Volusion is proud to announce the beta release of our latest feature that will revolutionize the way you sell online. With Volusion mCommerce, you’ll have an optimized version of your online store so customers can conveniently shop on their smartphone.
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We’ve got some VERY exciting news for you. As we’re all learning, the importance of […]
Original post by Matt
Not long ago I had the privilege of teaming up with George Michie of the Rimm-Kaufman Group for an interview on ecommerce issues. George has graciously reciprocated to offer his expertise in paid search. George is a well respected thought leader in search marketing, serving as co-founder and CEO of RKG, member of Google’s SEM Advisory Council, professor at Market Motive, columnist for Search Engine Land, frequent speaker at ecommerce and search conferences and has worked for top retailer Crutchfield Corporation. You can follow George’s blog here.
Linda: We’re seeing a lot of changes with Yahoo and Bing merging. Does that make things easier or more complicated for advertisers?
George: We think it will help search advertising, at least in the short term. The richer data set afforded by combining the Bing and Yahoo.com traffic will be a boon to those who know how to exploit the long tail, and having one less set of copy changes to make won’t hurt either.
Long term, is the industry better served having one larger competitor to Google or two smaller ones? That’s a tough question. To the extent that Google acts as simply a marketplace where advertisers compete against each other for placements, one could argue that a Google monopoly poses no real risk. On the other hand, given an absolute monopoly, who’s to say that Google will stick to the auction model? If negotiated placements yielded more revenue per impression and greater profits, they’d drop the auction in a second. I don’t think that’s likely to happen; I think the reason for Google’s success lies in the fact that the ads are cost effective when managed properly, and moving away from that model makes them just another portal.
Linda: It’s rare to talk about paid search strategy and escape the topic of the “long tail.” As you elude to, those who know how to work the long tail have an advantage. [Reader note: “Long tail” queries refer to searches that happen only a handful of times per year (maybe only once) can make up the lion’s share of clicks and sales.] What is the best way to capture the long tail? Is the broad match type with a thorough negative keyword list the answer, or should you try to predict the tail with keyword research and exact match terms?
George: I’ve written about this a good bit recently. The importance of the tail does vary a great deal from advertiser to advertiser so it’s not quite true that it matters tremendously for everyone. However, when it does matter, there’s no question about it: broad match by itself is not the best solution.
The right way to approach the tail is to build out the keyword list thoroughly and carefully, with attention to landing pages and copy to maximize both CTR and conversion rates. Then, with sophisticated bid management and flexible attributes applied smartly, the real power of targeting bids to the differentiated value of the traffic takes over.
We like using broad match as a catch-all with lower bids on the broad matched versions than the exact matched versions. The keyword list can never be perfectly comprehensive, and broad match is tremendously valuable for catching word orderings and typos that you’d never catch with exact or phrase match.
Linda: Keeping up with the changes in search engines and advertising program capabilities is a full time job in itself. It’s almost as if when you take a week’s holiday, you’ve surely missed a major announcement or change to the way things are done. The result is do-it-yourselfers may be relying on outdated books or blogs for guidance in managing their PPC campaigns, and even the professionals can be behind the times. In your experience, what’s the most outdated tactic that is still in use by too many advertisers?
George: Things do change all the time but in many senses the fundamentals haven’t changed, and what surprises me is the number of folks who still don’t seem to know the basics.
The fact that so many folks are still bidding by position just amazes me. In fact most of the platforms available for rent and used by many agencies are nothing more than position crawling systems. Even when turned to “efficiency targeting”, they find efficiency by hunting and pecking for the right position, rather than measuring the value of traffic, bidding what makes sense, and letting the position fall where it may. Position crawling guarantees inefficiency and lost opportunity, but even though careful studies have proved that the value of traffic is largely independent of position, people still use position crawlers.
Linda: Surely ignorance is not bliss! That reinforces the importance of having a search manager that really knows what they are doing. Often paid search is outsourced because the retailer does not have the in-house expertise to manage or even understand a campaign, which leaves the program without much oversight. How can you verify your campaign is being managed well? When do you know it’s time to fire your agency?
George: The devil is in the details. I outlined a process for a top-down evaluation of a paid search program. It’s imperative to periodically take the program apart to make sure it is being managed well. Too many folks assume that because they’re using a well-known, expensive agency that their program is therefore well-managed.
Certainly, you shouldn’t have to micro-manage your agency; if you do, what’s the point of outsourcing? But if periodic, detailed evaluations of the program reveal significant problems, the solution isn’t micro-management, it’s finding a competent agency.
Linda: I suppose when clients comes to you after working with another agency, there’s a certain degree of “reworking” you need to do. In your experience, what is the biggest (or most common) mistake that online retailers make in paid search?
George: The biggest mistake is also stunningly common, it’s failing to separate results of brand search and competitive search. Particularly for companies that do a great deal of offline marketing, brand search represents a fundamentally different subset of customers, those who are proverbially ‘walking through your front door.’ Crediting these sales to paid search efforts leads to tremendous overspending in competitive search.
Advertisers mistakenly believe that since the overall cost to sales ratio is reasonable, they’re spending money wisely. If we think instead about the law of diminishing returns and the question: what happened to the last $1,000 we spent and what would happen to the next $1,000? We’ll end up seeing that those answers are all found in the competitive non-brand search program, because that’s where all the incremental spending happens.
Linda: Speaking of keywords, it’s rare to talk about paid search strategy and escape the topic of the “long tail.” As you mentioned earlier, those who know how to work the long tail have an advantage. [Reader note: “Long tail” queries refer to searches that happen only a handful of times per year (maybe only once) can make up the lion’s share of clicks and sales.] What is the best way to capture the long tail? Is the broad match type with a thorough negative keyword list the answer, or should you try to predict the tail with keyword research and exact match terms?
George: I’ve written about this a good bit recently. The importance of the tail does vary a great deal from advertiser to advertiser so it’s not quite true that it matters tremendously for everyone. However, when it does matter, there’s no question about it: broad match by itself is not the best solution.
The right way to approach the tail is to build out the keyword list thoroughly and carefully, with attention to landing pages and copy to maximize both click through and conversion rates. Then, with sophisticated bid management and flexible attributes applied smartly, the real power of targeting bids to the differentiated value of the traffic takes over.
We like using broad match as a catch-all with lower bids on the broad matched versions than the exact matched versions. The keyword list can never be perfectly comprehensive, and broad match is tremendously valuable for catching word orderings and typos that you’d never catch with exact or phrase match.
Linda: Yes, sometimes the queries that trigger your ads can be very irrelevant (even humorous!) We would get searches like “granny cart” triggering our ecommerce software ads at Elastic Path, for example. When you add them up, there truly is a long tail of negative matches that can really dilute your click through rate.
Linda: If you’ve added sufficient negative matches and a keyword still suffers from low click through or abysmal conversion, Is it ever a good idea to delete the keyword? What are some strategies to turn a “dog” keyword into a “star”?
George: I once went so far as to say “there are no bad keywords, only bad bids.” That might have been a bit overstated, but my point was simply this: there are very few keywords – assuming they’re reasonably targeted — that draw in traffic of zero value. The value might be small, but it’s rarely zero. So, first and foremost is the notion that it isn’t a matter of finding keywords that “work” on the first page, and turning the others that “don’t work” off. Bid the appropriate amount and take whatever traffic you get.
Now, it is possible to improve the value of the traffic on a given keyword by identifying negative associations to knock out the wrong traffic, and by making sure the copy qualifies traffic as much as it can. If you sell “desk chairs”, but yours start at $350, where Staples has “desk chairs” for $35, you may find “$350 + for quality office chairs” helps steer the bargain hunters elsewhere.
To a large degree, paid search is dominated by mass marketers. Keywords that speak more to mass market intent can be tough for niche marketers who don’t have selections that appeal to the mass market.
Linda: Ad copy, like any copy, can benefit from split testing. What have been some of your most effective PPC tests? Are there any “rules” to live by?
George: There are very few rules that apply to every advertiser, so maybe one universal rule is to test assumptions! In truth, what may be a universal rule is this: never assume that the traffic on Google.com will perform the same as traffic on Google’s syndication network – even more true for Yahoo and its syndicates. Separate campaigns and measured bid differentials for the engine and its partners almost always delivers positive results.
We have some very exciting results from Yahoo’s new syndication bidding settings that should yield more revenue for our clients, and for Yahoo.
Linda: Sounds juicy! For my final question (you cannot interview a guru without asking something to this effect): where do you see the future of paid search going?
George: The two biggest changes on the horizon are likely to involve the ad formats and how paid search integrates with other marketing efforts.
Google is testing and testing to find formats that generate more revenue per impression, and they may find something. I don’t think product images are going to be it, though. Someone searching for “Pet Supplies” isn’t likely to respond to any particular product image. That said, giving marketers and agencies flexibility to design appropriate display ads for different levels of search depth might work. Providing a plus-box like expansion to the next level of depth, rather than all the way to the bottom with products, might be the best solution.
The ability to parse credit between multiple ads within a search program and across multiple marketing programs will become imperative. We’re launching an attribution management solution for our clients by the middle of March, and I’m sure other agencies will do the same. The better we understand what advertising dollars truly drive sales, the more efficiently we can allocate resources.
It keeps getting more complicated, but that keeps it interesting for us geeks.
Linda: It sure does! George, thanks again for sharing your brain. And now, we open up the floor to questions…
Original post by Linda Bustos
Wordpress is increasing its reputation as a platform for building e-commerce websites - from a simple blogging CMS, Wordpress themes and back-end functionality deliver all the functionality of a dedic…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Lawrence Reaves)
Volusion is proud to participate in this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival to showcase our industry leading shopping cart software and make a huge announcement. Additionally, we’ll be sponsoring “Microsoft BizSpark and Volusion TECH Cocktail SXSW: Blackout Sunday,” an event to showcase multiple tech start-ups. Keep reading to learn more!
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Coming to the big SXSW Interactive festival? […]
Original post by Matt
Came across this humorous video via Storefront Backtalk. Check out Hitler’s reaction to cloud computing security problems:
Can’t see video? View it on Youtube.
Original post by Linda Bustos
There’s a ton of chatter on Techmeme today regarding iPad and Flash and HTML 5. Again. In particular don’t miss posts from ReadWriteWeb regarding Flash vs. HTML 5 speed and PC World’s comparison of HP’s new Slate vs. the iPad and how the focus will be on Flash.
Yesterday I sat down with top execs from Adobe’s Flash team. Later today I’ll have a video demo of a variety of things they announced at the Mobile World Congress, including a new Flash player for Android and Palm Pre (I played with it yesterday, very nice). I’ll link that video in here in about an hour, but wanted to get this post up while my thoughts were fresh.
Why won’t the iPad have Adobe Flash technology? Anup Murarka director of technology strategy and partner development for the Adobe Flash platform and Aaron Filner, group product manager of Flash platform, focusing on AIR, answer some of the reasons why Steve Jobs doesn’t put Adobe Flash onto the iPad in one of the videos I filmed yesterday when I visited Adobe’s offices in San Francisco. Things like:
1. It will chew up battery.
2. It will crash or be buggy.
3. It doesn’t work with touch interfaces.
4. It won’t perform well enough.
They take on each of these complaints about Adobe Flash and explain what has changed with the Flash 10.1 player.
My thoughts? I’m buying an iPad anyway (we’re even having a party at the Palo Alto store all night on the evening of April 2nd) and I have iPhones. My life would be better if Flash shipped on iPad, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. So, developers are going to be forced to build two versions of their web pages if they care about reaching me as a customer and one of those versions will need to have no Flash or Silverlight (Apple is also resisting including Microsoft’s Silverlight platform).
But Adobe is doing a pretty good job of keeping Flash developers’ skills relevant. You can build apps for iPhones or iPads in Flash and compile them using some new tools that Adobe has been showing off and will ship before July. Even Adobe’s own Photoshop app on the iPhone was built in Flash and compiled using these new tools. That’s a compelling story.
I have to admit, though, that I will be checking out other competitive devices from Google and others. I already have a Droid, which will use the new Flash 10.1 player just fine and I expect I’ll check out the new HP tablet and, especially, ones that will come with the Google Chrome OS later this year. Those, I expect, will support Flash and that could be a big deal in future device decisions.
How about you? Will you decide not to buy Apple products just because they won’t run Flash in Web pages?
Original post by Robert Scoble
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has been using the bully pulpit over at Techcrunch to tell everyone that how we work together is about to radically change to be more like how we are able to share photos and fun things with each other over on Facebook. He’s right, but I’m not sure yet Salesforce is really going to be the one to lead us into this new world.
Other companies like Yammer, SocialText, Jive, SocialCast, and others have actually been doing the harder foundational work here of trying to convince us all to bring socially collaborative services into our workplaces. Yesterday I sat down with Yammer’s CEO, David Sacks, and talked about the industry and what Yammer is doing (Yammer was first to bring microblogging streams inside corporate firewalls and won TechCrunch 50 two years ago because of that).
I’ve been going around this enterprise world trying to understand it. I recently visited SocialCast and talked with CEO Tim Young about how he sees this revolution taking shape (and how he views Salesforce’s entry into it). In the interview you’ll hear Tim tout his advantages: that SocialCast is runable both on its servers, but can also be run on your own servers inside your firewall, or on your own infrastructure. Enterprises in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and banking will want to do this and won’t go with the Google or Salesforce model of “run it on our servers, they are safe, promise.”
I also talked last week with SocialText’s founder, Ross Mayfield. SocialText was the first company into this new “Enterprise 2.0″ space and they just shipped a new version that has a much broader range of applications than SocialCast or Salesforce has (spreadsheets and wikis, to name two) that are integrated deeply into its socially collaborative streams. Companies that want a complete set of applications should look at SocialText.
But, now, don’t miss what Google did last night (it turned on the Google Apps Marketplace). It’s big. But even more exciting and potentially revolutionary was the Gmail integrated contextual apps extensions. These let developers integrate all sorts of enterprise data right into Gmail. You can see where Google will go next, right? An enterprise version of Buzz with these widgets integrated into Buzz messages. Salesforce is actually ahead in integrating its partners’ data right into its feeds with Chatter, but it’s clear that window will close pretty quickly as Google keeps building its Enterprise Reef (my term for all the various projects that Google is stitching together). If you are interested in the enterprise space, I’d definitely watch the video presentations from last night. Salesforce has a few million users, Google has 25 million users, so you can see the relative strength of Google’s moves. Salesforce must articulate a strategy of how it will both partner with, and differentiate from, Google’s reef.
After the presentations last night I talked with executives from Zoho, Atlassian, and other companies. They agree with Benioff that a revolution at work is underway. They are seeing sizeable sales and adoption into enterprises as we all change how we work from a file-based and email-based system of working to a socially-collaborative feed way of working.
This is also why the most important panel at SXSW will be the Activity Streams panel. All of these companies need to adopt standards-based stream formats so that they can easily interoperate with each other and all the data sources that will need to shove data and reports into our work streams of the future. I’ll be there and will report more on Saturday as I understand more about the state of the art.
Are you feeling this revolution yet? Are you changing how you work with others? Or are you still only using email and Microsoft Sharepoint to collaborate with your coworkers? If you are, beware, your work life is about to change big time.
Original post by Robert Scoble
If you’ve been reading Techcrunch or Techmeme lately you know just how in love tech bloggers are with location-based services like Foursquare. Just yesterday Facebook announced its intention to check in on this hot market.
Even the major players, like Gowalla, know that they must innovate to stay relevant. Gowalla’s CEO, Josh Williams, told me yesterday in a video interview that everyone knows that the check-in gesture will be a commodity pretty quickly, if it isn’t already (even Yelp added the “check in” gesture).
Gowalla and Foursquare this morning checked in new iPhone apps, both of which make the experience of using these services a lot nicer. You can see Josh showing me Gowalla’s new iPhone app in the video here.
Gowalla and Foursquare aren’t the only ones trying to thrive in this space, though. Brightkite, Loopt, Whrrl, Lunch.com, and others are releasing new versions this week and are trying to find communities that will love them.
But for me the real fight this week is between Foursquare and Gowalla. I’m using both and neither has come out with a set of features that make me totally want to use one over the other.
The longer term fight (IE, between now and June) is whether any of these will be able to defend themselves against Facebook and Google.
Google’s Buzz should give some of these startups some hope. Before Buzz came out I expected it to be much more competitive with Twitter and Facebook. After it arrived we realized that Google isn’t as smart in the social arena and I thought they might be.
Already Foursquare’s co-founder is saying that Facebook is losing its “real friendness” when compared to these newer services and he does have a point, but it seems it’s way too early to poke the bear. Ask Mark Andreessen how that works out (he made Mozilla seem far more important than it actually turned out to be and woke up the Microsoft bear which proceeded to chase Mozilla off of its lawn).
Anyway, this space is white hot and the next week will decide which team or teams will get to do battle with Facebook and Google in the real test for this space.
Can this area get any hotter? Will something surprising that none of us are expecting come out at SXSW?
One thing I like is just how articulate Josh Williams of Gowalla is on this space. Anyone interested should definitely watch this video.
Original post by Robert Scoble
There are some points and tips to be kept in mind when you are going for online marketing businesses. These methodical points surely help to boost businesses. This write up explains how to focus on …
Original post by default@goarticles.com (David Ephraim)
Earlier this week, Google offered a free download of its own SEO Report Card, an open and honest document that grades around 100 of Google’s own “products” (think Youtube, Maps, Adwords, Reader, Blogger etc). While it may satisfy your curiosity on how well the Big G does at SEO itself (seasoned search pros may snicker that only 10% are using the title tag properly), it can also help you audit your own website. Topics covered include search result presentation, URLs and redirects and on-page optimization.
Here’s an example regarding canonical URLs and duplicate content:
Directory form, www.google.com/product(/)
www.google.com/product (canonical), try version:
www.google.com/product/
with: suboptimal behavior when trailing slash added
* includes product main pages in directory form without a trailing slash
200 status code given when slash added to Google Products’ canonical URL, Sept. 2009:
Avoid multiple URLs that serve the same content. From the example above, the good news is that visitors will reach the content no matter which version of the URL they choose. This is because a “200 OK” status code is given for both URLs. The bad news is that each of these URLs will get crawled and indexed by search engines, creating duplicate content. Search engines will have a tougher time deciding which URL is the canonical. Also, each URL will have its own reputation. Using a 301 on www.google.com/products/ will consolidate this valuable reputation so that the canonical can rank to its fullest.
404 status code given when slash added to Google Finance’s canonical URL, Sept. 2009:
Prevent 404s. A lot of visitors will try to reach Google Finance with the URL finance.google.com/. Many others will try www.google.com/finance, but a large number will also try www.google.com/ finance/, which leads them to an unhelpful 404 page. Some visitors will assume that the service is down (“Why wouldn’t www.google.com/finance/ work?”). Others might try another form of the URL, but say, “I never know which URL to choose for Google’s products!” Think of the most common URLs that visitors might try in order to reach your product, then 301 redirect these to the canonical URL. This will prevent a lot of frustration for users who access your product by typing the URL in their browser’s address bar.
404 page shown when slash added to Google Finance’s canonical URL, Sept. 2009:
To see the whole shebang, download the SEO Report Card
Original post by Linda Bustos
It has been announced today that Malcolm Cowley, one of the original founders of Buy.at has invested in Existem Affiliate Management and will be joining the board.
Malcolm left Buy.at in 2008 after it’s sale to AOL Advertising. During that time he’s kept his eye on the affiliate marketing sector and feels that now is the time to step back into the arena.
For my money this is a great move, I’ve always rated the Existem team as one of the top affiliate management agencies in the UK and often refer clients to them. Malcolm will be a great addition to the team and I’m sure will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to take the business to the next level.
Congratulations guys, I’m expecting big things!
What I’m listening to right now: Gorillaz - “Plastic Beach“
Post from Kieron’s Blog
Malcolm Cowley invests in Existem Affiliate Management
Original post by Kieron
Ecommerce sites have very practical values for the modern day consumers. They always want extreme ease while getting involved in any transaction, online to be more precise. Listening to their demands …
Original post by default@goarticles.com (arun kumar)
Business on the internet is often referred to as E-Commerce. Some people do business completely through e-commerce. Their customers come from the internet, and they do all their communication on the i…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Leslie Koch)
So what is the complete solution to all of your online business problems? The solution is called an ecommerce shopping cart system. This highly popular online business instrument enables you to ra…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Rigoberto Vinson)
With an increase in consumers using the internet to shop and perform business transactions, ecommerce has become the future of the online community. It is estimated that shoppers are spending billions…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Judson Hurst)
No, no, I’m not talking about going to the Diggnation party and downing a couple of drinks. This year there’s some geekier ways to augment your reality while you walk from panel to panel or event to party.
Here’s a few.
1. Win $1,000 by using SXSW version of the Junaio augmented reality app. The game is called ScavengAR and you can get details on the game here. Sorry, only for iPhone 3GS users. If you see me at the Rackspace Revolution party on Monday night (I’ll be working the door so should be easy to find) I’ll be wearing one of the T-shirts that can help you win this game (and the augmented reality stuff it does on my shirt is pretty mind-blowing. ).
2. Get the SXSW QR code app. There will be a ton of QR codes at SXSW, including on everyone’s badges. If you have a QR code app on your phone you’ll be able to easily exchange information without having to collect old-style business cards.
3. Use Gowalla, MyTown, and Foursquare and watch out for other location-based games that will do something fun at SXSW. Foursquare just announced their SXSW badges and I’m meeting with Gowalla’s co-founder later today to get the skinny on what they are doing. Foursquare is releasing a new iPhone app tomorrow, which has a much better design and new features. Gowalla is expected to do a lot too, and has a huge party at SXSW that’s already sold out. Are you not sure which one is best for you? Check out the shootout I put up on Google Buzz that got hundreds of comments.
4. Plan out your SXSW fun with Plancast (a new kind of event planner). They have a whole page dedicated to SXSW and most of my geeky friends are using Plancast to find events.
5. Prepare for wireless troubles. I talk about some of the preparations that AT&T is saying they’ve made to get ready for SXSW over on Google Buzz, but we still expect troubles so some of this stuff might not work at all. I’m carrying a Droid that will be on Verizon. At CES that served me well. Unfortunately not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford two devices. AT&T says they’ll have a bunch of wifi access points throughout downtown, though, which should help reduce the load on their cell towers.
6. Get some Stickybits and hand them out like business cards and stick them to all your friends’ computers like I will be. Hah. What are these? Little stickers with a barcode that you can put information into. Or, turn into a forum. Techcrunch explains.
I’m sure I’m missing a ton of apps that we could use to augment our realities, so please leave your favorite apps that you recommend other SXSW attendees to use in the comments here and I’ll probably write another post later in the week.
Oh, and the news? The ScavengAR app is built on top of the new Junaio 2.0 platform that’s the first Augmented Reality app that is designed to be used indoors where GPS might not work properly. That makes it great for using it at parties, or at museums. They are also shipping two new channels, one for BART (Bay Area transit, will show you station locations and estimated arrival times) and one for Eventful, which will show you event data from Eventful, which is a comprehensive calendar of local events. You can download Junaio 2.0 now from the app store (the video for ScavangAR shows you how) and there will be more details on 2.0 on Junaio’s website by the end of the day.
Original post by Robert Scoble
With an estimated 245 million subscribers worldwide, the mobile Internet is rapidly becoming one of the best channels for retail sales.
With mobile commerce (mcommerce), merchants can reach potential customers as they commute, wait in the lobby at a doctor’s office, or eat lunch in the company cafeteria. But the mobile Internet can pose something of a challenge for web designers and developers, requiring an additional level of project planning and aforethought.
When we design websites for desktop or laptop computers, there is actually a tremendous amount of continuity. Sure, we might complain that Internet Explorer 6 is quirky; or wonder why Google Chrome and Apple Safari, which run on the webkit engine, manage some margins differently. But, for the most part, we can depend on a very consist user experience across web browsers, monitors, and operating systems. This is not true of the mobile Internet.
The iPhone, as an example, has a 3.5-inch diagonal, widescreen multi-touch display that is 480-by-320 pixels in resolution when held horizontally, and 320 pixels wide when flipped vertically. So for which resolution do you design?
If everyone was using an iPhone or a comparable smart phone, it would not be too bad. In fact, it would not be too different than designing for desktops and laptops. But what about a mobile Internet user in Africa, where the average screen width is only 120 pixels? You can bet a fixed width layout won’t work well on both of these platforms.
And it gets worse. The iPhone uses a mobile version of the Safari web browser which manages XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript like a champ. While an older handset’s browser, which probably cannot be upgraded, might not offer HTML support at all.
With such differing mobile browsers and platforms, a mobile web designer and developer should do more planning and approach site development with graceful degradation in mind. While mobile projects can and do vary greatly, I believe there are some basic project planning techniques that will help a project succeed, and in this post I will describe these techniques in general terms. Remember, the goal is to provide some basic mobile project planning steps, each of these steps will require refining specific to your organization and project.
Device Targeting
In his book, Mobile Design and Development, author and mobile design expert, Brian Fling, describes the concept of device planning. The idea is to identify which particular mobile handsets you want to target with your design and then identify each handset’s weaknesses.
“If you know the weakness of each of the devices you plan to support, along with what you will be able to safely accomplish, then you can have many successful mobile projects,” Fling wrote.
Sure, your client or company may want to reach “every” mobile Internet user, but certainly you will have some priorities.
For example, are you really targeting so-called emerging markets like Africa or India? If you are, you’ll need to consider the sorts of mobile devices that users in these regions favor. If not, you may not need to focus a significant portion of your design efforts on these devices. Likewise, if you are selling a downloadable product that only works on smartphones or on a specific mobile platform like Google Android, then you only need to aim for some mobile handsets, not all of them.
At its heart, device argeting is a business decision that should be made before developing a mobile-friendly ecommerce site.
Device Evaluation
With a list of target handsets assembled, you can categorize these devices based on what markup and programming languages they will support. Again using Fling as a reference, here is how he classifies mobile handsets for design purposes.
Table 1: The Mobile Device Matrix. Source Brian Fling, Mobile Design and Development
| Class A Mobile Devices | XHTML, XHTML-MP, HTML 5 | CSS2, CSS3 | JavaScript, DHTML, AJAX |
| Class B Mobile Devices | XHTML, XHTML-MP | CS̀ | Limited JavaScript, DHTML |
| Class C Mobile Devices | XHTML, XHTML-MP | Limited CSS2 | Very limited JavaScript |
| Class D Mobile Devices | XHTML-MP | Basic CS̀ | No JavaScript |
| Class F Mobile Devices | XHTML-MP, WML | No CSS | No JavaScript |
If you need to design for Class D mobile devices, you have a very different task than if your only targets are Class A phones.
Furthermore, some devices can and will support more than one mobile browser, so it is important to be familiar with some of the more popular mobile browsers. A list of some of these browsers follows. It is arranged in no particular order.
Site Aim and Scope
After considering your target audience and the mobile devices that they are likely to be using, it is time to turn your attention to what your mobile site should offer. In a step analogous to other forms of site design, you should define site aim and scope.
Is your site a product catalog? Will it need to support demonstrations? What features are needed to meet your merchandising requirements? How will you accept payments?
Before you can really do a good job of designing a mobile Internet site, you need to understand what your site must accomplish. Put another way, you need to define your site project goals, and work out a design that helps your client or company achieve those goals.
WML, XHTML-MP, Or XHTML
Target devices selected and site goals in place, you will need to select a markup language. Fortunately, many modern mobile devices support XHTML, one of the most common markup languages and a markup language you have no doubt used when developing other sites. But depending on your target devices, you may need to support other, earlier markup languages or you may want to push the edge of mobile design and choose something like HTML 5.
- HTML 5 — The fifth major revision of the Internet’s core language is a powerful update aimed at making web pages act more like applications. The recommendation is still not completely supported in desktop web browsers, and can only really be trusted at all in mobile devices running Firefox for Mobile, Opera, or Apple Safari.
- XHTML —The extensible hypertext markup language is nearly ten-year-old web recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that represents a reformulation of HTML 4 and XML 1.0. This markup language has been, perhaps, the most popular markup language for all web design for past several years. Class A, B, and C mobile devices support it, and Class A devices, which would include the iPhone, support it very well. For an even safer choice, use XHTML Basic, which is a subset XHTML that will almost certainly work on modern Internet-capable devices.
- XHTML-MP — XHTML Mobile Profile (MP) is a modularization of XHTML Basic, which the Open Mobile Alliance, an industry association, named the preferred markup language for the wireless application protocol (WAP) 2.0 in 2002. According to Fling, if you can write XHTML, you can probably write XHTML-MP with little or no trouble.
- WML — The wireless markup language (WML) is based on XML and was specifically developed for mobile devices running on WAP. Used mobile devices in some emerging markets, particularly those manufactured before 2001, may require a site to offer a WML version.
Basic Site Structure
In mobile website design, it is important to remember that not only is the platform different but the user is different too, or at least how the user acts is different. What’s more, whenever possible you want to build a single website that works across platforms, i.e.; mobile and desktop.
To achieve these ends, take a minimalist approach to XHTML site structure, and arrange the site in such a way that it would make sense to read it top to bottom. You can change the structure with CSS or JavaScript in the presentation or behavior layer, but in XHTML, you want simplicity.
Progressive Enhancement
This minimalistic structure is also a tenant of progressive enhancement. Progressive enhancement focuses on content, and generally encourages developing content first and gradually adding presentation and behavior layers to your content as you go. It has two important effects for mobile design.
First, by focusing on content, progressive enhancement helps the mobile design identify the site’s essentials.
Second, by adding presentation (CSS) and behavior (JavaScript or Flash) layers on after the content layer is developed, we also get a site that degrades gracefully. If we build content that is readable on a Class D mobile handset, adding CSS so that a Class A phone renders that content differently has no effect on the Class D user, but improves the experience for the Class A user.
Summing Up
In this article, I have tried to generally introduce you to the mobile site development process. Certainly, I have not provided an exhaustive list of everything that you will need to do, but I believe I have given you enough information to get your mobile project started properly.
This post was contributed by our guest columnist Armando Roggio. Armando is a journalist, web designer, technologist and the site director for Ecommerce Developer.
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With the continued popularity of smartphones, more and more retailers are launching either mobile websites or mobile applications by the day. Many who haven’t yet taken the plunge are wondering what to invest their resources in first.
Aside from “doing nothing,” retailers have 2 options when considering mobile commerce: building an application (or “app”), or creating a website specifically for mobile devices. As Graham Charlton of Econsultancy has observed in the UK, some etailers are opting to bypass the mobile optimized website and go straight to a mobile app. This post continues the conversation and examines the differences of each and how you might choose between them.
Do Not Nothing
Smartphones are built for web browsing and users will generally be able to access your web site through a mobile browser even if you do not do anything. But this is not the optimal user experience, as pages designed for the web render very poorly on small screens:
Above left: Sephora.com website as viewed through mobile browser. Above right: Mobile optimized website at m.sephora.com viewed on mobile device.
While doing nothing is an option, any retailer who anticipates driving any sales through mobile devices needs either a mobile optimized version or a mobile application.
A mobile application is essentially software developed to run on mobile devices. Apps were popularized by the iPhone and Blackberry, but also may be developed for the Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems.
Mobile applications may serve as a mobile storefront, allowing in-app purchases. For example, the iPhone eBay app generated $400 million in revenue in 2009. It’s a tiny bit of eBay’s $59.7 billion in revenue but still impressive for an application people voluntarily install on their iPhones.
Pro: User experience
The main advantage of building an app is the user experience. Most mobile browsers can’t handle JavaScript and Flash. A properly built app gives a developer control over the way text and images are displayed, as well as the use of sounds and videos. Apps can utilize the whole screen of the phone and remove other distractions from the shopper like address bars. There are also no compatibility issues when apps are dedicated to the device they were developed for. Screen size and features are consistent for all users.
Pro: Hardware features
GPS, camera and “shake” functionality can all be baked into apps. For example, a customer could add an item to cart by shaking her phone. For multichannel retailers with local stores, mobile applications can offer a GPS based store finder, or “augmented reality” where you can view a street through your iPhone’s camera and it will tell you the nearest gas station or fast food restaurant.
Pro: Loyalty
A customer who actively downloads and installs an app has a pretty good chance of using it. The app on the “desktop” is top-of-mind.
Pro: Off-line usage
Even when wi-fi or 3G is unavailable, a customer can browse your catalog or other application features which do not require Internet access.
Con: Development resources
Mobile apps take longer to develop than mobile websites. Not only because the look and feel of the app will usually have to be built from scratch, but also because you will need to create multiple apps to reach a wide audience. The iPhone currently dominates the app market, but with the large amount of other devices and app stores popping up, that will not last forever. Some think that Android-based mobile phones will surpass the iPhone in market share by 2012.
Con: Adoption and usage
Before a customer can experience your app, she has to download and install it. You will mainly reach your most loyal customers who are fairly invested in your brand. Just as with PCs, most people think twice before they install an app on their phone.
Con: Nascent market
Despite all the press coverage, the app market in total is not that big. Only 13.3% of the phones sold in Q3 of 2009 were smartphones, and of those only 17.1% were iPhones. With Apple controlling the app market for now, that’s a very small number of potential customers.
As mentioned earlier here on Get Elastic, there are many ways to build a mobile optimized site which each have their own pros and cons.
Pro: Less required resources
Mobile sites will most likely be quicker to implement compared to building an app with a unique look and feel. Note that due to the wide variety of handsets available, you may have to optimize your website for more than one phone and/or screen size. In most cases, depending on your ecommerce platform, you should be able to reuse large parts of your existing infrastructure and focus on changing the website’s look and feel so that it fits a smaller screen.
If that’s not fast enough for you there are services like Usablenet and Mobile Aware that will take your existing ecommerce site and build a mobile optimized version in a few weeks without you having to lift a finger.
Pro: Accessible to all
If a user is not heavily invested in your brand chances are slim that they are willing to download an app just to be able to find the nearest store or buy the thing they’ve just seen an ad for. But a mobile site is accessible on any device with a mobile browser, including non-smartphones, as most of these have some form of WAP-browsing. Though WAP is fast becoming a long forgotten technology it’s still worth considering depending on the customers you’re trying to reach.
Con: Limited functionality
Even though all smartphones have browsers, most of them are very simplistic and cannot handle the same complexity and dynamic behavior as browsers on a PC. Flash is especially an issue, as hardly any of the smartphone browsers support it. Even some JavaScript that should be simple can be problematic.
Being confined to working with what the phone browser can handle means you cannot use any of the phone’s other features such as GPS for a location-based store locator. It also means the customer must have network coverage to continue to use your website. If the connection drops for any reason you could potentially lose a sale. As mentioned previously, building an app would help you avoid these restrictions as an app has better access to other features the phone offers, as well as being able to store information locally until the phone regains network access.
Con: Customer satisfaction
A mobile optimized site may not have the same appeal for a loyal customer who might expect a greater interaction or immersion on your brand.
It should be clear now that neither solution alone is perfect for reaching all your customers, and if resources were not an issue the optimal solution would be to do both. So the question really becomes “If I can’t have both, how do I choose?”
The short answer is (as always): It depends on your target audience.
Apps are great when you have a segment of loyal customers who interact with you on a regular basis and want a fuller experience on their mobile. You can provide special news, content, offers etc. to these customers, leveraging the hardware of a device such as GPS, camera and “shake.” (Hint: Survey your customers through email, on-site surveys or social media like Facebook or Twitter).
In some cases, your customers are already screaming for a mobile app and are making their voices heard in online communities like the Sephora Facebook page:
Unless there is sufficient customer demand, an optimized mobile website is your best bet. It requires less commitment from a potential customer and allows access to all.
Besides considering your target audience, it’s also vital to consider the impact on your brand and how your mobile strategy in general fits with the rest of your offerings. You can still offer special content, products, offers to a select group of customers in other ways like SMS/text messages, email newsletter, physical newsletter, personal promotion codes, etc.
Dennis Newel is a business analyst and ecommerce consultant at Elastic Path Software.
Don’t forget:This month we are presenting a webinar on application stores: App store – a new way to sell software, media, and anything digital where we will discuss the app store as an ecommerce platform and its business models.
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