immediately input this into the thousands of users of whatever technology they have already.

DM: And your mobile site-building tools, you used to have a free entry-level version, is that still how it works?

AT: We have always had the free entry point but we realised the sort of people who were using it, and was people who were trying out the mobile web, so we have created a developer programme to replace that. There’s a free trial if you want it, but if you use the developer program, you get resources, you get training on the platform, you get tutorials. The only restriction we place on it is that once you build a site, we end the free trial once the site has had 200 page views, which is obviously minimal. But the idea is that by that point, you have learnt how to use the platform, you can now implement it in your business, so then you start paying a licence fee.

The goal of the summit was to increase understanding of the mobile eco-system, so ensued a day of news, ideas, networking and a chance to hear some of our industry’s brightest share their knowledge.  The future for mobile, business and media is looking bright.   If you weren’t able to attend, the presentations are now available at the Guardian Mobile Summit Micro-Site.

You can watch Rich’s  passionate speech on the case for mobile web or read how 2011 has proven (finally) to be the year of the mobile web.  As Rich discussed in his presentation, mobile web requires just a single iteration that will work across multiple devices and makes redundant the need for seperate mobile apps for each device or browser.  One of the biggest hurdles facing organisations attempting to create a mobile presense is the diversity of platforms.  Unlike the web, where you design for say 4 browsers, mobile web requires knowledge of hundreds of devices and platforms and this diversity impacts the cost to build.  Mobile web using Wapple’s technology transcends this and with one URL you can deliver a rich mobile experience to customers at a fraction of the cost.

When considering behaviours of mobile consumers Rich says “when someone searches for a restaurant on desktop they want to book, when on mobile they want to eat”.   This is key to why mobile technologies present a huge opportunity to retailers, and as Ebays Angus McCarey told the summit “digital activity influences 40% of all purchases”.  He also said that “Mobile is blurring the traditional boundaries between online and offline shopping”.  This huge potential still isn’t being  wholeheartedly embraced by businesses.  Russell Buckley from Eagle Eye Solutions shared that brands should spend 15% on digital yet they are only spending 2%, that’s a 13% underspend.  QR code usage, or misuse, took a bit of a bashing from Rish at BlippAR who believes they may be the thing to die off in 2012 unless marketers are quickly taught how to use them effectivley, after all this month we have seen examples of them on top of a bus and the side of a cow.  The need for faster and more reliable mobile broadband with better coverage was raised with a prediction that mobile data traffic will increase 10 fold over 5 years.  Interestingly out of an obviously very mobile-savvy audience, only 4 participants owned up to owning a NFC enabled phone.

All told, the Mobile Business Summit proved to be a very diverse and successful day and we look forward to 2012 as it has many exciting mobile developments in store, our predictions for the New Year will be in another blog very soon.

Whether or not this was because I’ve been involved in the business for many years and my expectations are guided by Wapple’s proficiency in this field, a recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive shows that I’m far from alone in this area.

According to the company, a whopping 84% of respondents have had trouble with completing mobile transactions with a further 43% saying that a negative experience would force them to abandon the transaction with nearly a fifth saying they would be more likely to buy from a competitor because of this.

This is real world data that completely replicates my recent experience. While this figure of 84% is undoubtedly going to change and let’s remember that 16% of Harris respondents WERE happy in their mobile shopping experience, this situation cannot last forever.

While we agree that 2011 has seen a climatic shift towards the mobile web and mobile commerce, retailers will have to raise their game and bring this 84% of customers into the fold. If so, there will be many Happy Christmases to come, if not it will be many Unhappy Years for both customers and retailers alike.

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Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from everyone at Wapple, see you in 2012
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Over the past 15 years the internet has made this process an absolute dream… and to think there was once a time when online shopping was regarded as a fad. Fortunately, Amazon has set the standard and when the Advent calendars start to open the company prepares itself for the deluge of demands and deliveries.

This year everyone is expecting an unprecedented increase in Christmas sales to be via mobile, and there will be! Figures figures just coming in from the US show that mobile sales this Black Friday vs 2010 are up 254% and PayPal experienced a 516 per-cent year-over-year increase in global mobile payment volume. Paypal are set to be one of the winners this Christmas, along with Amazon, but many other retailers will miss a golden opportunity.

I very recently moved house and whilst waiting for BT to come and establish my broadband connection (20 days to be precise – arrrggghh) I was depending on my mobile for Christmas Shopping. But after hours of trying to browse PC websites I eventually gave up and went to Amazon mobile, disgusted that my time had been wasted when I had so much else to do.

Amazon on mobile is relatively easy. There are some minor user frustrations BUT it works, holds my payment details and offers one-click checkout. This is not a difficult model to replicate or even improve on yet so many mobile lazy retailers continue to let their consumers down.

Perhaps when Amazon releases its mobile figures at the start of 2012 its competitors will realise the opportunity they missed. The mobile web isn’t going away… but if companies don’t get mobile friendly, their customers will.

As you no doubt remember, to enter the draw you had to scan the QR code on a Wapple T-Shirt worn by the bar staff and our team members.

Our team enjoyed the opportunity to chat to so many of you and we think we demonstrated the fun and interactive opportunities that can be generated between brands and customers by combining QR codes with truly mobile-friendly websites.

Much scanning was done and most people entered the competition succesfully despite dim lighting and some people obviously needing to win a smartphone!

The winner of the HTC Radar Windows Phone 7 was drawn at random this morning, many congratulations to:
Peter Bacher of Deutsche Telekom UK Ltd on bagging one of the smartest smart phones on the market today.

Last week’s acquisition of Mobile Interactive Group by Velti and the recent merger between iLoop Mobile and Lenco Mobile is testament to this. The market is converging and consolidating as the mobile web matures and larger organisations realise that it is critical to their businesses to be part of this Latest Frontier.

We expect this consolidation to continue as smartphone use increases and the mobile web becomes an integral part of businesses’ strategy.

Back in the early days we visualised how the mobile web would evolve so it is a joy to continue contributing to the growth and to watch it come into fruition.

In 2011 we teamed up with Google to mobilise advertisers for the GoMo initiative, our award-winning mobile web development technology, Architect, passed one billion requests and we launched a Developer Program that created an ‘army’ of mobile web experts. We delivered our Mobile Web Training Webinars whilst our dedicated team continued creating hundreds of Mobile Friendly sites, interactions and experiences for you all to enjoy!

Our efforts did not go unnoticed by our peers. As well as being nominated as best publisher at the ME Awards and Most Effective Publishing Solution at the Mobile Marketing Awards we were nominated as one of the companies in the ME Top 50 innovators.

To vote please login using your twitter or facebook ID at MASHABLE AWARDS 2011 and enter Wapple for Digital Company of the Year. We really would appreciate it, Thank you!