Practical mobile marketing-part 1

Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request
Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request

In this article, we are going to describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing in the near future.

The hands-on experience is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU (www.infonu.com). InfoNU is a free web based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:

Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons
Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games
Push links to mobile websites
Create and schedule mobile campaigns
Sign up and manage consumers
Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost
View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users

As in all sectors in explosive growth, bright people gravitate towards mobile marketing, create start-up companies, offer solutions and unfortunately also create a big creative mess full of definitions, standards, ideas and solutions. This article series is the authors attempt to untangle the web of technologies into easy-to-use patters you can use in your everyday marketing of your brand, company, products and services.

A second part of this article is planned. In Part 2 we will take a closer look at advanced concepts in mobile marketing like tailor-made mobile applications and mobile community services.

Permission Marketing and What Mobile Marketing is NOT

A mobile phone is a highly personal communication device. Mobile marketing is not about spamming uninterested people with irrelevant SMS messages at 2:00 am. Marketers have to respect this. Never send messages to someone without having their permission. Sending unsolicited SMS messages to people is not good marketing. Aside from the ethical aspect of spam, it does not work and costs you a lot of money. Do not do it.

Marketing activities that depends on the permission of the consumer is referred to as permission marketing and is central to mobile marketing. Embrace permission marketing and protect your list of consumers, it is the people who have given you permission to speak.

The Mobile Marketing Dance

Instead of sending unsolicited SMS messages, the trick in mobile marketing is to persuade people to sign up for your service and then to find a balance between providing sales driving information and offering value so that your customers are both informed and happy.

How to Persuade People to Sign Up for Your Service

What can you offer that makes your consumers accept the commercial side of your company? Here are a few suggestions:

Promote the following message by printing it on your packaged goods: Text COCACOLA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). The first 100 people to text us will win a free subscription on Coca-Cola magazine. After you received 100 replies, call up the winners and get their address.
Promote the following message on billboards, posters, banners or signs around your town: Text WHEATIES to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new ringtone.

Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ABBA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song.

Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ROXETTE to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new video.

Promote the following text on your web site: Do you want information about us in your mobile? Click on this link and enter your contact details.

Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text ARMANI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and win a trip for two to Paris. The winner will be notified the 16'th of August.

Promote the following text in your radio commercials: Text ATARI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and get Pac-Man to your phone.

Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text MCDONALDS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to claim your 10% discount coupon.

In other words: Send something back as a Thank you for signing up. Give your new user something for free. Give your new user a possibility to win something nice. At least a thank you SMS.

To configure InfoNU so that you automatically send something back when new consumers sign up to your service, log on to your InfoNU account, select Settings in the Intranet Home menu followed by SMS Signup settings, click on Details for your code word and enable Respond automatically with an SMS message. You can send back an SMS message, mobile content like images, video and music, a link to your mobile web site or a Java application.

To integrate your own web site with InfoNU as in the fifth example above, select Help in the Intranet Home menu followed by Integrate InfoNU and click on Generate Link.

File Formats to Use when Distributing Mobile Content

Since virtually all mobile phones support SMS messaging, sending SMS messages is the simplest and most reliable way to come across to mobiles. SMS messages are as we all know limited to 160 characters but can contain links to mobile content.

All mobile phones does not support the same media formats. If you have no a-priori knowledge about your consumers phones but still want to reach the biggest possible audience, use to the following file formats:

Media, File Format,File Extension

Images, Portable network graphics, .png

Sound, MP3 songs, .mp3

Video, 3GPP video 3gp

Ringtones Midi music .mid

This list of file formats comes from analyzing mobile phones produced by the biggest manufacturers and ranking the phones after how common each phone is in practice.

Three other interesting file formats can be used for more specialized tasks:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Visiting cards and address book entries, vCard, .vcf

Calendar entries, vCard, .vcs

Java games, Java application descriptor files, .jad

Distributing links to mobile content with InfoNU is performed in the exact same way regardless of file format: You log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload the content from your PC to your InfoNU account. To distribute the content to a single person, click that person's Communicate link. Make sure that Upload is selected as Type of Content.

If you want to send an SMS message to many people, create a campaign by clicking on Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu followed by New campaign. With InfoNU, you can also schedule campaigns to be run at a specific date and time. Go to Campaigns and click on Schedule campaign to define the start date of your campaign.

A Catalogue of Mobile Marketing Patterns

After your user signed up for your service, his/hers mobile phone transforms into an excellent communication channel. This section lists proven marketing methods for you to reuse:

Task: Inform customers about new products and updates, new offers and relevant company news.

Solution: Send an SMS message at an appropriate time with the information.

Note: To know when to send your message, ask yourself the following two questions: When is this information relevant to my mobile user? When will the message have the biggest impact? If you are selling umbrellas, sending your message when your customer is outside your store on his way home and it is raining outside might be a good idea. When is it not a good idea to send a message? At night? In the morning?

InfoNU supports sending personalized SMS messages. By using the tags {FirstName}, {LastName}, and {Mobile} in your SMS text, you can personalize the message with the recipients name and mobile phone number.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task: Promote your rock groups new album.

Solution: Promote the following message: Text THECHAINSAWS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song. Follow up by sending an SMS message to everyone who signed up when your new album is released.

Note: Distributing video to mobile phones is possible today but do not expect top quality and do not expect to send out more than 10 seconds. Advances in mobile streaming technologies will make longer video transmissions possible in a few years.

To distribute a song to mobile phones convert it to an .mp3-file, log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload your song from your PC to your InfoNU account. You can distribute the song either to an individual person or create a campaign to send content to large groups of fans.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task: You have a nice jingle that you would like to be recognized in the metro.

Solution: Produce a ringtone and send it to your consumers for free.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task: Increase sales by distributing a mobile coupon to your customers.

Solution: Send out the following SMS message to your consumers: Here is your coupon for the movie. Show this message and get two tickets for the price of one. A43-K32-F83.

To create SMS coupons with InfoNU, use the {Coupon} tag in your SMS text. InfoNU will automatically create the coupon text for you. To view coupons and its owners, select Mobile Users and click on Mobile coupons.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task: Get new customers by using viral marketing.

Solution: Create an SMS campaign with the following text: Welcome to Marty's Bar. This is your VIP pass. Show this message and get a free beer. Feel free to send this message to your friends.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task: You want to create an SMS newsletter that is delivered once a day.

Solution: Create several days of SMS campaigns with your content. Schedule the campaigns so that one is run every week.

To schedule a campaign to be run at a specific day, log on to your InfoNU account, select Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu and click on Campaign schedule.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task: You are having an event together with all your employees and customers.

Solution: Send out an invitation as an SMS message one week before the event. Send an SMS message the day before to remind everybody. Schedule SMS messages to be sent during the event to sychronize people. Send out an event the day after the event to say thank you and to follow up.

But...We have Invested in a WAP Site?

If your company has a mobile web site or a WAP site, use SMS messaging to simplify access to your site. Send an SMS message with a link to your site. To visit your site, your consumer simply opens the SMS message and does not have to enter your URL adress on the mobile phone:

Task: Promote your mobile web site and make it easier to access.

Solution: Add the following text to your web site: Mobile Access At All Times. Get our news on your mobile. Text REUTERS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). Send back an SMS message that contains a link to your mobile web site. Your consumers can access your site by opening your SMS message instead of entering the URL address on the handset.

To distribute a link to your mobile web or WAP page, create a text file that contains the URL to your site (i.e the text http://wap.sl.se), save the file with a .lnk file extension and upload the .lnk-file to your InfoNU account. To automatically send back the link, select Configure Settings, SMS Signup settings so that people receive your .lnk file as a response when they sign up to your service.

The Future of Mobile Marketing

Handset manufacturers are now working hard to unify the user experience on mobile phones. This will make Java applications and mobile web pages look and feel the same way regardless of handset manufacturer.

Manufacturers are also implementing a video compression standard called h.264. This compression technique is twice as efficient as the one used today. If you ever have tried video calls and been disappointed, expect to experience higher image quality within a year or two. The h.264 compression technique will be used for video calls, mobile-TV (in the standard called DVB-H) and for video streaming. The telecommunication industry believes that h.264 will make video calls and mobile video streaming useful in practice.

In Part II of this article series, we will take a closer look at mobile applications and how marketers can design mobile chat, newsletters and community services in just a few minutes.

Mobile payments-collaboration is the key

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 8577.
Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 2, position 9227.

In theory, the concept of mobile payments has a strong business case, given the high market penetration rates of mobile devices, such as cellular phones and PDA?s, in many parts of the world. In addition, mobile operators and financial institutions, through the use of these devices, envision an attractive way to enable their customers to make payments. On the consumer side, users can reap the benefits of convenience, permitting them to buy goods and services from any location.

In principle, a mobile device can be used as a POS (point of sale) tool. Mobile operators and financial institutions consider this concept as the next logical step in making mobile devices a trusted payment device for consumers, acting as a payment instrument supplementing cash, cheque, credit card and debit card.

Currently, financial institutions are rolling out wireless POS capabilities to merchants which are in-turn competing with a consumer?s mobile phone. Several new services have been introduced around the world in which merchants are accepting payments from wireless POS terminals. These wireless POS terminals, for example, allow merchants to offer home delivery services in which payments are presented and accepted upon delivery of goods or services at the consumer?s location.

Wireless POS terminals use the wireless networks of mobile operators to send payment instructions to a merchant acquirer?s payment server. Consequently, wireless POS services are classified as an extension of traditional payment services. Given that in some areas of the world almost everyone will soon own a mobile phone, and most merchant locations offer POS terminals as a form of payment, it is at least conceivable that the mobile device will take over a large part of the retail payment market.

Since wireless POS implementations are an extension of current payment infrastructures, users still need to use a credit or debit card to make purchases. The convenience associated with current wireless POS methods have to do with the fact that these terminals are brought to the location of the purchase. For example, in a restaurant environment with the user paying for their bill via debit card from their seat, or for their groceries which have been delivered to their front door.

Mobile devices enable the use of numerous services, services that do not need card readers, personal computers, and modem combinations or a merchant?s wireline POS terminal. Nowadays, mobile devices have an embedded chip that can be used to store information and provide secure authorization and identification.

The Need for Interoperability

But to make these services available to the majority of mobile users, mobile payment service providers need to roll out services that offer interoperability. There have been numerous mobile payment pilots conducted that enable mobile devices to be used as a payment option, some of which have advanced into full mobile payment services (e.g. PayPal, PayBox, MovilPago). To date, we?ve discovered that the key to providing a successful mobile payment service has to do with the benefits it gives the end user and the end user's customers: convenience, security, and freedom being a few key elements.

Though the industry has a long way to go before mobile devices will become a consumer?s payment instrument of choice, to ensure the stability of a viable mobile payments infrastructure, collaboration is the key.

Both mobile operators and financial institutions have tried, with little success, to implement their own individual pilot projects. Both parties have encountered numerous difficulties. Mobile operators, for example, because of their extensive existing customer base, technical know-how and billing comprehension, seemed the most likely candidates to provide mobile payment services. However, problems associated with risk management and the collaboration of numerous providers needed to accomplish interoperability have arisen. Financial insitutions on the other hand are confronted with a limited number of users and high infrastructure costs. To remedy these problems, mobile operators and financial institutions have begun collaborating to jointly offer mobile payment services to their customers. For instance, leading Dutch direct bank ING/Postbank Nederland, has partnered with the Netherlands number three mobile carrier Telfort, to offer users mobile access to the bank?s retail applications and link user bank accounts to Telfort?s prepaid service top-up capabilities for account recharging. In this case, the fact that these two entities are taking advantage of their natural symbiosis is a big step in the right direction.

Right now there are four entities needed to make a payment via credit card (acquirers, issuers, merchants and consumers) to make a payment via mobile device, there are five (mobile operators, acquires, issuer, merchant and consumers). As a result, the ideal business model includes the cooperation between mobile operators, financial institutions, technology suppliers and industry associations to create a certain amount of standardization which will ensure the successful implementation of a strong mobile payments infrastructure.

Still, numerous issues, including limited functionality available through the current generation of networks as well as a lack of standards to name a few, are still hampering the efforts being carried out by these industry players. In addition, questions regarding successful revenue generating business models also remain.

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, cell phone and PDA penetration rates are higher then they've ever been, with forecasted growth rates showing exponential increases in consumer adoption. Accordingly, industry focus should be centered around the business side. Right now it is not feasible for a mobile operator or a financial institution to role out competing services on a proprietary model that does not include interoperability. Mobile operators and financial institutions must work together to implement mobile payment services that marry a consumer?s bank account with their mobile subscription. Offering payment services should not be seen as a competitive advantage, but rather as a necessity which will drive the success of the rollout of mobile commerce.

Today we see several initiatives taking place including the creation of various industry associations designed to address the different issues associated with the mobile industry. With these activities underway-mobile operators and financial institutions are beginning to work together to roll out new payment services. Pre-paid top up, for example, is the first real commercial mobile payment application that is being introduced into several markets. Financial institutions and mobile operators are collaborating to enabling mobile subscribers to electronically pay for their pre-paid wireless accounts using several banking channels such as telephone banking, Internet banking, and ATM and mobile banking, completely automating the ?top-up? experience using SMS (Short Message Service).

Currently, payment instruments are stored in virtual wallets residing either on the mobile device or centralized on the open network service platform. Consumers register for the service through their financial institution, mobile operator or service provider, depending on how the service is setup. The registration is necessary to link the consumer?s subscription data with their financial information and provision the mobile device for the service. Future methods may see users using their mobile device as a way to simply access their bank accounts, whereby the mobile operator?s function will be simply to transport the data. In addition, smart cards issued by financial institutions may begin to become more prevalent.

As mobile services and infrastructures evolve we will begin to see the true notion of mobile payment instruments living up to the hype of ?anytime, anywhere payments.? Soon, mobile payments will become an integral part of consumer lifestyles, replacing the payment instruments we have hidden in our wallets today. It is clear, that the co-operation between mobile operators and financial institutions is needed to build a viable mobile payments offering. It is also clear that the next logical payments industry step is to provide consumers with the ability to make payments for goods and services on their mobile devices. The only true concept of ?anytime anywhere payments? is conceivable through access via a mobile device. 'Where there's a wireless, there's a way' and the key to the success of the industry is as simple as giving consumers what they want.

The mobile landscape – the truth behind the hype

Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request
Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request

This year, 2010, is apparently the year of the mobile. Any organisation dealing in digital media is talking about it, Wall Street analysts are lionising the potential and there are a growing number of major brands implementing their mobile strategy. Any international marketer worth their salt is plotting a course to get access to the pockets of the 4 billion mobile subscribers world-wide. Many organisations are now starting to meet the associated technology challenges head-on and this paper points the way for innovative brands to begin implementing high impact mobile initiatives immediately.

However, executing a mobile strategy today is an evolving process, and there are significant hurdles to overcome in constructing effective, broad-based, mobile initiatives. It is not just about delivering a new piece of technology (which is getting easier) but it is also about the application of that technology to the market you are addressing and how to get your customers embracing your mobile channel. Obviously, the need to create a compelling user experience is key to the success of your campaign. We have learned through painful experience that in reality your customers will try your mobile channel only once before deciding whether or not to give it 'general air-play'.

Why is 'going mobile' so hard? In short, the mobile medium has many different players from carriers to handset manufacturers to platforms to content publishers and many others. There are few standards for moving content across carriers to different mobile devices and it is still a little daunting for the uninitiated to navigate. Despite the noise and the 'explosive' growth of this market there are only a handful of suppliers that understand how to produce and publish rich, compelling, relevant and engaging content across the multiplicity of mobile device types now available.

The first obstacle to overcome exists in the form factor of mobile devices. Consumer expectations of the interactive media experience have been shaped by the Internet, and the Internet experience does not map directly to the small screen size and is limited by the bandwidth of the mobile environment. Mobile initiatives must be conceived and designed specifically to support a compelling mobile experience. Our experience to-date has been that this is uncharted territory for the vast majority of mobile brand strategies and has been characterised more by trials than by national and international rollouts.

The next challenge is that, unlike the open, standards-driven Internet, the mobile world is highly fragmented. There are currently more than 30 major handset manufacturers producing over 500 different phones, with significant variations in operating systems, screen sizes, display resolution, processing speed, memory, and performance. These differences mean that mobile content and applications must be adapted to run on multiple, dissimilar devices, greatly complicating the development effort. Further variations in service delivery among more than 600 carriers add still more development complications and cost. For these reasons, many mobile campaigns today are limited either to one carrier and a handful of devices, which compromises reach, or to the most basic of content technologies, which compromises effectiveness.

Perhaps the most important question that needs answering is: "Do you believe the hype and if so, is the timing right for me to 'go mobile' now?" If the answer to both is 'yes' the next question is "How will I gain competitive advantages comparable to those of pioneering web initiatives a decade ago?"

Given that the mobile market is in a constant state of flux and the noise level is constantly increasing - what are the possibilities open to an innovative brand?

There are five distinct tried and trusted methods for extending mobile initiatives to new audiences, which are described as follows in the chronological order of their entrance to the general market.

1. Text messaging via SMS has universal reach, and offers simplicity. It's also the most common non-voice use of mobile devices, accessed by anyone who texts friends and family or downloads ringtones and provides a solid delivery mechanism.

2. Rich content delivery via MMS (multimedia messaging service) delivers basic video, audio, and pictures in addition to text, and can be used for more colourful, animated enticements such as directions to a restaurant or a coupon for a film. SMS and MMS can team up, with SMS making the initial solicitation and MMS providing the delivery of rich content. On the downside, SMS/MMS offer very limited content delivery - only 160 characters. SMS, being text-only, can deliver just bare messages. While MMS adds basic multimedia, it and SMS share a further limitation in that they offer only two-way, walkie-talkie type communications. They are useful for alerting users to special offers and in following up offer acceptance by sending simple, static content. They do not provide an effective means to a brand experience and must also be used with caution; nobody likes receiving unwanted text messages on a mobile phone, or worse, getting stuck with usage charges.

3. The Mobile Web uses WAP (wireless application protocol) to access web sites. The WAP browser, which operates much like a computer-based browser but is simplified for the mobile environment, can deliver a much more satisfying user experience than SMS/MMS can, and is fully interactive. Mobile phones with browser capabilities are mainstream, and while usage is less common than SMS/MMS, approximately 75% of all mobile devices are Internet-enabled. What those users do with their WAP browsers differs markedly from their behaviour with computer browsers, as general web surfing on a mobile device just doesn't work well. There's no mouse, no proper keyboard, the connections are slower and web sites designed for computer access typically display awkwardly on small mobile screens. That makes the mobile web best suited to utilities that target specific audiences with tailored offerings. For example, an airline mobile service that displays flight status, schedule information, itineraries, and offers flight changes and check-in. In other words, delivering a limited portion of the content and functionality available at a brand's full web site, formatted specifically for handsets. Having identified an appropriate application, the challenge of accommodating variations among devices and carriers remains.

4. Downloadable rich media applications that support a variety of environments including Java, BREW, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and iPhone, are now hitting the headlines. These applications enable a far richer user experience than do SMS/MMS or mobile web, with the addition of high-quality video and audio and a higher level of contextual presentation, such as menu choices that make optimum use of screen real estate at any given point in the user experience. Creating compelling mobile applications requires significantly more that simply deciding what content to include and where to reformat the full web site and necessitates the creation of fresh content and interaction designed and optimized specifically for the mobile experience. Even though most phones are rich-media capable, few rich media device independent applications exist. For example, Apple now boasts that there are more than 100,000 iPhone Applications or Apps ( http://bit.ly/803DzU ) for this specific device - but it's highly unlikely that the vast majority of these will ever be ported to other handsets. That's largely a development issue and means that the proliferation of these applications cannot be ubiquitous unless they are developed for every single type of smart phone. Unlike in the computer world, a Java version that works on one mobile device doesn't necessarily work on other mobile devices. Given the proliferation of device-specific Java implementations, brands who choose to deliver rich media applications are often forced to choose which devices they'll support, in order to control development and testing costs.

5. Flash Lite is a runtime environment specifically optimized for mobile phones. Flash Lite enables OEMs and operators to differentiate their devices via customized user interfaces, a more complete web experience, and the ability to access video and mobile content across devices.

Now we have covered what is available we should consider how a brand should start to implement these technologies. Most brands that have embarked on their mobile strategy have often commenced their initiative with a marketing focus and have largely limited this activity to SMS/MMS campaigns, using them with the most basic user interaction. Those who have ventured further typically partner with a vendor offering either mobile web or rich media expertise. Because of the inherent technology bias, this risks letting technology drive the implementation, rather than business goals driving the implementation. Ideally, a brand wanting to optimize their efforts would be best served by partnering with a vendor that can support their strategic initiative with whichever technology is best suited to the task, combining multiple technologies to support different aspects of the mobile initiative when appropriate. It would be a bold move to commence an initiative using 'in-house' resources that have no track record of success and at this stage of the market development there are a small but growing number of suppliers who offer robust and reliable development platforms - not dissimilar to the early days of the internet. The prudent choice should be a vendor who has been in the market for some time with a demonstrable track record of delivering exponential growth from the mobile channel.

If you are seriously interested in divining and executing your mobile strategy you will be glad you made the decision because the sooner you get started with high-impact mobile campaigns, the sooner you'll have a serious competitive advantage in reaching those 4 billion global mobile phone subscribers.

In conclusion, there is now hard data ( http://bit.ly/4JJDq4 ) showing that the mobile internet is ramping up faster than desktop internet did. There currently exists an explosion in the growth of mobile data which is set to continue for some time. Mobile is here to stay and is only going to dwarf the first internet wave due to its ubiquity, necessity, convenience, and proximity to nearly everything we do.

What goes behind the design of a mobile site

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 9050.
Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 2, position 8663.

It cannot be denied that almost everything nowadays is mobile. Whereas before laptops were not common, today these gadgets are abundant and actually cost lower than they used to cost before. Cellular phones were not the trend in the past, but nowadays almost everyone has a cellphone.

Recognizing these, cellular companies and website programmers have launched what is now called the Wireless Application Protocol. Abbreviated as WAP, it is the international standard for Internet access using a mobile phone or from a personal digital assistant. The mobile application for WAP is very similar to a web browser in computers (Mozilla Firefox, Opera, atc.) but with some features removed to comply with mobile phone standards.

With WAP, mobile users can access services provided by various websites from their cellphones. They can send email, browse through the latest news reports in major news websites, track news about their favorite sport events and even download music files to their phones. This is very useful for businessmen, who are always on the go and might sometimes find carrying a laptop around as tiresome.

Despite its similarity to the Hypertext Markup Language used to design websites, WAP sites are created using the Wireless Markup Language. Similar to HTML, WML provides web interface features such as navigation, data input forms, hyperlinks, text and images.

How Mobile Internet Works

Mobile Internet access works much like its computer-based cousins. It uses a bridge or gateway to access the World Wide Web. When the user requests a page, the bridge retrieves the pages from the Web. These pages are then converted into a format that the phone can read and recognize.

One wonderful feature of mobile Internet is that you can query for phone numbers of certain establishments through the Web. You can then use the numbers that are returned by the query to make a call through your cellular phone, saving you from the hassle of having to dial the number to make a call.

The Process of Designing and Building a Mobile Website

There is little difference on how to design and build a mobile website as compared to designing conventional websites which are accessed from a desktop or laptop browser. But it is important to know these differences before one decides to tackle the task of creating websites specific for WAP browsers.

For one, designing a mobile website takes a far longer time to complete as compared to its desktop cousins. This is because the WAP accessing terminals in each phone model varies from each other. There is a different terminal for Nokia devices, and different ones for Sony Ericsson, so on and so forth. WML itself has very strict specifications because it is a very different beast compared to its ancestor, HTML, despite their similarities in the appearance and behavior of sites that are built using their codes. Thus, one finds that there are different methods of how to design and build a mobile website that caters to each of these specific phone models.

To design a mobile website, you need specific authoring kits for mobile phones. In the beginning, when mobile phones did not support the XHTML standard, content providers needed specific development kits to come up with WAP-specific pages. This is in great contrast to designing desktop-accessed pages, where one only needs a text editor and a browser to design and test a page.

Fortunately, WAP authoring kits are available and are abundant in the Internet. To search for these kits, one only needs to type "mobile website authoring kits" in their preferred search engine and will be rewarded by a lot of hits, or search results. These results are links to the various WAP development kits that can downloaded from the World Wide Web.

There also documentation available in the Internet providing information on how to design and build a mobile website. For example, mTLD hosts a myriad of training resources including ebooks on how to make your websites compliant while mobile phone internet standards.

Initially, unlike conventional websites, WAP sites need to be tested using a cellular phone itself. This has made designing and building mobile websites take a far longer time to be completed as compared to computer-based web sites. Nowadays, however, more and more mobile phones are adapting to the XHTML and XML standards. Plus, there are also mobile phone emulators (software that imitate the environment of a mobile phone) that can be downloaded from the Internet. The mobile web designers can use these emulators to speed up the testing phase of their projects. Because of these improvements, the ways of how to design and build mobile web sites are much easier and faster.

To facilitate faster development of WAP sites, the World Wide Web consortium or the W3C has developed a scheme in which developers can assess if their web sites are ready to be accessed by mobile phones. The registry of mobile ready sites, mTLD has even released a tool, named "MobiReady Report" to test for the mobile readiness of website using established practices and standards of the industry. These tools can be used as a reference as to how to design and build mobile web sites faster.

There are basic principles and limitations one should be aware of in designing a mobile website. Summarized, these limitations are:

o Only Cascading Style Sheets can be used to design the layout of your mobile website. In contrast to conventional websites, one cannot use tables to lay out the design of the pages.

o XHTML (Extended HTML) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) can be used to hard-code the pages' design.

o Only characters encoded using the UTF-8 standard can be readable and accepted by mobile phones' browsers.

o There are specific page sizes for each specific phone. The pages have a resolution of 640x480 at most, and 120 pixels on the average.

o Unlike designing pages that are accessed by a computer, in which you have the freedom of placing whatever information wherever you may want to put them, you have to place the most important information of your WAP site at the top of the page.

o WAP users favor the use of radio buttons and list to take their picks, rather than entering information through text entry fields such as text areas and textfields.

o Only the JPEG and GIF image formats are accepted in a WAP-oriented site.

o Mobile phones can only accept a maximum page size of 20 kilobytes. Any larger than that and it will cause phones to crash when accessing the pages.

o Pure HTML is used a mobile page. You cannot provide links to videos, as well as the Portable Document Format or PDF. You cannot embed Flash and other similar file types as well because mobile phones are not yet configured to be able to play such files from WAP sites.

o Most mobile devices access WAP sites with the speed of a dial-up connection. As a designer, you must be careful to design your pages in a way that it will be too big and take too long for the WAP user to access. Users pay for the time that they access the Internet through their phones, so it is important for your pages to load quickly.

o Mobile devices do not have the luxury of navigational icons unlike web browsers. Mobile phone users are limited to using the directional buttons and scrollers on their phones to navigate through a page. Designers are also encouraged to put in an interface to navigate to the previous page because most mobile phones do not have a "back" button in their WAP interfaces.

Mobile websites are hosted using the top-domain name of .mobi. The domain is approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and is managed by the mTLD global registry for domain names. Like mentioned earlier, websites hosted on the .mobi domain follows a specific standard in order to make sure that they are friendly to mobile phone processors. This standard, released by the W3C, specifies how to design and build mobile websites and optimizing them for users to achieve positive experience in navigating them.

To summarize previous information, these are the key points of how to design and build mobile websites:

o You need a content editor in order to design the user interface of your mobile website. These editors are available from the World Wide Web. Some of them are free, some are commercial.

o There are limitations that should be remembered when designing websites for the mobile phones, including the screen size (which is dependent on the phone model you are developing for) and the maximum file size that a WAP-ready mobile phone can handle.

o The content you come up with can be tested using an emulator that is also available in abundance in the Internet. These emulators imitate the environment of a cellular phone so you no longer have to upload your beta content to a host, and then access them using a WAP-ready mobile.

o Mobile web sites are uploaded and hosted using the ".mobi" top-domain name.

What is the mobilization? Optimizing mobile?

Unless you live in a cave, you might have heard the new buzz around "mobilization of websites", "mobile website optimized", "Mobile site" and "iPhonized" in the last year or so. You might be wondering what is this whole story and what's in it for you?

There were many technologies around mobile phones that were on the market for a long period of tranquillity. You might have heard about Microsoft's mobile platform a few years ago, what specifically targeted for mobile applications in the Windows mobile operating system. This mobile market segment what not given much importance or excitement until the 3 g mobile network (3 g allows simultaneous use of speech and data services and higher data rates) in particular was used for the communication of mobile data. Introduction of Apple's iPhone and Google NexusOne with the open source mobile operating system Android-based mobile devices, and other devices like Palm pre, Motorola droid etc completed model. All these smart phones with 3 g network technology made a huge impact on the world of mobile computing.

These introductions of the new so called "smart phones" are like a mini computer that you can keep in your pocket or bag and has its unique advantages that can do almost all the things you can do a computer. In some cases, it is much better than using GPS navigation and location-specific applications, which are even better than a computer or laptop. During the mid-February 2010 Mobile World Congress, held a Conference in Barcelona, Spain, where there were high enthusiasm and excitement from smart phone produces about the future of mobile technology. One of the companies that Microsoft has mentioned that they were about to renew and refocus on mobile technology. So everyone is on it, when all these things are happening around you and you may also notice that every day more and more people around you buried in their phones, you might be wondering why all the buzz around this mobile technology and what's in it for me or my business?

Yes, there is a lot of things that you want if you're a small business or business owner with a website or want to have your own web presence in this world wide Web impact. "Let me tell you a little story behind all these changes when information revolution occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000sHe did lot of business to move their business process towards the internet and the internet has become a backbone for everything that happens around us. More and more companies have wanted their web presence and website has become a default value for any business.

So now you have millions and millions of websites accessed by each with one click of a button and all these engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo and social media networks like Facebook, tweeter, etc. have information available where ever and when ever you wanted to search. Initially there were desktop computers with dial-up modem that progressed slowly and then to "wifi". If you want to access information at any time, you must have a laptop with a WiFi access. You must bring your laptop where ever you go, but that is not very convenient and not very profitable. The problem is resolved by the latest mobile technologies. Your phone gives you the convenience of connected always with 3 g or other sophisticated mobile networks so that you can access information when ever you wanted, as long as you have a signal in your phone. With this change in technology, offers a new opportunity for all businesses.

According to estimates, there are mobile users 2 times more often than users of the internet to any child and 3 times more mobile phones than personal computers or laptops. You will be losing something unless you "wake up", and think about these changes and act on it, if you are a business owner or web sites, this is the moment of "Mobilization" or "optimize your site for mobile phones". If you don t, then you may be losing customers for sure. More and more people are traveling and watching for information with their mobile phones. The beauty of these smart phones are that it's GPS-enabled devices and if you want, you can find out exactly where the customer is in and who is a treasure trove for online marketing.

Lot of marketing research shows that location-based search and location based marketing will increase exponentially and not only that, there is a cost advantage using cell phones to purchase laptop and have broadband access. So people are moving to mobile phones and not having those traditional landlines, and so eventually everyone will have a smart phone in the next few years. As the mobilisation of your website is a must. One would'nt think that their site looks OK on the iPhone, but that may not be true. You mean when you see 2 different versions of the site want to understand what I have, one optimized for mobile phones and another is a normal site optimized for surfing on your mobile phones. The user experience on a website regular phone could be quite frustrating.

There is a misconception about what is "Optimizing Mobile" or "Mobilization" of websites. Some think that a developer must take to develop an iPhone app for iPhone or hire some one to write an Android application that can run on phones that uses android operating systems. It is not true. All you have to do is to optimize the site to look good on mobile phones. These mobile friendly sites will be easy to use in a mobile phone and your customers will like for example, if you go to CNN, have a separate site for mobile phones and a regular browser fxcor site. That is called mobile optimization and at the same CNN, CNN Money application that iPhone is an iPhone application that you can download from Apple iTunes or from CNN.

So don't wait for your competitor to take advantage of. Think and act on it to get your Mobile optimized website "or" Mobilized ".