Transcript mobilemarketing2012

MOBILE PORTALS INTRODUCTION
Course Faculty: Mrs Yasmin Malik
Venue: IBA City Campus, Karachi
Course Start Date: Spring 2012 (Feb 1)
MIS553: Mobile Marketing Strategies
dotMobi Domains
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dotMobi or .mobi = top level domain that was created to indicate that a website is
developed specifically for mobile access
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First made available for purchase in 1996
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Originally designed to help distinguish mobile websites from traditional websites
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Some critics, like Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the WWW and the HTTP Protocol)
say that the dotMobi domain extention violates the notion of “device independence”
Device independence = the idea that the Web should always work regardless what
type of device is accessing it
In other words, the theory is that the device and the browser should adapt to the
Web content rather than forcing Webmasters to create content that is specifically
designed for a certain set of devices
3 Basic Mobile Portal/Site “Architectures”
Architecture = refers to where and how the pages of the site will be organized
and stored on the Internet
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3 basic mobile site architectures to choose from:
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A mobile sub-domain or subdirectory on the main site
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A separate mobile site, on a different domain from the main site
3.
Mobile-traditional hybrid pages on your main site (outside the scope of this
course)
Which option you choose will affect your ability to control the mobile user
experience and the content you are providing to the mobile user
Mobile Sub-domain
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This is a good option for many popular websites
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They put a mobile version of their site in a sub-domain or sub-directory
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Subdomains: subsections of your website that are represented in the URL with usually the term
“mobile”, then a dot (.) and then the full domain name
Examples:
 www.Reuters.com becomes www.mobile.Reuters.com
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www.msn.com becomes www.mobile.msn.com
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www.lufthansa.com becomes www.mobile.lufthansa.com
(refer to live Lufthansa mobile site)
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The main advantages:
 users do not need to remember a new domain name
 The brand benefits from the traffic, links, history and keyword rankings that the main site
has with search engines
 Mobile site does not have to start from scratch and can begin attracting traffic from mobile
search engines faster
Mobile Sub-directory
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Sub-directories: sometimes called folders or sub-folders
Operate in much the same way as sub-domains do but they are presented differently in the
URL
Examples:
 www.bbc.co.uk/news becomes www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile
 www.dawn.com becomes www.dawn.com/mobile
All the mobile content is hosted in the mobile subdirectory
Benefits: content is tailored easier – get rid of elements from the traditional or main site that
would take a long time to download on mobile phones
Note: some mobile sites are specifically designed for specific mobile devices!
Dawn.com/mobile is optimized for Nokia phones which means a less than optimum view will be
gained when trying to view this site using phones other than Nokia
Question: What are the implications for mobile marketing….?
Mobile Web and WAP
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As with any Web development, mobile web site development is an ever-changing art and skill sets needs to
be adjusted in line with changes in technologies and coding languages
WAP or the Wireless Application Protocol (released in 1998) allowed users to view simplified versions of
mobile websites that had been developed using the Wireless Mark-Up Language (WML)
Things improved with the introduction of WAP 2.0 which allowed the viewing of colour, images, interactivity –
coupled with the use of XHTML for coding of web sites
The WAP 2.0 protocol also supports Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which create “hybrid” pages
CSS: make all existing pages on your existing site work on mobile phones and are the rendering instructions
that control how the content of your site is displayed (colours, layout, fonts)
CSS is not a good option for sites that have a lot of images or Flash
The HTML5 standard is in the making which promises to further improve mobile rendering on browsers/plugins such as MS Silverlight, Adobe Flash
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HTML5 has been adopted by the iOS, Symbian, Android and the Palm Pre
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Other mobile dev languages include: JavaScript, AJAX (JS + XML),
Mobile Portals
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Mobile Portal = A mobile website that is created to achieve a very specific goal that
represents only a small portion of the company’s or brand’s overall marketing goals
Instead of changing the main brand website to fit a campaign, a different site (or portal) is
created to venture further away from traditional brand guidelines, be edgier, and offer a
better customer experience
This tactic has worked quite well for many companies as part of their mobile marketing
campaigns – good examples are Land Rover and BMW
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One important element of portals is their viral nature and link to social networking apps/sites
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There are also many traditional mobile portals that can be used to kick start your campaign:
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MSN
Yahoo!
Live Search
AOL