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...).

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.

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)

Charging for mobile Internet gets better

I just heard an interesting rumour concerning mobile operator billing services: It looks like a Finnish mobile operator will enable (mobile Internet) content providers to charge for their content from users using their GPRS/3G Internet access point (not WAP Access Point). I have been talking with the operators' technical personnel for quite some time already about the availability of such a service, and they've been just telling me that "they are working on it". I actually asked the operator's technical contact immediately if there was any truth in this rumour, and he confirmed that this is the case. They are going to start a commercial pilot in the near future.

This is actually very good news for all content guys out there. At least those ones who have been selling content to Finnish WAP users (we've had WAP-based click-to-pay-billing services in Finland available for many years already). The problem with the WAP-billing has just been the fact that according to Nokia, less than 25% of the mobile phone users are actually using WAP access point to connect to the Internet; the great majority of the users use the Internet access point to connect to the Internet (and bypassing the WAP gateway). Therefore, they have not been able to pay for the mobile content.

Enabling users to pay even if they are on an Internet access point will be damn good news for the mobile service industry. Can't wait to get my first client to launch a premium content service that supports it. Hopefully it will become possible in other countries / networks ASAP.

Make money too, with mobile internet

When companies are thinking to have somekind of presence on mobile internet, I mean having a mobile site, they usually think that as a way to share information, news and other content as an additional "media channel".

Too often it just stays this way, yet another channel to publish information for those who perhaps find it and are interested. It should not stay this way as next logical, and necessary, steps should be to start thinking and working how companies can utilize this channel, which is not tied to location or wires, much more better.

Some companies are getting this. World's third-largest pizza chain, Papa John's has generated 1 million dollars thru their mobile web site in less than six months. Its still peanuts when compared to their yearly online sales (more than 1 billion USD), but encouraging and fast results.

So, kids are ordering pizza online via their mobile phones... suprisingly not, as user demographics covers all age groups. Group of 35-44 years old is roughly the same size as 18-25 years old. Just another good example that its not only kids who are willing to use advanced mobile functionalities or mobile services. Older ones are too, if the service is needed, easy to use and useful. Are yours?

413: Page Cannot Be Displayed

Most of the major internet sites cannot be used with mobile phones! This was a conclusion of resent research done by english company Bango. Alarming result, especially because by IDC there will be by the end of this year 1,3 billion people using internet services via their mobile phones. Or, at least willing and trying to use but can they...

In this perspective it is praiseworthy how some companies, which has been traditionally considered stiff and slow moving ones, like BBC and YLE (Finnish National Broadcasting Company) have one of the best mobile services. Regardless of the ways how services are measured - by number of the visitors, by usability, by amount of content or by how willing the company is to try and explore - YLE has been sometime now been the most active on developing mobile internet services. They have been also advertising their mobile sites, both yle.mobi and ylex.mobi, quite actively on the web, tv and radio. BBC has been surveying how its services has been used and what users think of the services etc. and as a result of those surveys, BBC has increased marketing of its mobile internet services.

Today there was news story in Finnish digitoday.fi service where was some speculation of possible coming new launches next week by Nokia. The most interesting part of the story was comments of Gartner's mobile area analyst Carolina Milanes. She said that Nokia's own (mobile internet) services meaning and value is quite high and provides better position for Nokia in the future because for the consumers mobile internet services are now more important than number of the megapixels of the camera in the mobile phone.

Its quite easy to agree with Milanes. But when big (and smaller) site owners do understand that consumer is out there, literally, and using her/his mobile phone and not only for talking.

Tourist is mobile

Tourists and travelers do carry nowadays mobile phones all the time with them, but are not using them only for calls and sending text messages. More and more, because of faster mobile phone networks, they are using mobile phones for chatting, checking emails and using other network based services, like searching for information. And use most likely will increase, especially here in Europe as European Union bureaucrats has taken lately active role for making use of mobile phones more cheaper while traveling in Europe.

Country and city tourist offices, as well as other organizations publishing information for tourists and travelers, traditionally have lots of information available on the internet. Background information, history, practical information like about transportation, sights, restaurants, bars and nightlife, not forgetting maps and other content types like videos and audios. Unfortunately this information is not easily usable, if at all, by mobile phones and mobile phone browsers thus making it practically unusable for tourist after s/he has left home and started her/his travel.

Its actually surprise how little there's usable tourism and travel information which can be used with mobile phones. Here in Finland Helsinki has its own mobi site but, well, not so attractive service and could have more content. Especially if compared for the mobile service provided by eg. SAS, even their focus is a bit different.

What's the problem? Most likely that those tourism offices and boards are just so traditional, slowly moving elephants. This have seen already when internet, as term and a "channel", was new and how slowly tourism and travel communications moved into the net. Now the good sides, more cost effective and up to date communication, has been seen but hopefully value of mobile phones and services for them wont take so much time as it did with web services. Because the tourists and travelers are here, now, and willing to use information if that's just available.