Hostway Bylined Articles

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Why isn’t the mobile Internet working?

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Over the last few years, mobile Internet has been put forward as “the next big thing”.

Everyone has a mobile phone, and many of the operators have been pushing technologies such as i-mode and 3G to encourage mobile Internet usage. Furthermore, there’s been a lot of money pumped into advertising campaigns to encourage people to use the world wide web on their mobiles. However, despite all this, recent research commissioned by Hostway from TNS indicates that 73% of people still aren’t using mobile Internet.

So what’s the problem?

It seems to lie with the mobile websites themselves. The research revealed that 38% of consumers are frustrated with slow-loading pages, and 27% had problems navigating the pages once they’d loaded. 25% also complained that some websites were completely unavailable from mobile handsets. Although the mobile phone service providers may be making it easy for phones to actually connect to the Internet, this is useless unless the content is fast and easy to access. Even if consumers do wait for websites to load, it seems that just under a third of them cannot access the content because of the way that sites are designed.

However, the research also revealed that people are certainly keen to get onto the mobile web, with 90% stating that if they could be sure that pages would load properly, and they wouldn’t incur high charges from their operator, they would use mobile Internet. The types of content that people were keen to access were broadly the same as the conventional web – 71% of respondents were keen to access their email on the move, and just under half said that they would like to be able to access news and information sites from their ‘phones.

However, marketers looking to encourage consumers to use their websites and internet based services through mobile devices that the way people use the mobile internet is usually different to conventional PC-based browsing. Standard PCs, with large screens and keyboards are often used to both “find” and “browse” pages on the Internet, because the interface makes it comfortable to do so. With mobile phones, prolonged usage isn’t comfortable, and handsets can make website navigations difficult, so phones are more likely to be used to simply “find” things, such as cinema times, nearby restaurants etc. Location-based services are probably the largest potential market for mobile Internet sites, provided that they can be accessed cheaply and quickly by consumers.

So what are the implications for marketing professionals?

Quite simply, if you are developing a campaign around mobile content, keep it simple! Sites should also be comprehensively tested, preferably by a normal person on a mobile phone. Avoid fancy content and simply concentrate on getting the message across simply and quickly. You should be award that some phones will not display images, which may negate your carefully planned branding strategy! The survey seemed to indicate that the majority of people have problems accessing conventional websites via their phones, so if you’re considering getting a new website for mobile content, it may well be worth considering a specialist extension such as .mobi, where certain conditions have to be met to ensure that the site is suitable for mobile access. Consumers can then be assured of a better online mobile experience and marketers can be assured their message is getting through.

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