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.

The overriding reason for this has been the spread of smartphones and much has changed over the course of a year. According to research company IDC, 100.9 million smartphones shipped in the final quarter of 2010, a figure that was up 87.2% on the previous year.

Eleven months later and a seminal report from data analysts Neilsen showed how things had moved on in 2011. In the US the vast majority of those under the age of 44 now have smartphones and usage was significantly up across the board.

It’s not just the 40% of teenagers who own one, but also the 18% (up 50% on 2010) of people over the age of 65 who have them. Just as importantly not only do they own them, they are using them and the UK is as enthusiastic as they are across the Atlantic in the US.

Research last month from EPiserver reported that 59% of UK consumers now own a smartphone and 18% have a tablet device… and more than a third have used them to make a purchase, a figure that will undoubtedly rise as the Christmas season approaches.

These are exciting times. At Wapple we have been predicting these numbers for years – sometimes in the face of opposition that didn’t believe that mobile could ever stand against the bigger brother that is desktop internet.

But today many people reach for their phones before opening up a laptop or even moving to a desktop PC.

So how did we get here? What were the events of 2011 that caused the mobile web to hit critical mass? Naturally when it comes to tipping points there are multiple factors but Google’s advances in the mobile space have ignited the sector and consequently caused mobile marketing to explode.

Google’s Android is now the dominant operating system after finally taking over from Apple in 2011 and the company has thrown its weight behind several initiatives to support the industry. In Q2 Google launched ‘Google Sites Mobile Landing Pages’, aka Google Mobilize, a new tool to help SMEs launch mobile websites.

This provided simple, template-based sites for customers and was free for them to use, although this was not a philanthropic gesture on behalf of the company. This was all about mobile advertising revenue with SMEs signing up for the AdWords platform, not that SMEs seemed to mind too much.

The company followed this in Q3 with the launch of Google Wallet as it joined American Express Serve, Mastercard Paypass, Visa Wallet and Isis in offering mobile payments services. According to mobile analyst G + (not related) this market will be worth a whopping $670 million by 2015 of which 40% will be ‘digital goods’.

Last and not least the company recently announced GoMo, a significant signpost in the natural development road of the mobile web. Google had previously announced that 79% of advertisers had sites that were not optimised for mobile devices, a truly extraordinary figure. The GoMo initiative helps agencies and companies by using 12 mobile web experts to create mobile-friendly sites.

For example, 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. GoMo will help prevent this and the unwanted 80%+ bounce rate that comes from a non-optimised mobile web site.

Google know that mobile web services represent the future of our connected lives. The browser is at the heart of their devices, both mobile phones and the new Chromebook laptops. Wapple once suggested that entering a URL on a mobile would be easier than dialling a number. Today we see the Google bar on the homescreen and the dialler stored away like any other application. Interfaces like this from Google have subtly influenced users to further the journey that already started – a shift towards consumption of digital services through the devices they carry in their pockets and places on the bedside table every night.

But it wasn’t all down to Google. Other companies jumped into the space with their own positive statements on mobile. Global brand Unilever announced that it would use mobile as its primary marketing channel within ten years, in a strategy that includes covering mobile data charges for those interacting with its brands.

Moreover clothes retailer Gap claimed in 2011 that its investment in mobile had helped the company treble its online conversions, citing its new mobile commerce platform, targeted mobile ads and a GPS-based store locator as the elements behind this surge.

Then there’s the automotive industry. Every week eBay sells more than 2,000 cars on mobile web and innovation is this sector is rampant. In some cases, QR codes have been used to take the customer from a brochure or TV to a test drive and AutoTrader recently reported that in 2011 45% of its customers had accessed AutoTrader Mobile while ON a dealer’s forecourt to research a car.

Significant dates have also pushed mobile web through the last 12 months. Mothers Day purchases of gifts and especially flowers have seen mobile become the platform of choice for many and the recent Thanksgiving Day celebrations in the US has seen a similar spike. Christmas, as already noted, will push mobile transactions via the mobile web to a new level.

Of course, there’s more to come. At Wapple we’re busy getting the message out to those businesses and brands that haven’t yet caught the wave. There are plenty more verticals still to bring their services to the mobile masses. Thankfully, with great technology platforms like ours it’s no longer the daunting task that it once was.

Acquisitions and mergers have also driven the market. The recent acquisition of Mobile Interactive Group by Velti and the  merger between iLoop Mobile and Lenco Mobile is testament to this. Expect further market consolidation in 2012.

But there are also grounds for caution and it might be propitious to return to Google for the numbers. Its 2011 study that only 21% of its biggest advertisers had a mobile-optimised web presence.

Google used 200 diagnostic points to measure each advertiser’s mobile readiness, with criteria such as load time, device detection and mobile optimisation, so this is an in-depth study.

There is still work to do. With at least 10% of web sites now accessed by mobile and rising daily, this state of play shows how important imobile strategy is. Sub-standard mobile experiences damage brands and send customers away. Companies, big and small alike, need to treat mobile with as much as respect as they do for all traditional channels. Perhaps even more so – after all this is the platform of the future, the platform that connects with consumers wherever they are.

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

Furthermore the report goes on to say that 22% of these searchers go on to buy a physical purchase and is yet more evidence that an optimised mobile web site creates revenue for businesses wise to this trend.

And I’m not talking big business. In a time where local small businesses are feeling the pinch from an increasingly macro world, this research underscores how important a mobile strategy is. According to research company Mobile Discoveries Radio in the US, only 12% of small companies and 21% of medium sized ones have a mobile site at all.

We are strong supporters of local business and I recently blogged (here) about how companies should think global and promote locally. In this case I say think local and promote locally… and ensure that mobile website is optimised. If it isn’t it will not only cost you money, it will cost you dearly.

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