I'd take the browser

I just realized that once again I am going against the flow, and this time it is about whether to do mobile applications or mobile websites.

I think it was back in 2001 when I made my first mobile application, it was for Nokia 9210 and Symbian was still called Epoc. To make an application for that device was a very painful process, supporting documentation was nonexistent, there was hardly anyone to ask help and SDKs and tools were jurassic. When application was ready, users didn't dare to even try installing it, because the whole concept of installing stuff to telephone was beyond their comprehension. Despite of that I wanted to create applications and not browser content.

Constantly I was challenged about applications vs. browser question. Users had just experienced the transition from desktop applications to desktop browser solutions and of course wanted to know why mobile world was different compared to desktop world. The reasons for applications were simple: terminals were lacking many features and only applications could fill those gaps; data networking was very expensive, unreliable and circuit switched; browsers supported only WAP and user's didn't even know how to configure it. That's why I wanted to create applications, luckily there was no fragmentation at that time.

Fast Forward 10 years.

Today's devices are primarily internet data satellites and most of them have capability to do also old-fashioned voice calls. Devices are online all the time, switch between networks transparently and some have better screen resolution than office monitors had ten years ago. Devices are filled with capabilities, including great (or bearable - you know who I mean…) browsers. At the same time new device platforms pop up everywhere, old platforms get updates, fragmentation spreads around the business and still applications are the most hyped thing. It doesn't make sense. No matter which platform you choose for your application, you rule out most of the users. If you pick browser solution and implement it wisely, you can reach 96% of devices instantly if that is needed. Today I can't help suggesting customers by default to choose browser and forget applications, unless a real reason exists to decide the opposite. Because typically browser is also cheaper choice, customers can invest remaining budget on marketing and attract users that way. When your first application is published, you have just scratched the surface but with browser you probably are done already.

Why everybody then wants applications today? Probably because it is so easy to go with the herd and application stores give you visibility and some coolness-factor? Of course there are cases when an application is a must, but looking at top-100 applications from any listing you can easily see that "let's duplicate our browser content with our application" is the most common specification used. And if you think application store is a great way to get publicity for your application, you certainly are not alone. In Apple AppStore only you have over 300.000 friends, sharing your hopes.

//Harri

Ovi Store disappointment

Earlier Nokia's Ovi Store has had some usability challenges, to put it politely. Having used new Ovi Store for some time with N8 I've been quite happy with it as there has been a major improvement to user experience. Application discovery and installation work acceptably and sometimes I've even found myself browsing the store just to see what's available.

After many installed applications I started to wonder that I never received any notifications about application updates. You know, sometimes developers do make mistakes and release fixes for those or even add new features to applications. Must say I was shocked when I was told that missing update notifications was not because Nokia developer ecosystem has reached the ultimate quality level but because Ovi Store doesn't support update notifications!

Ok, no update notifications then. Before application is installed from Ovi Store, there is a button to download the application and after installation is finished, the same button allows me to launch the application. I can't download the same application again - is the purpose that I must uninstall the application before update?

How am I supposed to update an application I've installed from Ovi Store if I know an update exists?

How would I know there is an update available because Ovi Store doesn't show version numbers?

Why does Ovi Store offer me the same application again and again for download even if I have it already installed?

Has somebody really wrote specification that states this is the way an application store should work?

Below are some screenshots if Ovi Store is not familiar to you.

//Harri

All these different devices are the same

While smartphone competition is heating up, many analysts have asked when Nokia will start using Android in its devices, instead of Symbian. Most of the answers to this question have been the same, how Nokia would then differentiate itself from all the other manufacturers who use Android? In general, how could a manufacturer differentiate from all the other competitors using the same platform? Here are two ways to do it, both of them I would highly appreciate as a customer.

Superior hardware quality

Thinking about Nokia, their hardware quality is still unbeatable. Take an E-series device and hold it in your hand, it feels rock solid and durable. Then repeat the test with - let's say - HTC Hero and you feel the difference. You might not want to do this, but drop both devices to concrete floor - which one is still working?

OK, I have had HTC Hero and touchscreen has now broken three times in a year and device is again getting repaired. That's why HTC Hero is used as an example here. And yes, I haven't dropped it to the floor.

How do you differentiate from competitors if all are using the same platform?

Make sure your device has better and more durable hardware!

Give an unbeatable support statement

No matter which platform the device is running, there will be new platform versions and sooner or later the device becomes outdated. New applications will benefit from new platform services and you are missing all those. When will your device get an update - or will it ever? Has the manufacturer forgotten its old customers? Here is again a good way for manufacturers to differentiate: make a bold promise to customers that they will not be forgotten and they receive new platform versions in a timely and expectable way. What this would mean? Here is a sentence that you are free to use: "If you buy this device, we will provide you new platform software within three months after the release or give you an immediate information if such an upgdare cannot be made because of a major hardware incompatibility."

How do you differentiate from competitors if all are using the same platform?

Make a statement that your device will be kept up-to-date, also in the future!

//Harri

Marketing with Ovi Store error page

Although Nokia during latest quarter sold more smartphones than before, they are loosing faithful Symbian customers to other platforms. Time to do something?

Some days ago I received from Ovi Store an SMS that promoted a local application

Well, I wasn't using anymore the S60 device, but HTC Hero instead. When I clicked the link from the message, it opened the browser and displayed a message

I'm not a marketing guy, but wouldn't this be a great place for trying to get a customer back? After all, this page is displayed to somebody who has previously owned and actively used a Nokia device but who has swithched to other manufacturer's phone. Opportunity to tell about latest news and improvements and make an offer for new Nokia phone?

//Harri

Are SMS alerts an opportunity or an expense?

Just now there are two major factors that shake the ground under the (postal) logistics business; first is the economic downturn and second is the almighty internet. The combination of these two means that the volumes in their business have fallen significantly and will continue to do so. As an example, volumes for Finnish Post have decreased between 9% to 16%, depending on the product category.

Someday the economic situation will improve, but internet and electronic communication are here to stay.

There is a major trend to move away from paper invoicing to electronic invoicing because of the huge cost savings. Deutsche Bank estimates there is a potential of €54 billion savings if invoicing process is improved, and that’s just in Germany! It is safe to assume that volumes of paper invoice are going to drop dramatically in favor of electronic invoicing.

Let’s leave business-to-business invoicing aside and concentrate on business-to-consumer invoices. In the B2C world the problem is how to send the electronic invoice to the customer, the scene is very fragmented and solutions are many. The selected media should be reliable, fast, common and cheap.

Assume that someday electronic B2C invoicing is working flawlessly and you will in some digital way receive the minimum information that’s needed to accept the invoice. What’s missing from the business’ point of view? Today paper invoices come with customer newsletters, marketing material, offers and so on - invoice has become an “advoice” that carries much more information than just the invoice. At its best advoice concept is so powerful that customers are delighted to receive the invoice, because of the attached content. When everything is electronic, what will happen to advoices and this media? The progress reminds me of the banking business in the 90’s - banks created products that allowed customers to do self-service instead of visiting the offices. Later banks understood that maybe they succeeded too well in allowing self-service as they had lost contact to customers. Now banks and insurance companies try to get customers sometimes visit the office, but results haven’t been good. How to sell new complicated products to people without personal contact?

Ok, what’s my point? Finnish Post has a service that allows companies and organizations securely send messages (e.g. invoices) to customers; it’s like an email system that allows only pre-approved senders to send messages. When new message arrives, user will get an alert to his email inbox and he can login to see the message.

This summer system was upgraded with an option to send also SMS alerts when new messages arrives to inbox, end-user price is €0.25 message. This is a mistake, messages should be free and here is the reason why.

I can easily understand why there is a price tag in the alert message, it’s just the easiest way to secure the decision maker’s background in the current economic situation. "Customers want SMS, let’s put it there and charge for every message" goes the easy rationale. Last year there were total 2.1M messages sent through the system. Just taking list price from an SMS-aggregator shows that if they had sent alert for every message, the cost would’ve been about €72.000. I don’t think that is much if compared to other media that they use for marketing: with that sum Finnish Post can’t even get two front page ads in a major newspaper - and that's just the printing cost. Comparing a print media ad to a highly engaging SMS message with a call to action and immediate return channel is like comparing a steam train to a sports car. Studies have shown that Blyk’s answer rate for SMS’s has been around 25%! If Finnish Post were able to do the same, they (or their customers) would have received 500.000 replies from end users. (Yes, this is not a fair comparison because Blyk’s model depends on having a very homogenous user base with information about personal preferences, but that’s still an evidence how SMS marketing works at its best.) Can you see the business here: trend towards electronic invoicing suddenly becomes an opportunity instead of a threat, but that needs some new thinking.

In short: it’s is just wrong to punish users who want SMS alerts. If that channel is used well, Finnish Post could in fact reward users who accept SMS alerts with information about new message and a short ad with a clear call to action.

//Harri

Quick study about media companies' mobile sites

In my previous entry I wrote about a small study I made to see how top 100 Finnish companies have arranged their mobile presence. In short they havent done much with it, as only 8 companies had some kind of a mobile website that I could discover.

Frustrated about the bad results I made a second test, this time I took ten Finnish online media houses. The companies tested were not picked from any top-ten list, but those were the sites I use myself.

I tested for the existence of .mobi site, site with m-prefix and possible device detection with automatic redirection to mobile site. For more information about the tests, please check my previous posting.

Results

This time I was able to see more mobile sites than before. Two sites had mobi-site and three had registered the domain but there was no service. Four companies haven't registered mobi-domain and one domain name was taken by some other company. The sites that had mobi-service were Yle and MTV3.

From ten tested sites seven had mobile service available in m-address (e.g. m.yle.fi), one redirected to original desktop browser site and two didn't use this server name at all.

Device detection and redirect to mobile site seems to be the most difficult test. In the top 100 company study only one company had deployed such a system, this time two sites (Digitoday and Taloussanomat) were able to detect mobile device and redirect user to mobile site when he tries to access the base service with his mobile.

This time there were three sites that were able to score 2 out of 3: Yle, Digitoday and Taloussanomat - kudos to them. Previous test round didn't find any company that was able to score more than one out of three. It looks that media companies have far better understanding about mobile browsing than top 100 companies do.

List of sites tested (random order)

• yle.fi
• mtv3.fi
• nelonen.fi
• helsinginsanomat.fi
• iltasanomat.fi
• iltalehti.fi
• digitoday.fi
• taloussanomat.fi
• kauppalehti.fi
• uusisuomi.fi

//Harri

Study: Top 100 Finnish companies and mobile websites

Lately I’ve had many disappointments with corporate mobility especially in customer care. There had been situations when I have wished for a mobile access to some simple information, just to discover that it doesn’t exist or is not discoverable.

Because I started to feel that Finnish companies are not up to date with mobile solutions, I made a small study that reveals big companies are really missing the mobile opportunity. No mobile marketing. No mobile customer care. Just mobile silence.

I took a list of biggest (by turnover, excluding bank and insurance) 100 Finnish companies from Kauppalehti’s site. The things I wanted to verify were:

• does company have a mobi-server (e.g nokia.mobi)?
• does company have an m-server (e.g. m.nokia.fi)?
• does company have an automatic device detection (i.e. mobile users are automatically redirected to mobile site when accessing the main corporate site)?

The reason for these tests is that whenever I don’t know if a company has a mobile site, I try these two combinations (m.company.com and company.mobi). If those don’t match, I practice wishful thinking and try the main company site, just to see if there is some smart redirect to mobile site. After these three tries I usually will give up and understand that the company will not deliver information to mobile devices.

Test setup and results

Tests were conducted between June 19th and June 21st. Original list had 100 companies, but one of those doesn’t seem to have a website (or it is down all the time), so the results below will sum up to 99.

Mobi-domain

In this test I tried to access the company’s mobi-website (e.g. nokia.com) with a desktop browser. If site was found, I also tried to access it with a mobile device (Nokia N96) to verify the contents. For found mobi-domains I also verified whether those really were registered for the company.

Domain not registered	33
Domain not registered by company	29
Domain redirects to desktop website	5
Domain is registered by company but has no website	27
Mobi domain has a mobile website	5
	99

From the list of top 100 Finnish companies only Elisa (operator, content not available for non-Elisa customers), Lassila-Tikanoja (password protected internal service or CMS console?), Nokia, St1 and Valio had a mobile website.

M-service

In this test I tried to access company’s website from address m.company.com. Because mobi-domain solution is often criticized for some extra costs for registering and administering the domain, I expected to see more mobile sites this time.

No m. service	97
Mobile site available at “m.company.com”	2
	99

Only two companies (DNA and Toyota) from 100 had mobile site available at m-address (m.dna.fi and m.toyota.fi). Note that none of the “mobi companies” from above are in this group.

Redirect to mobile site

Because there is a possibility that company puts its mobile service to some other address and automatically redirects mobile user there, I also tested top 100 companies for automatic redirect. Test was made so that I accessed company’s main site with desktop browser and mobile browser (Nokia N96) and verified whether the content was the same or not.

No device recognition and redirect	98
Mobile user redirected to special page	1
	99

The result was that only Hewlett-Packard has deployed mobile device detection and redirect to mobile website.

Notes about the results

The results are poor. Using this criteria only 8 companies from 99 have really thought about mobile access and the potential benefits. Of course some companies may have mobile sites at mobi.company.com, mobile.company.com, www.company.com/mobile or something else. Those were not tested, because as a user I don’t like to guess many times just to see if there is a mobile site or not. Why not use “de facto” names or automatic redirect? Comparing “mobi” and “mobile” to “m” means 8 or 13 extra clicks with phone’s keypad when writing the website address, for example.

None of the companies was able to score more than 1 out of 3 and the list included 3 operators and 1 device manufacturer - they should know how to do the trick.

It looks that 32 companies have some plans with mobi-site, because they have registered the domain but not yet published a mobile service there. I hope they understand the possibilities and didn’t just register the domain to protect it.

Size doesn’t matter in mobility. World’s largest company Shell has a subsidiary also in Finland and they scored zero points in this test. No mobi-site, no m-site, no device detection. Ironically, Shell’s chairman of the board is Jorma Ollila, Nokia’s previous CEO and current chairman of the board.

This survey was only about the companies, not about the brands, trademarks or such. I’m aware that many corporations have mobile sites for their brands, but that was out of the scope.

//Harri

Great product, but so hard to get

It's often said that Finns are good in technology but poor in marketing. Let me give you an example of that.

Nokia has long time ago created Sports Tracker, an application that will record and store your exercices. The solution is one of my favourites and I use it regularly to track where I've been when running, cycling and rollerblading. During excercises I use Polar heart-rate monitor to ensure that intensity is at optimal level and I don't start with too high speed. Sometimes I've dreamed of combining mobile phone and heart-rate monitor into one.

Good news is that Nokia and Polar have now created the solution that does exactly what I've wanted. With a special Polar heart-rate chest belt you can send the information to Sports Tracker application and later upload the training info to the website. You can see where you've been and how effective the exercise was. I have tried this combination and and it is - literally - breathtaking experience. Wow!

There's only one problem: this solution is almost impossible to buy!

First when I heard about this product, I went to Nokia flagship store to buy just the chest-belt - after all I have N96 that is same generation product than N79 that comes bundled with the chest-belt. I learned that chest-belt is not sold separately and I should buy the bundled N79 if I wanted this small piece of hardware. Didn't want to do that.

Then I went to the Polar website to see where chest-belt is available, maybe Nokia just doesn't want to sell that alone. Result was the same, belt is not available and their support forum has some angry discussion because of that.

Nokia's own customer website doesn't seem to know anything about this combination anymore, N79 product page is silent about Polar integration, Sports tracker site promotes other N-series devices and so on. From one Finnish webshop I can see that by ordering the N79 + chest-belt bundle I could get the product in one week with 45€ extra price compared to standard N79.

Nokia and Polar, can you hear me: you have created a superb product, please put power to marketing and start selling! It's not good business to play hide'n'seek with customers. To Nokia: this is something that makes digital convergence and internet services real, not just hype. To Polar: don't be afraid about cannibalizing your traditional market, this combination doesn't compete against your high-end heart-rate monitors.

Great engineering, poor marketing.

//Harri

I want mobile marketing!

Hi again, I'm back. Vacation is over.

I’m returning back home with my family after a month’s trip across Europe to Southern France. Roaming costs still being sky-high, I made a decision that I will not use cellular data connections during the trip to test if there are free WiFi hotspots available and whether that’s a real solution for connectivity problems. The answer was clearly “no”.

When traveling for business, one typically stays in hotels with network access and the offices also provide network access. For family trips the accommodation is more like bed-and-breakfast and private houses. And luckily there were no offices to visit!

When we walked the streets or visited cafes I tried to scan for open networks. Result was surprisingly bad and most of the networks I used were open by accident, I guess (most of them were named “linksys", “netgear” or similar). If there had been an open network for any cafe that I could recognize by network name, my promise was that I’d take my family there and spend some money. There was none.

Just letting customers and bypassers to use network for free is nice and might generate additional sales. However, often free WiFi is a lost marketing opportunity. Why not strenghten the customer relationship with some innovative solutions, like sending access password to customer's Twitter account as a DM message as soon as customer becomes a follower. After that the marketing channel is established and every follower has an existing relationship with the business. At least I'd be happy with this deal.

Another thing about mobile marketing that businesses should think about is the scope. Too often mobile marketing is just about phones and PDA's, but what about the navigators? Is your business visible in the common navigator placemark listings? When traveller needs a service (use case: hungry kids screaming at the back-seat), he most probably does a search with his navigator. If your competitor is there and you are not, that's bad for your business. I can confess that when we were in France, Casino lost a customer because their shops were not listed in the navigator database and instead we went to Intermarché, just because I was able to find their nearest shop from the navigator listing. Mobile marketing is business.

//Harri