MobileWebsiteWatch

Discover® Card today announced the launch of a mobile solution for its cardmembers, Discover.com Mobile. This mobile version of the Discover Card Web site will allow cardmembers to manage their credit card account directly from their mobile phone’s browser.The new mobile Web site offers a simplified version of the Discover.com account summary interface and includes the following functionality:

• Make a payment

• View recent transactions

• View recent and pending payments

• View rewards activity

• Enroll in the 5% Cashback Bonus® program

While there are a few banks out there that offer mobile services, such as Chase (SMS only) and services like Paypal, for the most part this major function of that people need access to in their everyday lives and consistently report having a desire to do via mobile in surveys, is sadly underserved. Discover is making some great headway ion this space and clearly has a solid understanding of the market and its customer base.

“At Discover, we know that busy consumers are constantly looking for more convenient ways to stay in control of their finances,” said Sarah Alter, vice president of e-business and new markets at Discover Financial Services. “Discover.com Mobile provides a new service channel that allows cardmembers to have access to their account information right at their fingertips. Whether by telephone, Internet or now mobile phone, Discover Card is committed to providing cardmembers with the services they need at the time, place and method they choose.”

As more and more companies turn to using the booming mobile web channel to provide serives to thier cusometers, streamlined and mobile optimized products like this will continue to grow rapidly in importance use and payoff.

Mobile Marketer put out their “Classic Guide to Mobile Commerce” in November, filled wtih 30 articles from key players in the mobile web and commerce space. The articles range from mobile marketing, mobile payments, and mobile web design.

Too much to sum up here, but there are two articles that I found very pertinent to the importance of mobile web.

The first is on page 9, “Mobile Commerce: Leverage the targed impulse purchase opportunity.” The key to this article is the discussion of how retailers can engage customers more meaningfully, and as a result increase sales. But, more importantly, the graphic in the article shows how all of the various mobile marketing initiatives all point back to your “mobile marketing presence” or your mobile website. Text messages, online advertising, SEM, mobile couponing, store displays, rewards programs all need to be tied together with an enjoyable mobile user experience.

The second is on page 26, “So, you have a mobile site. What’s next?”. I like this article because it assumes you’ve taken the right initiative to develop your mobile site and discusses how to promote that site to maximize it’s effectiveness. I think this is where many organizations get stuck. Let’s not forget that your customers are already going to your existing site, mobile or not, on mobile devices, so it is safe to assume that you will see traffic on mobile with the proper analytics tools, but your traffic will increase once you have optimized the mobile site for mobile. But, once you’ve made the investment in time and money to optimize your site for the mobile device, this article discusses how to promote the site further.

Opera Software’s report, “State of the Mobile Web, November 2008″ is a fascinating, quick read.

A couple of key points I think the report makes:

1. 2008 isn’t the year that mobile web went mainstream, but instead the year that we realize that we utilize “one web” on a multitude of devices.

2. The US moved from 7th position to 3rd position in the top ten list of Opera Mini using countries.

3. Page views increased 303% year over year, with 5.7 billion pages viewed in November 2008.

4. Portals, social networking sites and informational sites dominate the top 10 sites for most geographic areas.

I’m glad to hear that the major mobile players are in agreement that mobile web should not be seen as a “different web” but instead just a way that users are accessing existing websites from mobile devices.

ESPN is taking mobile web seriously. During the 2008 college football season, ESPN saw 59.9 million visits, a 185%.

Not bad, you say? How about an average of 7 minutes looking at content? How about the fact that visitors spent 2 more minutes on the mobile website on average than the wired website?

Maybe that’s because the mobile site is made “little” and gives users the info they need without a massive information overload? I’m speculating here.

Naturally, peak mobile traffic occurred during the SEC Championship game and the Texas vs. Texas Tech rivalry.

Click here to read more.

This great article appeared a few weeks back in the WSJ about retailers making it easier for customers to shop on their mobile devices and also in brick and mortar stores.

“Connecting with busy shoppers through their mobile phones “is even more important right now” for retailers, given the tough economic climate, says Brad Beasley, president of CrossLink Media, a mobile-marketing firm.”

Amazon, Target and Gap have released various iPhone apps of differing capabilities. Amazon’s is one of the most robust shopping apps for iPhone. The Gap application lets users mix and match clothing to create an outfit.

Other retailers like Sears have launched mobile e-commerce solutions from multiple devices, while Buy.com is sending out daily specials using Twitter.

Brick and mortar “giants” such as Wal-Mart and Sears and click and mortar stores like Amazon and Zappos are developing their m-commerce sales channels in various ways.

Wal-Mart is focusing on promotions and specials being delivered to handsets, whereas Sears has embraced m-commerce with their launch of Sears2Go.com, where shoppers can shop on their phone in a view optimized for their device and pick up their order without waiting on line.

Amazon has a new iPhone app that allows users to take a photo of a product and Amazon will scan their database of products to try to find a match, an addition to it’s first offering, TextBuyIt. And, in this article in Retail Industry/About.com, Zappos is said to be embracing m-commerce through socialization, which may or may not be relevant.

This article goes on to say that “m-commerce” is here to stay…I agree.

Papa John’s Pizza, the country’s #3 pizza chain reported that its mobile web pizza ordering service had boosted sales by a staggering $1,000,000 since its launch only a half a year ago! Considering that its online sales have grown in total 75% over year end 2007, it is not surprising that mobile is such a big boost and that it is growing fast. Just another example of how mobile web is paramount to contining sales growth in a shrinking economy. Your customers are already mobile, if you cannot serve them in that space, a competitor will.

This is just a guilty favorite of mine. Gamefly, the online service that rents video games through the mail, in the same way that Netflix rents DVDs, has launched a full mobile version of its web site. This is a really great example of best practices for mobile web. The user has access to almost 100% of the features and functionality available on the regular site and it is presented in a view that is specialized for mobile. The interface is sleek and easy to use, Users can add games to their queue, organize the list of games they have coming, look up games and get info an cheats, even purchase games right from their phones. Another best practice point: no new URL. All you have to do is go to gamefly.com on any phone and you get the specialized view automatically. It even detects what kind of device you have and sets it up especially for that. I have tried it on both a Nokia and an iPhone and got a custom interface. Pretty slick.

The benefit here is that a service like Gamefly needs to keep it users engaged to keep them paying their subscriptions month after month. Allowing gamers to add a game to their queue wherver they may be (at a store or on the schoolbus getting a reccomendation from a friend) increases the level of interaction customers have with the service, and makes it personal since the interaction is occuring on their personal device.

According to a study realeased on the 4th by the Kelesy Group, about 19% of cellphone-owning

Smartphones offered by Verizon

Americans now have a smartphone and, shockingly, 49.2% plan on getting one within one year. The study goes on to disect the things people use the mobiel web for which include: searching for products, getting maps and directions, getting info about movies and entertainment and accessing social networking sites. All of these areas clocked in double digit growth year over year and with half the cell phone owners out there who plan on upgrading to a smartphone in 1 year, that should accellerate more in 2009.

As this surge of mobile users comes online, you can be almost certain that once they are shelling out for new phones with advanced data services, a seamless and successful mobile web experience on any company’s web site will pretty much be a basic customer expectation. As we’ve posted here, smart companies like Sears, Gamefly, American Airlines, and Victoria’s Secret have already implemented an optimized mobile web view of thier sites and are building up market share. Getting mobile should be top priority for anyone not yet there as everyday customers who try and interact with you on mobile are frustrated and lost.

In the Sears Mobile press release (from Women’s Wear Daily here), Sears mobile innovations team leader Thomas Emmons says it best:

“If you’re marketing to people who read 85 percent of their e-mails on a BlackBerry, and you don’t have a good mobile site, you’re losing that customer,”

Sears is a great example of mobile best practices and others will have to either follow suit or get out of the way.

While m-commerce continues to grow in many areas, tickets is probably the fastest moving and the easiest

ProVenueMobile

for people to grasp and adopt. In the USA, tickets for movies, travel and performances are more and more commonplace on mobile. On Nov 12th, Tickets.com made a major step that gives it a serious competitive edge over even big competitors like Ticketmaster by offering it new service, ProVenueMobile.

ProVenueMobile is really the mobile version of tickets.com regular site. It is the 1st full complete mobile web commerce solution of its kind, that allows the user to fully complete the ticket purchase transaction from the mobile web, and does not require any click-to-call or telephone use. This is not only a major convenience and time saver for the user, but also a big cost saver for tickets.com, relieveing the need for 24/7 phone sales staff. Tickets.com notes to the press:

“We are excited about this technology, and view it as a major breakthrough for our company and for our clients,” said Larry Witherspoon, CEO, Tickets.com. “Staying ahead of the curve through industry-leading innovation, as well as delivering unparalleled customer support, is our chief mission. Offering this versatile and convenient mobile platform gives Tickets.com the opportunity to reach new milestones in both areas. We are delighted to be able to introduce a green, paperless technology into the marketplace. In early 2009 we look forward to offering website mobilization services to our clients.”

By extending the functionality and services of Tickets.com — including full e-commerce — to the mobile web platform http://mobile.tickets.com, full- circle ticket purchases can be made 24/7 on any handheld mobile device. Missing an on-sale time, waiting in line and being put on hold will be things of the past. The Usablenet Mobile-supported site integrates seamlessly with all web-enabled devices from smart phones (Blackberry, iPhone, Treo, etc.) to basic cell phones with web access. It supports all browsers, file formats, carriers and other technologies, so that Tickets.com customers can shop for and purchase tickets from anywhere, anytime.

The ticketing boom is not only limited to concert and movie tickets. Most major airlines now not only offer full mobile sites, but are extending mobile boarding pass functionality to thier passengers. This technology, being implemented at airlines like American Airlines and Northwest Airlines allows mobile users to use their phone as their boarding pass without any special software or hardware and regardless of what carrier they are using.

With mobile on the rise to buy more and more things, any company not allowing its customers to access them on the device they have on them at all times and look at the most for both personal and business purposes is outright loosing ground.