With the markets being flooded by affordable mobile devices, the Internet has now extended beyond the reach of conventional desktops and laptops. People in this modern world, even in the remote parts of the world, carry a sleek and portable device that suits their budget and purpose. Mobile marketing, which is just an extension of online marketing, is a marketing exercise fine-tuned to specifications of mobile devices that are mostly constrained in terms of display size and Internet speed.

How Best to Address Mobile Marketing

There are several mobile marketing techniques including messages (SMS and MMS), advertisements on the mobile versions of popular Internet browsers, QR codes (matrix barcodes), banners, in-app ads or ads tagged to mobile games. Whatever be the adopted approach, the job is to keep the message short, relevant and clear.

• Clear, concise and relevant SMS messages are ideal to start off with. Messages, however, can be sent to only those who opt to receive them.
• Optimised or lean websites render well on mobile devices. Given the Internet speed offered by different service providers, simple layouts with minimum jazz, images, graphics or flash cut down on the loading time, a major problem as reported by 64 % of smartphone users according to a Keynote Systems Inc. survey.
• Advertisements are all about pictures; they use small pictures to draw attention to the website. Small file sizes have a better reach and appeal, likely to be unaffected by local Internet speeds.
• Mobile ads often help boost local businesses and figuring on local searches, especially on the maps matters the most. A Keyhole Markup Language (XML) file replete with geographical information on the physical location of a brick-and-mortar shop, placed in the root directory of a site, forces search engines to take notice of the website for ranking purposes, making it easier for users who use maps for their searches to locate the shop.
• QR codes, through prevalent, need an appropriate call to action and relevant info on the landing page to be successful.

Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) reports reveal a 132% growth in mobile advertising and 152 % surge in mobile search during the first half of this year in UK. With the basics right, mobile marketing efforts are sure to pay off.

What’s Different About HTML5?

This new version of the mark-up language which web development teams use to create your sites has media integration … which means that animations, interactive tools and movies can now be scripted into your website without using third party programs like Flash or Silverlight. These third party programs had issues of their own, and didn’t always work as well with different browsers and mobile devices (notably the iPhone and iPad).

How Do We Love Thee, HTML5?

Let us count the ways! HTML5 is a naturally better choice on the web, and even more so if you want to free your website from the shackles of the desktop computer and infiltrate the 2,000,000+ touchscreens of Australia. It’s most lovable characteristics include:

Ability to display rich media on ALL mobile devices: Any websites designed using Flash in the past could only be read by Apple mobile devices with certain plug-ins. This was not the most stable or user-friendly solution – HTML5 makes it much easier.

Offline opportunities: Some of the features of HTML5 expand the offline information storage capacity past what cookies or a cache could do. This means that blips in the wireless signal won’t necessarily kick your users off your website, and many features will be available without any signal.

Finding yourself: Apps which integrate geo-location work much more intuitively with HTML5.

However, HTML5 is not a robot. It is human. Oh, wait…

Perhaps I should say that HTML5 has failings along with its wonderful qualities! There is little backwards compatibility with the platform, so users with older browsers may miss out completely.

Flash: “What about Me?”

It seems set that HTML5 is the future of mobile website design. But what is the future of Flash? At Lava, we haven’t ditched Flash. In no way is Flash a tool of the past – although it will probably start to be used in more niche situations. Especially for desktop-based websites, you’ll still see the superhuman reflexes, super-speed and manipulation of the laws of physics that Flash is known for!

What do I mean? Let’s take a closer look some common conversion optimisation tactics to find out if your site could benefit from a tweak in execution:

It isn’t enough just to have a contact form:

Poor Quality Contact Form

Contact forms are great, and simple contact forms are even greater, but a form’s impact is greatly marginalized if its purpose isn’t made clear. Too many websites just have a form on the side that says “Contact Us” with a generic “Message” field. Why would a customer want to send you a message? What is that you want your users to contact you for? Mention the contact form in the call to action in your copy, and use it as a medium to take a step in the right direction. Instead of simply, “Contact Us,” consider “Contact Us for a Quote” or “Fill Out This Form to Reach a Salesperson.” It’s important to minimize the number of fields on your form, but make each one purposeful. Instead of “Message,” considering a field titled “How Can We Help You?” or “Describe your Problem.” Use a form to get all the information you need, but absolutely none that you don’t.

List benefits instead of features:

Think About What Goes Into Lists

Lists on webpages are great because they are easy to skim. Users are rarely willing to wade through big blocks of text, so bullets are a way to get a lot of information across without the intimidating the reader. However, many websites fill these bullets with lists of features instead of important messages. A good bulleted list can be some of the most valuable real estate on your page, so don’t bury the lead – customers don’t buy products to acquire features, they buy products to solve problems. For example, instead of saying “All sessions are SLL encrypted,” consider “SLL encryption ensures that your data is safe from theft.” Instead of “100% Satisfaction Guaranteed,” try “Eligible for full refund if customer is unsatisfied for any reason.”

Use visual contrast to guide the user:

High Contrast Sign-Up Button

With myriad tools available for webpages to enhance user experience – videos, testimonials, downloads, related links, etc. – even concise, well-structured webpages can have a lot going on. By strictly adhering to a visual color scheme, many designers overlook the element of visual contrast to aid in guiding the user’s eye to the conversion action. For example: if your website has a ‘cool-colored’ theme, as many do nowadays, consider the effect of a ‘warm’ color for your action items, such as contact form submit buttons, phone numbers, “Learn More” links, etc. If used sparingly, the contrast will “pop” off of the page, drawing the eye of the user to elements of your choice; even if the user is engaged in the content of the page, he or she will always know where to go next.

When all else fails: test!

You don’t need a focus group to gather good feedback – just ask your friends and co-workers to interact with your website. But be sure to do as much watching as you do asking, as the most valuable feedback is often what you can derive from how someone acts before he or she has a chance to reflect. In the real world, users don’t reflect on the effectiveness of their experience with your web page – if they are unsatisfied, they just hit the back button and choose the next result.

Keyword Stuffing is Dead

Any good SEO will know that you shouldn’t be stuffing keywords into your text, but there were many who carried out this technique with moderate success.

Previously, keyword stuffing was something that was considered to be “illegal” by Google, but it was very loosely enforced. Now it’s much stricter so writers and web masters need to be more careful about how they use keywords on their websites. If the site is flagged then it will tumble down the rankings.

Linking Out

Links to other websites was one of the most common SEO techniques. If the site was linked to a reputable website then it increased the authenticity of the content. However, now that’s all changed. The principle remains the same, but now the links must be relevant. Before these updates it was possible to just put in any old link to any old website and that would be enough. This meant that no thought had to be put into the link and it could have been completely irrelevant.

Writers and webmasters now will have to make sure these links are relevant. It’s currently unknown what signals are used by Google to detect improper linking, but the reality is that if the links aren’t relevant then the website will drop down the rankings.

Poor Quality

The Panda update was so monumental and so damaging to millions of sites due to the fact that it was the first time Google actively checked the quality of a web page. If a site is considered to be a place that has no or little value to a reader then the site is taken down on Google’s ranking system. This means that the site must be considered to be high quality. Subsequently it’s not enough to just spend time marketing oneself anymore. Now a page has to be both informational and promotional if a site is going to prosper under Google’s new regime.

In short, the post-Penguin world that Google has created has almost completely eliminated the use of the so-called black hat SEO techniques and now webmasters will see fit to seriously think about what they put on their websites.

Mozilla’s aggressive rollouts are mainly down to the people at Google Inc. running their popular Chrome browser at version 15. It’s crazy that Chrome has been around half as long as Firefox, yet is more than twice as high regarding current version numbers.

The guys at Mozilla obviously see this as an issue and have incorporated a new policy of releasing versions quicker than you can say ‘Checking for Updates…’ The last 3 major releases have been within 4 months of each other. The first 3 versions were each around 2 years apart. Quite a change in tact.

Not that version numbers really matter that much, I mean, just because your version is higher than the competitions doesn’t mean you’ve got a superior product. Right? However, Mozilla obviously think Google have a psychological advantage over the regular user.

At this rate Mozilla will continue to catch Chrome in the numbers stake. But it’s a risky game to be playing. With every release has to come something significant enough for users to want to upgrade. You can’t just sell it on some minor enhancements and bug fixes. The reduction in time between rollouts will also result in reduced testing time. Which affects us all as end users.

It’s clear that Mozilla is all about targeting new users with their new strategy. But regular users of the browser are updating so often it’s likely they’ll decide to ignore new versions. With the hassle of broken plugins, broken websites and changes in functionality, who really wants to be updating their web browser every 2 months?

It all points to Mozilla feeling slightly insecure. Rather than spending time sorting out the memory issues and other inherent bugs, they’d rather play catch up with Google. Firefox was brought out in 2004 4 years earlier than Chrome which didn’t release until 2008. According to the stats, Chrome is the 3rd most popular browser (as of July 2011) having around 22.00% worldwide usage and Firefox is the 2nd most popular (as of August 2011), with around a 30% worldwide base.

Mozilla are obviously coming a bit tetchy about Chrome’s rapid rise. It’s fast and clear interface is appealing to regular users. It’s got the major name behind it. It supports extensions and many web developers have access to some excellent tools available for development, design and SEO.

Firefox has a loyal user base but the change in it’s release schedule sends out warning signals. Chrome certainly has the money and brains behind it to be top dog. With the release of Googles own social networking service in the shape of Google+, Chrome can incorporate tight integration into it and if it becomes as successful as Google anticipates, it may be another reason for Mozilla users to jump ship.

It’s clear the next year or so is an important time for Mozilla. Let’s just hope the next few version releases finally sort out the memory issues. After all, who cares if we’re running Version 103.298 if all it does is crash when you have more than 2 tabs open.