We applaud Google’s initiative as it will encourage advertisers to raise their mobile game. Mobile ad networks serve billions of page views so this is a huge opportunity for their advertisers but often they waste this by linking their banner ad to their website, rather than a mobile optimised version.

We know from our research that a brand will see 80%+ bounce rate by serving their website to the mobile consumer so in essence each advertiser is simply burning their ad-spend unless they link the consumer to a mobile friendly experience. Mobile lazy brands are doing a disservice to the industry and, more importantly, to their consumers.

Google are a mobile friendly ad-network, as are Microsoft and Mocean Mobile whom we have teamed up with too.  We look forward to working with the rest of the mobile ad-networks to ensure they can maximise their advertisers’ spend.

What we loved: Looks nice and is consistent with Apple branding
What we’d love to see improved: Apple are currently only providing the desktop version of their website for their mobile consumers.  Let me repeat that.  Apple are currently only providing the desktop version of their website for their mobile consumers!!  This is bad form for any brand but Apple probably receive c.15% of their traffic from mobile users.  This is very bad for all the reasons we’ve discussed in other Mobile Friendly/Mobile Lazy posts.

The load size of their home page is nearly 400kb which makes for very frustrated consumers waiting for the page to load on mobile.   When it finally does load the consumer experiences the exasperation of zooming in for content and zooming out for context.  When they do zoom in they are then presented content that is completely irrelevant to their mobile needs. Additionally the videos they present on the homepage will not play on most mobile devices – including my mango-updated WP7.

With little analysis, it would probably take Apple marketers less than an hour to work out what their mobile web consumers want from them and then another hour to present an appropriate solution.  Apple make smartphones – they more than the majority of brands should understand mobile web.

Go mobile and tell us what your experience of APPLE mobile is… and cast your vote below http://apple.com
Or see who else is Mobile Lazy

What we loved: The homepage wasn’t too heavy despite the content so loaded on a range of mobile devices…BUT this site was designed for desktop not mobile!
What we’d love to see improved: Everything! At the moment Play are delivering their desktop website to all mobile devices meaning a lot of zooming in for content and zooming out for context – a classic example of mobile laziness! The site will frustrate the mobile consumer and they simply won’t stick around for all of the unnecessary content loading on all of the internal pages. Play would likely report significant increases in turnover just like Gap did if they mobilized their website with technology like Architect.

Go mobile and tell us what your experience of PLAY mobile is and cast your vote below… http://play.com

What we loved:The website is relatively uncluttered because of the nature of the service with great branding so it is not too badly presented to mobile devices but…
What we’d love to see improved: This is a desktop site!  118 is a huge directory service brand – they would benefit greatly from offering mobile-relevant experiences such as ‘Search near me’ and ‘click-to-call’.  The brand is perfect for mobile web and they must get way above average hits to this URL from mobile consumers currently but they simply are not maximising the opportunity.

Go mobile and tell us what your experience of 118 mobile is and cast your vote below… http://www.118.com/

Citing its new mobile commerce platfrom, targeted mobile ads and a GPS-based store locator, Gap told its investors that integrating mobile into its overall strategy is beginning to pay dividends (if you excuse the pun).

Gap’s innovative marketing campaign has also used TV via mobile to offer customers rewards when they check-in to their favourite TV shows and if we were an investor in the company, we would be absolutely delighted at Gap’s approach.

This is more evidence that strengthens our case on how to ‘do’ mobile. Gap’s attitude is spot-on and is enlightened because it is utilising all channels to give its customers a streamlined experience.

Whether its print, TV, ads or SMS, the story remains the same. Mobile should be represented across all marketng activities, both above, below and across the line, as Gap appear to be doing. Perhaps we should invest in them after all.

What we loved: Great design optimised across a broad range of devices with consistent style. Good usability and clickable links.
What we’d love to see improved: The site would benefit from a lighter load, 87.9kb is big and runs the risk of alienating consumers on older devices or pay as you go. Introducing some unique customer or location based experiences for customers would bring the mobile site alive for users and add to an otherwise great mobile experience.

Go mobile and tell us what your experience of FORD mobile is and cast your vote below… http://ford.com

I used Alexa to identify the top 500,000 websites to determine what percentage of these had a mobile friendly version when hitting the web URL. From this methodology I hoped to determine the REAL number of global mobile-friendly websites today. I classified a site as ‘mobile-friendly’ … or ‘mobile-optimised’ if, as a minimum, I was redirected to a mobile site under a sub-domain or served mobile-formatted and designed content from the main website domain. I excluded every experience where I was simply served the website that was designed for PC consumption.

What is a Mobile-Friendly Website?

A REAL mobile-friendly website should present the same web company branding but one that is designed for small-screen display and browsing. It should take into account the mobility of the consumer and present only relevant information and content from the website for their ‘in-situ’ need.

It should interact with them for their unique device and provide mobile-specific opportunities such as location-based offerings. Interaction should be simple and easy with few clicks, forms should be low maintenance and contact numbers should display as click-to-call.

I did find some gems during my search (not all built by Wapple by the way), some exemplary mobile experiences that were served to my mobile browser from the websites domain.

Example of a Great Mobile Friendly Website – CoverGirl

TABLE: Wapple Mobile Friendly Study 2011
So back to my results, even after including poor mobile experiences in the ‘mobile-friendly’ mix, the outcome of my analysis was very different to the data I’ve been reading. 61 percent of the top 100 sites rated by Alexa deliver a mobile friendly experience however only 8.1 percent of the top 500,000 even try.

It is not mobile-friendly to disregard the needs of the mobile consumer, this is ‘mobile-lazy’.

Many brands that we’ve worked with typically see an 85 percent bounce-rate from mobile devices until they present optimised content for all mobile devices using our technology and then the bounce rate significantly reduces. To put some figures on this, based on 10 percent of traffic from mobile devices, if they generate 200,000 unique hits in a month, this is around 17,000 unhappy consumers.

With mobile web usage rising every day, can you afford to be mobile-lazy?

Published on mStrategy.com 30th September 2011

What we loved: An effort to create a mobile presence had been attempted with text set at a width to fit a number of phone screens.
What we’d love to see improved: Everything else! The navigation bar stretches full width of desktop site, and no other mobile usability has been implemented. The buttons/links have been reduced so significantly in size they are too small to use. This really is a very mobile lazy website but there really is no excuse for a publisher like Smashing Magazine given its web-dev knowledge-base and readership.  We’d love to work with these guys to make their website truly mobile friendly so that they can be seen as an authority on mobile as much as they are on web/platform development. I know our dev team here at Wapple would be delighted to work with them.

Go mobile and tell us what your experience of Smashing Magazine mobile is and cast your vote below… http://smashingmagazine.com

What we loved: Presentable, easy to use, strongly branded experience on iPhone and Android.
What we’d love to see improved: Faster loading across all mobile devices and improved styling and layout on Windows and older phones.  There is an assumption that everyone has Android or iPhone, this is not the case as 36% of mobile web traffic is generated by Windows and other OS. By offering a mobile web version for all devices could increase mobile web usage by up to 1/3.

Go mobile and tell us what your experience of PHOTOBUCKET mobile is and cast your vote below… http://photobucket.com/

mOcean’s parent company Mojiva has always pushed for innovation in the mobile sector and Publisher Annex brings together leading mobile web developers, agencies and technology providers such as Wapple to ensure advertisers provide branded, optimised and relevant mobile ads, thus maximising their mobile advertising opportunity. It also means that consumers will experience an engaging mobile ad; one they expect and one they deserve.

While 2011 continues to be the year that mobile finally hit critical mass and Google has played a huge part in accelerating the process, it is strategic innovations by mOcean Mobile that will take mobile advertising to another level. We are delighted to be part of this process and to allow advertising brands maximum return on investment.