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

A tale of descent into madness, the collapse of self and ultimately submission and through that redemption, the character, Pink, of whom the story is told, sings of the realisation that his relationship with his wife is finally over. While travelling, he continuously calls on the phone only to find that there’s ‘Nobody Home’.

Of course, back in 1979 all our phones were just there – home. Probably in the hallway, maybe by the bedside too, but certainly not in our pockets wherever we went.

Pink’s interpretation of the ringing out is the realisation of what he already knows. This isn’t simply a case of unfortunate timing, it’s really over. He has [sarcastically] “amazing powers of observation”.

The reality back then was that if you called at the wrong time, you wouldn’t get an answer. No call log, no voicemail, no sms. Catch someone or try again tomorrow.

Not so today.

If you call someone on their mobile you expect to reach them. No call can be missed, no message unheard. We can make direct connections with people wherever they are in the world, instantly.

And this is true of customers connecting to brands. Customers are using their phones right now to reach out to the businesses and brands that matter to them. But they aren’t always getting through. Often, there’s nobody home – and that can be the end of that relationship too.

Now you probably know that I’m not going to keep talking about voice coms today. In 2012 consumers are using their mobile phones for a lot more than that.

I’m not talking about dialling a number and having it ring out, I’m talking about consumers hitting a url only to find that the page doesn’t load, fit or work on their phone. That’s when, in the case of mobile web, there’s nobody home.

Prompting this piece is the news that among 100 leading brands in fashion, beauty, hospitality, jewellery and retailers, only two-thirds have mobile-optimized websites, and few of those are set up for users to shop, according to a survey by digital think tank L2.

This should be shocking, although with my own ‘amazing powers of observation’ it comes as no surprise. The brand manager and marketers that should be listening to this are letting the phone ring out.  Those that ignored mobile web and invested purely in native apps are finding there was no point, the apps stores are not where the customer is calling.  They are missing the customers and the relationships they had are breaking down.

With an increasing amount of organic traffic hitting websites from mobile devices now is the time to make certain that mobile web is firmly set as part of digital strategy. It is cold hard fact that this is how users want to interact and if they are shut out they go elsewhere.

The solution is easy. Mobile web is not difficult when you work with people like us at Wapple. We can help you answer the call of mobile web. Sure, there are some challenges but we’ve been there many, many times.

In Pink’s case, he makes the wrong choices and descends into madness. Now that cautionary line may be a little too strong for this tale but I think that we can all agree that not answering the call of consumers who want to connect is madness in itself.

I’m done now. Kind of a different post to normal this time. I’m certain that there are plenty of you who have never even listened to Pink Floyd. I guess I really am that old now but it’s never too late you know. Just, please, if you buy it on iTunes, play it in order not on shuffle!

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.

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!

Architect enables you to mobilize your existing websites & applications to ALL mobile devices creating the ultimate mobile friendly experience for your consumers. Websites receive in excess of 10% of visits from mobile browsers, mobilising with Architect ensures you keep these mobile consumers happy with an optimum experience for their device.

If you’d like to know more about Architect then Sign Up for FREE DEVELOPER ACCOUNT or CONTACT US

We look forward to celebrating Architect’s 2 billionth api request soon and hope that by then far more than 21% of websites have optimised for their mobile customers!

Store locators, POI locators, Location Lookups – call them what you want – we’ve integrated them into Canvas so you can have location based services built into your mobile site.

The system is two fold.

Geo caching

First up, you create your locations (either manually or with a CSV file) – you don’t need to know exactly where they are either, a zip or postcode will do. We’ll then use geocaching techniques to work the rest out including an exact latitude and longitude. We use a mixture of Bing, Google, Yahoo and Multimap for that but it’s configurable, so if you find your locations in your area are more accurate with Bing, then use Bing.

Location Lookup Chunk & Maps

Once that’s done – place a Location Lookup chunk on a page, specify which location group to grab data from and you’re done!

You get a whole raft of options with the chunk, ranging from which map provider you want to use (Google Maps so far – but more to come), to the colour of the marker/pushpin you want to use to show locations.

We’ve also employed some new techniques and technology with this chunk -  if you have a handset with a browser that supports GPS capabilities, the chunk can automatically find your location. Particularly handy if you don’t know where you are and need to find a coffee shop in a hurry!

Also, if you have an iPhone, you can click on the map and it’ll automatically open up Google Maps, again very useful if you want to pan and zoom. Of course if you don’t have an iPhone, you’ll still get a great looking map with all the locations mapped on it.

Store locators are the obvious and probably the most widely used application for this functionality, but you don’t have to restrict yourself to just that – surf spots and locations of music events are two others that spring immediately to mind. You could get really creative and track vehicles/people, and then allow visitors to your mobile site the ability to find them. Who knows, you could even create some sort of city based spy game with it!

If you’ve already created a store locator or any kind of location based service – or would like more information about how to get started, get in touch, we’d be only too glad to talk to you about it.

We’ve created a Sitemap chunk, which displays links to all pages on your site, alphabetically, with nice URLs (if you have it turned on).

Not only will Google, Bing and other search engines be able to find your pages easily, your users will thank you for providing better access to pages across your site.

To get started, login to Canvas and edit one of your pages. Drop a Sitemap chunk anywhere on it, and we’ll take it from there. We’ll work out which pages are available, which shortcut letters should display at the top, and the URL structure of the pages.

If you want more from the sitemap chunk, or would like to talk to us about mobile SEO, drop us a line.

Some are updates to existing functionality, some are completely new. All of them are exciting and greatly improve your mobile browsing experience!

So without further ado, here’s the list.

Radios

We now support radio form items, so when building a form, head over to the Edit Form page and try adding a form item with a radio type.

Google Analytics

We’ve made some updates to our Google Analytics mobile integration. Previously we only supported the JavaScript version (and therefore not all phones), but as Google have updated their code, we have too so we can now deliver to all phones!

Google Verification

If you’re using Google webmaster tools, you have the option of placing a file in your web root to show you own the site. It’s usually named something like “google123456789.html”, and if you head over to the Analytics section of Canvas, you’ll see an option to enter your verification code and prove it’s your mobile site.

Bango Auto Country Identify

If you have Bango Auto Identify enabled, we can now use the country code they pass back to influence the country activation/suppression rules on your mobile site. Check out our Identification section inside of Canvas for Bango options or take a look at Bango for more details.

Try all of these new features out by logging in to Wapple Canvas. And if you haven’t got an account yet, sign up and create one!

There are plenty of other minor bug fixes, browser issues and other small feature requests we’ve added/fixed – if you want more details (or you’d like something added/changed), get in touch and we’ll be happy to talk you!

The form above is fake. But luckily for you, the correct answer is “All of the above”!

Quizzes in Canvas now report results (Edit > Features > Quiz > Quiz Data), and we’ve created a brand new chunk, the Questionnaire chunk, that expands massively on the Quiz chunk.

You can assign numbers to questions, group them up so that you can have different numbers of questions on different pages, and you have all the reporting tools you need to collect data from your questionnaire.

Of course, they both go through Wapple’s advanced device profiling system so you get a perfectly optimized user experience to every phone!

Get started by logging in to Canvas, then add a Questionnaire chunk to a page – you’ll need to set up your Questionnaire, but check out the help docs inside of Canvas to help you out.

If you’ve created a quiz or a questionnaire and you’d like us to take part, let us know the address and we’ll take a look.

It’s called the Video Link chunk – login in Canvas and add one to a page to see it in action!

If it’s a YouTube video you want to show, a thumbnail is generated automatically, but for other video sharing websites, you can specify the location for an accompanying picture.

If you have an iPhone, videos will display with a play button on, allowing you to play the video with the native controls on the phone. Anything else and you get forwarded to the URL – of course when other handsets add functionality in for video playback, we’ll update the chunk!

If you want to know how to add a Video Link chunk with Architect and WAPL – check out http://wapl.info/coding-for-the-mobile-web-with-WAPL/chapter/Video-Link/ for more info.