2009/02/12

Mobile-readiness of Finnish mobile sites

Sometime ago I blogged about using well known web sites with mobile phones. Today popped into my mind to check out how well Finnish mobile sites has been done and how well them perform on mobile devices.

Lazy bast.. eh, guy as I am, I used simple one page test only (offered by ready.mobi) and on sites which first came out from my hat (well, I don't wear a hat but I believe you know what I mean). Ready.mobi provides detailed results as well as overall rating on a scale from one (1) to five (5). And, tadaa, here's results of Finnish well known mobile sites:

YLE yle.mobi 4,91
Helsingin Sanomat 3,75
Sonera Surfport 3,64
digitoday.fi 3,56
City-lehti 3,5
Maaseudun tulevaisuus 3,39
MTV3 handy 3,35
dna Tasku 2,95
Kauppalehti 2,28
Elisa only wap access...

You can draw your own conclusions from above results but I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed... well, on the other hand, YLE's yle.mobi has rightly earned the first place as it's done by us :) (well, who raises dog's tail if not the dog himself...).

2009/02/02

Social Network services driving the growth of mobile internet

At the end of the January comScore released interesting report: Social Networking Services are driving the growth of Mobile Internet in Europe.

This is many ways interesting as it tells that mobile phone users are not just consuming and using one-way published content, like news, but also using their mobile phones to communicate and participate.

Many Social Networking sites, like Facebook, has understood this and made use of them quite easy. Still many major web site or service don't have any working access for mobile phone users. Weird, as mobile phones are more personal and, in the near future, more important devices to use network based services than PC's at home or work.

2009/01/25

Mobile services are still too expensive and complex for the end-users says a study

IUP, An international network of indenpendent usability companies, conducted recently a study on the usablity of the mobile services. The group has members in few countries, namely Finland, Italy, Spain, UK, France, China and Germany, and the findings are somewhat interesting stuff to read and to learn.

According to the study, it looks like the mobile Internet usage is finally becoming accepted by the consumers. For example, 12.9% of the population in the UK use mobile Internet. In the US the figure is even higher, 15.6%, but I bet this is explained by the success of mobile mail (=BlackBerry).

There are some main reasons given in the study why someone is not using the mobile Internet services. The top ones are Costs (and not necessarily the high cost, but one believes that it is expensive) and Potential Usability Issues (you think you can't use the services).

The study provides some recommendations to service/content providers. This one I like the most: "One of the biggest issues found in all countries is that websites designed for PC access rarely translate well on handheld devices. Ideally all sites would have a version designed specifically for the mobile platform on which they will be accessed."

( You can download the study in .ppt format)