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.

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.

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

These are heady days for the mobile web. After any number of false dawns, it would appear that its time has finally come.

While it is difficult to pinpoint any particular tipping point for the channel, the combination of smartphone penetration, fixed-rate data plans and sufficient bandwidth means that customers now regard the web on their mobile device as essential as the web on their PCs.

And the numbers are not going to stop rising.

In emerging economies where fixed-line internet access has been overtaken by mobile, the figures are extraordinary. India has 20 per cent mobile web penetration and Nigeria a whopping 37 per cent, and while UK penetration is only six per cent, this figure is expected to explode over the next two years.

So is this a wonderful opportunity for web designers, developers and brands to work together to build rich mobile web experiences?

Well all these problems and more have been solved with the latest chunk to be added to Wapple Canvas.

It’s called the Bing Search Near Me chunk and is an integration with a number of technologies from those clever folk at Bing. It allows you to search for locations near to you – pizzas, restaurants, golf clubs, fitness centers – they’re all there ready to be searched for.

Lots of Bing

First of all, it integrates with the Bing Maps Search Service, which allows you to enter a location and keyword – and return relevant results. Tie it in with GPS lookups on a mobile phone browser and you’ve got something that will find you stuff right where you are!

We’ve also integrated the chunk with Bing Maps, so not only can you find locations near you, but you can see where they are on a map – very useful if you’re not too familiar with an area.

And finally we’ve used the Bing Maps Direction Service, so after seeing your nearby spots on a nice looking map, you get handy directions that show you exactly how to get there and how long it’ll take!

Some practical uses

If you want any kind of search on your site to find businesses, or shops, or restaurants or whatever, this is the chunk for you. It’s massively configurable, so if you want to allow your users the ability to click the link to phone the shop direct, or change walking to driving directions, you can.

It also has a setting for overriding the mode it starts in – so if you have an event and want to show the nearest 3 Sushi restaurants to your party in downtown Manhattan, set the mode override, specify the where and the what and let the chunk do the rest!

To demonstrate just how useful this chunk is – we had a guy at Wapple HQ needing to find a tyre in a hurry. He used the Bing Search Near Me chunk to find a tyre shop nearby, used the click to call functionality to check if they had one in stock, and followed the directions and map to get there to have his tyre fitted!

It’s all available in one chunk inside of Canvas – so log on and add a Bing Search Near Me chunk to your page to get your users looking for locations near them!

If you’ve got some ideas for using the chunk and would like to talk them through with us, drop us a line.

But as we’ve improved the Architect schema, one area of documentation we’ve sadly neglected was telling you how to use these advanced Canvas features in your WAPL.

Not any more

We’ve create a new area of documentation with an explanation of how it works – the short version is you create a feature in Canvas (menu / page / poll / etc), grab the ID, and reference that in your WAPL. You then configure all the options you have in canvas through elements and attributes. You’ll find this page on our Canvas Chunks doc.

Also, we’ve added a few pages that tell you how to build FAQs, use Canvas graphics and deliver graphics as wallpapers with the <graphicwallpaperChunk>.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding all the other Canvas feature chunks and of course we’ll keep you up to date of what we’re up to! But if you want to give us a call or get in touch about anything specific, we’d be only too glad to talk to you!

Upload a source graphic, create a Graphic Wallpaper chunk on your page, and configure it how you want – your users will be able to view and download a perfectly sized wallpaper to their handset. And that’s every handset with any screensize!

Head over to Wapple Canvas, log in, and start uploading your wallpapers to check it out!

You’ll need an Amobee account, so for more information about Amobee and to sign up, check out http://www.amobee.com/main/hp.htm

You can listen to the whole thing on Brian’s website at http://mobilebeyond.net/mobilizing-and-making-money-with-a-wordpress-blog-or-mobile-website/ or have a search on iTunes for MobileBeyond.

Lastly, I must say a big thank you to Brian for first of all giving me the opportunity to do the podcast, and secondly for doing such an awesome job of editing it together!

Let us know what you thought of the podcast – and if you’d like to hear more, tell us what subjects you’d like us to cover!

I am pleased to say that since my recent rant, the BBC have started to render correctly for my Android handset. I have the mobile version again. I am happy.